Chapter 19

I had told Mik I was coming up for a few days and asked if he wanted to come; he had said yes, as the house was boring when I was gone. I suspected he may have had ulterior motives, but I could never be sure; he played his feelings close to his chest.

His girlfriend Connie was with her parents on a winter break in the Canary Islands, Lanzarote, I think he said, so he was at a bit of a loose end. We had packed up some clothes for a few days away and stopped at Lidl in Bingley and filled the car with provisions, mostly tinned and packeted, just in case we didn’t stay; then the food would be good till the next time we went back.

I gave Mik the car keys after we had finished putting the food in the car, and as I went to return the trolley, he started and warmed up the car.

“Have you seen the forecast, Mum?” He asked as he drove us out of the car park and onto the road towards Keithley and towards the cottage.

“No, I don’t bother with them usually; it is what it is. It is either cold or wet; there doesn’t seem to be any other option these days.” Even though Mik was driving, my feet still pressed the non-existent brake pedals; I couldn’t help it. I trusted him; my feet, it seemed, did not.

“Okay, well, they say major wintry showers, especially in high and exposed places. The cottage is exposed, and the dales are up high.”

“Oh well, if it snows, it snows. We don’t usually leave the cottage anyway. I suppose it is good that Connie won’t be here; she might have gotten a little worried if some snow fell.”

“They are not talking about some snow, Mum; they are talking about a lot of snow.”

We carried on, the skies heavy, but there was no snow yet. The wind was picking up, but apart from the darkening skies, there was no sign of the bad weather that Mik had read about.

“Do we have fuel for the generator?” Mik asked.

“Yes, we do, and the tank is full, and I also have some five-gallon jerry cans full as spares.”

“Right. Okay. Torches? Candles?”

“Yes. Look, I am the parent here; stop acting like my mum. I know what I am doing; you concentrate on driving the car.” I tried to tell my feet to stop braking.

After about thirty minutes, as we pulled on to the track to the cottage, the first flakes began to fall. Mik pulled up outside the cottage.

“Mik, let’s get everything out of the car; we’ll just dump it in the kitchen, and then you can go and put the car in the barn. Bring some shovels and brooms back with you, just in case we have to dig ourselves out.”

“Okay.”

I guess it took us ten minutes to empty the car and simply dump everything on or by the kitchen table. Mik then went and parked in the barn. When he came back in, he put two shovels and two brooms just inside the door, turned and shut and latched the door. I had the AGA going, and soon heat would be building in the cottage.

“That snow is really coming down now, Mum,” he said.

I looked through the kitchen window, and yes there were a lot of big flakes swirling in the wind, and it was settling in some places. I shrugged. Mik took our clothes upstairs and put them in our rooms. I had assumed we would use our own rooms; he hadn’t hinted otherwise whilst I began stowing the shopping in the cupboards. I put the kettle on, using the electric rather than the AGA, and put some thermoses on the work surface. My plan was to keep filling them with the unused boiling water; just in case, at least we would be able to get a quick hot drink if we needed one.

The cottage soon warmed up, and I was able to take my big coat off and hang it by the back door. As I was deciding what we would have for tea, the lights flickered and went out and then, a moment later, came back on again. The wind was howling around the cottage, and it gave an almost surreal Hammer House of horror feel to the place. I shivered, not from the cold, but from my mental images.

There was little that would actually scare me these days. I had faced aliens, witches, gods, angels, faeries and the Devil and had lived to tell the tales – not that I did tell them, I mean, few would believe me. A howling wind might conceivably harbour banshees. I cared not; bring them on, just another experience in my life.

One big gust had the cottage shake, but it had done worse; perhaps the snow was tempering the impact. I went to the kitchen window and looked out. The snow was really falling now; everywhere outside was white, and the daylight was nearly gone – no moon or stars, of course, just the reflected lights from Keighley on the base of the clouds.

I made two teas and went into the front room and sat on the sofa with a blanket over me, just to trap whatever heat I could from my body, and opened up my laptop. A few emails to deal with, and then Mik came down and sat opposite me with his tea.

“Spoilsport,” he said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“You know why,” he answered.

“No, I don’t. Why?”

“Covering yourself up with a blanket.”

Oh, well yes, I often sat on the sofa in a skirt and sometimes with no knickers. Mik would obviously gawp, and sometimes it led to more.

“You had given no inkling of interest,” I said, “and anyway, the cottage hasn’t warmed up yet.”

“Do I need to say anything? I mean, we are here, alone, no Connie, no, whoever your current man is, for you, and we are probably going to be snowbound. Do I really have to give you an inkling of whatever one of them is?”

I smiled. “Yes, sweetheart, I am many things; a mind reader is not one of them. Now give me five minutes; I have some emails to deal with.”

“Fine, I’ll just look at your photos then.”

He had previously sneaked some upskirt photos of me; all I could hope for was that he didn’t lose his phone and that the photos didn’t find their way onto the internet. I turned my attention back to the emails. Just some queries from contractors that were easily resolved. After that I started browsing reels. The latest thing was people taking Mounjaro to lose weight and the stupid questions they asked in the support groups.