Page 32 of Snowed In with You

‘That’s perfect,’ said Alex, looking at Lucy with a new-found admiration.

‘Lucy’s a writer,’ said Nate. ‘A very good one, actually.’

Alex had already gone back to tapping frantically on his screen and wasn’t listening, but Lucy appreciated the compliment all the same. She and Nate edged back into their booth where they could watch the unfolding party.

‘How’s your day going so far?’ asked Nate, nibbling at the corner of a slice of cheese.

Lucy thought about it, processing what felt like thousands of tiny events since she’d woken up barely ten hours ago. The bus ride, lunch, wine, playing board games with Nate, the avalanche, the phone call to her mother. And that was before she even scratched the surface of the hundred different ways today had been about Leo.

‘Today was always going to be a weird day,’ she said, her eyes fixed firmly on her plate. ‘And usually I spend it with my parents, which is . . . difficult in a different way.’

‘Yeah,’ said Nate. ‘I bet that’s pretty tough.’

‘But I figure if Leo was here he’d be loving the drama and drinking Gunther’s bar dry. He’d also be telling me to write everything down, so I don’t forget.’

‘Isn’t that what phones are for?’ asked Nate.

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Lucy saw that Alex was videoing again from over by the door, but this time she turned away a little and ignored him. ‘We should talk about you. You haven’t told me anything about your family.’ She glanced sideways at him, taking in the strong profile and his hair falling in loose curls over his ears, still wet from the snow.

‘Nothing much to tell,’ said Nate. ‘I have family in France, but I’ve lived in and around Bristol since I was a baby. A couple of years in Paris when I first joined LUNA, then back home.’

‘Can I join you?’ said Chantal, sliding into their booth with her plate of food before they could answer.

‘Sure.’ Lucy tried not to feel annoyed that an opportunity to find out more about Nate had been interrupted. She rationalised that they were in a small bar with seven other people, so any private conversations would have to wait until they retired to their attic later. In Lucy’s head it was a dark, cobwebby space accessed via a ceiling hatch and lined with itchy insulation, like the attic at her parents’ house. But maybe in Switzerland they did things differently.

‘Du sprichst Deutsch, ja?’ said Chantal to Nate, gazing at him in wonder. Lucy’s German didn’t extend much beyond ordering two beers, but she knew enough to understand that Chantal was trying to cut her out of the conversation.

‘Yes, but Lucy doesn’t,’ said Nate firmly. ‘So I think English would be more polite.’ Chantal looked crestfallen, and Lucy resisted the childish urge to stick her tongue out.

‘Of course,’ said Chantal. ‘We learn English at school from very young here in Switzerland. What kind of work do you do?’ She addressed the question to both of them, but it was clear that Chantal was really only interested in Nate. Lucy was too tired to compete for Nate’s affections, so she said nothing.

‘We both work for an advertising agency,’ Nate replied. ‘But Lucy is the talented one. She’s an amazing writer.’

‘Oh,’ said Chantal, looking a bit sick. ‘That’s nice.’

‘I write ads for condoms,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s hardly Dostoyevsky.’

‘Condoms?’ Chantal’s expression was a picture of innocence. ‘That’s very useful, after what you were telling us in the kitchen. I hope they give you lots of free samples.’

‘I really need to charge my phone,’ said Lucy quickly, giving Chantal a hard stare and turning around to see if Alex’s charger was still in use. He’d unplugged it and the cable was hanging loose, but before she could ask the question the lights went out and the room was plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Please, be calm,’ said Gunther. Lucy blinked as her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, which was punctuated only by the flickering glow of the wood burner.

‘Will the power come back?’ asked Alex, his voice seeming louder in the sudden silence of the bar. Lucy hadn’t been aware of all the ambient sounds until they were gone – the gentle sloshing of a dishwasher, the hum of the lights, the background burbling of a radio in the kitchen – but now there was just dark, heavy silence.

‘Not tonight,’ said Gunther. ‘Our power comes from a generator, and clearly there is a problem but we cannot go out and fix it in this weather. To be honest I am surprised it has lasted this long.’ He sounded cheerfully upbeat, and Lucy wondered how many other parts of this building he expected to break down in the coming hours. Oh, the roof? I’m amazed that didn’t collapse hours ago, with the weight of all that snow.

‘What do we do?’ asked Nate, his face shadowy in the flickering firelight.

‘Stay here,’ said Monica, turning on the torch on her phone. ‘Gunther and I will fetch some lights. Sit down, please, so you don’t fall over anything.’

‘I have a phone torch too,’ Felix declared, like this was revolutionary new technology that only he had discovered. Lucy could hear him scrabbling around, then a dull thud as his phone hit the floor.

‘Please, save your battery,’ said Monica firmly. ‘We do not know what is wrong with the generator, so it is good to keep as many phones charged as we can.’

‘Fuck,’ muttered Lucy, wishing she’d bagged Alex’s charger earlier. Although without Wi-Fi she had no way to keep in touch with Jonno and the others anyway, so it wasn’t like a charged phone would be any use.