Page 24 of Break the Ice

This girl really does have a flair for the dramatic. ‘I love you like a friend, Steve.’

Phoebe shakes her head at me. ‘I can’t believe you’ve friend-zoned the dog.’

‘The dog needs to know his boundaries.’ I know I’ve established a good rapport with the dog, but we are not going to see each other past today. There is no point in making him think this is anything else. I see his monkey on the floor and pick it up. ‘Here, kid – you dropped… Martin.’

Phoebe chokes a little on the soda she was sipping and I turn to see if she’s all right. ‘You named the monkey too? Why?’

‘Steve… Martin. Geddit? I thought it was cute.’

She looks me in the eye, as if she thinks I’ve gone slightly mad. This from the person who bought the dog antlers and Evian.

‘We should get going, I think it’s going to snow again,’ I say.

She takes another sip of soda and shakes her head. ‘Forecast says no. We haven’t had a white Christmas in decades. Bet you a fiver this is the worst of it.’

ELEVEN

PHOEBE

I owe Joshy five pounds because, as soon as we get to Fleet on the M3, we hit sleet. Sleet in Fleet. This isn’t snow, Joshua. It won’t settle so all bets are off. However, by the time we reach the A303, it was most certainly transformed into snow and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’ had already come around twice on our playlist. Steve fell asleep clinging on to Martin with two paws. The traffic slowed, brake lights for miles. I didn’t like the smug look on Joshua’s face, like he’d made this happen. This is English weather, it is both unpredictable and erratic. You can leave your twenty inches in New York. We have neither the infrastructure nor the tyres to cope with snow like this.

I think what’s worse is that the light is starting to fail. It’s coming up to three o’clock and the winter twilight is mixing with the low-level cloud so that out of the windows all I can see are fields of white, glowing in the distance, and beside us cars full of worried motorists wondering if and how they’re going to be able to make it home. We stop briefly next to a black VW Tiguan filled with boxes of gifts, children and luggage. I see the face of a toddler in the window and they look over at me and wave. I wave back. I hope you get to wherever you need to get to, little one. I hope the snow doesn’t hold Santa up either, and that he is immensely generous.

Josh looks over as I draw little pictures on the fog on the window to entertain said child. He looks shocked. ‘Did you just draw a penis on my window?’ he asks me.

‘It’s a stocking with a face,’ I tell him.

He cocks his head to one side to look at it properly. ‘Oh.’ He looks over to the car in question. ‘You know it’s illegal to fill a car like that, the dad can’t see out the rear window.’

‘Did you want me to wind my window down and tell him that?’ I ask him.

‘Well, obviously not.’

‘Shall I wind down my window and throw chocolates at them?’ I ask, having already cracked open the Celebrations.

‘Again, no. You could cause an accident. But I’ll have a Malteser, please.’

‘You make the assumption that my aim is bad,’ I mumble, raking through the tin of chocolates, because I may have eaten the majority of those already.

‘Plus, the dad looks pissed. I wouldn’t go there,’ he says, glancing over.

I turn for a moment to ensure he means pissed as in angry, as opposed to drunk. True – he and the wife are turned in opposite directions, and he has his head rested against his arm, his teeth gritted. She looks upset. If he’s made her cry on Christmas Eve, I’ll get out of this car and slap him.

‘I told you I wanted to leave before lunch, Helen, to avoid the snow and traffic,’ Joshua suddenly says in that weird Jason Statham accent he likes to adopt.

I side-eye him, but I can play along. ‘Well, you weren’t the one who had to wrap all the gifts and pack the bags, Gavin,’ I say, going a bit West Country with the accent.

‘My mother is expecting us at six, she’s made a ham.’

‘Well, she can stick her ham up her jacksie,’ I say.

‘Her what now?’ Joshua says wide-eyed, back into American.

‘Her ass,’ I say in American, laughing back.

The car rolls forward so we’re in line with said couple and they turn to look at us. There is silence for a moment as I hand him another chocolate. So you’re into the role play, are you? That was almost a moment of levity, of which I thought you were incapable.

‘So your dad lives in Devon?’ Joshua asks, as the car again creeps forward a few metres and then stops. He hasn’t asked that much about me, to be honest. He’s allowed me the time to gabble complete nonsense at him and marvel at the snow. I do this to avoid conversations about politics because, given where he’s from, I don’t want the mood to sour for the next four hours.