NOW YOU’RE HERE by Vivien Graveson

Chapter 1

It’s snowing again. It stopped for a while and then it came back and now everywhere is silent, like a kind of death. I want to stay at the window resting in its stillness, but I won’t because the larder’s empty, and we need to go shopping.

‘Forty minutes,’ Christopher said as he pulled on his ancient dogtooth coat, and the red woolly hat he insists on wearing even though the knitting’s unravelling and bits drift in the air like cobwebs. I didn’t say anything, but his lips tightened anyway, as if to tell me, “Don’t. Just don’t say it.’ 

So I didn’t. Didn’t say goodbye either.

That was two hours ago.

A really loving wife would go and meet him, wrap herself up and stride out into the velvety whiteness, making shapes with her feet, hearing the silence, lifting an arm in a wave when he emerged from the gloom. But we’re not that sort of couple.

Haven’t been for years.

Besides, I’ve no idea which way he’s gone.

Perhaps I’ll switch the oven on, make coffee, have a mince pie.

Instead I lean into the window to see if I can spot the dark bulk of him coming across the field. There’s nothing beyond the hedgerow, so white now and strange against the heavy sky.

When I turn back into the room I spot my computer still there on the kitchen table. It rebukes me for my lethargy, my lack of inspiration. I push some papers away from the keyboard and the screen jumps into action, bringing up a picture of a forest. The Word document is still there at the bottom right-hand side and I click it into view. It hasn’t changed, the article hasn’t written itself. 

‘Secrets,’ I say aloud, ‘Ghosts. What was I thinking of?’

The clock tells seven more minutes have passed. Damn Christopher. So thoughtless sometimes, his head in a cloud, contemplating, I imagine – though he rarely tells me these days – some obscure theory or other. There was a time when he’d explain, I used to enjoy that – Kant or Wittgenstein or Leibnitz. Not recently though, not for a long time.

I miss it.

Miss him actually.

I move back to the window. Still nothing.

A thin layer of beans sits at the base of the coffee jar. I stare down, unsure whether there’ll be enough to make a proper pot but upend them into the grinder anyway. I crush them finer than usual, pulsing again and again, as if the extra seconds might bring him home. Even though what’s left is little more than dust, I tip it into the cafetiere and push the switch on the kettle.

Outside, the sky has darkened, become cruel, the snow turned to needles.

Stupid man. Where the hell he got to? 

But he’s not stupid. He’ll have seen the sky, recognised the warning signs. Any minute now and he’ll appear around the edge of the drive, his shoulders hunched against the storm, his silly hat pulled down so he can hardly see where he’s going.

I open the larder and reach for the tin containing the mince pies. Might as well have them ready, have them warm. I ease the top from the container.

It’s empty.

We need to go to Sainsbury’s. Maybe not in this, maybe not when you can’t see beyond the windscreen, have no idea what’s ahead.  Christopher would risk it though, because he’s a bit mad like that, would like the challenge, fighting to hold the car steady on the slippery roads.

It’s why he’s still out there, I suppose, challenging the elements. Idiot man.

I move over to the side window, from where I can see the car and the driveway. I say ‘can see’ but actually now I can’t, because I’m appalled to discover that the snow has turned to a blizzard, is massing in drifts, the tarmac no longer visible.

 The telephone rings and makes me jump. But it’s relief I feel because I know it’ll be Christopher. Or one of the neighbours perhaps, who’s lured him in for a drink. Pity they didn’t phone an hour ago, I think, knowing precisely what they’ll say, because they’ve said it a dozen times before. ‘Come over,’ it’ll be, or some such, the speaker blithely insensitive to the conditions outside, because once they’re huddled down in their plush armchairs, with Mozart in the background and their glasses of whisky to hand, what do they care? 

So no, I won’t go.

Not just because the pavement will be treacherous, but because I don’t like drinking and Christopher knows it. What’s more, if I’m right, it means he’ll be over the limit and won’t be able to drive even if the storm eases.

I glare down at the phone willing it stop, willing Christopher to be so struck with guilt that he hurries back, wanting to know why I didn’t answer, anxious and contrite. But the ringing goes on and on, and I’m forced to lift the receiver and put it to my ear.  I adjust my face and force a smile.

‘Anna Shepherd?’

The voice is gravelly, a tiny bit hesitant. Young.

‘Yes?’

‘Grandma?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Grandma? Anna Shepherd?’

‘Excuse me,’ I say, because I feel a flutter of fear, and want to pretend I don’t.  ‘Who exactly is speaking?’

‘I’m…’ There’s a pause. ‘I’m – your grandson.’

That word again.

I feel a surge of indignation, at the cheek of it, the presumption.

‘I don’t think so.’ My voice is sharp – because I don’t have a grandson. Or rather I do. But neither I nor Christopher have seen him in eighteen years.

***