Prologue
The street noise was an insignificant background hum to which she had long ago become accustomed. She trudged through the ugly grey icy slush that three days ago had been such a delightful surprise addition to the dreary London streetscape. She had awoken on that February morning and sensed a completely different feel to the world outside. Although it was still dark and the curtains were still drawn it had just seemed quieter somehow. She had gone about her morning routine as normal, shower, breakfast of toast and jam, dressing for another cold day’s walk to the tube station for the trip to the school where she taught, no, delivered lessons, to a bunch of disinterested (on their good days) fourteen year olds. As she opened the front door she blinked and did a double take as the vista that welcomed her that morning resembled a scene from a Christmas card – a blanket of white covered everything before her. Today, nothing remained of that beautiful scene; the dirty ice boulders gripping the gutters simply adding to the gloominess of the closing day as the slowly melting snow seeped into her boots and chilled her from her toes to gradually spread through her entire body.
She stamped her boots on the front step then cleaned the soles on the metal scraper to remove as much of the ice as she could while simultaneously locating her keys, then fumbled with cold fingers to open the front door.
“Hi!” she called out as she closed the door and put her bags down so she could remove her coat. After hanging it on the hook by the door, she collected the post on the hall table and re-gathered her bags before making her way into the living room where the two other occupants of the small tenement house she called home were warming themselves by the radiator.
“Hi yourself.” A male voice answered from the sofa. “How was your day?”
The other occupant blinked and stretched her three legs then raised herself languorously to groom her patchy coat. “I wish I knew what was causing Feef to lose her fur”, sighed Annika. “Yeah. Fine. The little shits weren’t totally feral today.”
“You know what? I’ve been thinking,” replied Andy as he got up to plant a kiss on her cheek. “We should go back to Australia.”
