Winter delights

As the first snowflake settled, it whispered secrets of a winter tale waiting to unfold.

The ground was cold but at many miles underneath, it was a core of hot magma. Vivienne felt cold on the surface but boiling with a crazy hot anger underneath too. Her car had decided today of all days not to start.

She had come to the remote cabin in the mountains trying to salvage her relationship with Dean. But a week together hadn't reconciled their different views. Dean still wanted to live permanently at the cabin with the occasional week long trip to the city or to a holiday spot.

She couldn't see herself living so far away from civilization, the nearest neighbours half a mile away. The mobile internet connection was spotty too and the quietness was mind numbing.

She had told him their relationship was over and she had stomped outside ready to go back to her orderly life in Redbourn.

Unfortunately, her car wasn't cooperating.

Was she prepared to spend more time with Dean or ask him to fix her car? The cold and the steady fall of snow pushed her to go back inside.

The cabin was a log chalet with a large main room pleasantly warm from a log burner.

There was a generator linked to the cabin providing electricity for the hot water, for the modern cooker and for the fridge freezer.

What it wasn't provided was quick access to the outside world, to shopping, to human interaction. As Dean was happy to spend all of his time writing, reading and hiking, the set up at the cabin seemed ideal for him.

Dean was drinking his coffee when she came in. He didn't even seem to have been bothered by their argument and her hasty departure.

'My car won't start,' she said sullenly.

'The forecast is for three days of heavy snow. You better brace yourself for another week with me,' he said lazily.

'You better come and help me jump start my car. I don't want another week in your cabin.'

'I told you to put your car by the log shed canopy. Then your engine would have been kept a little bit warmer.'

'The mud by the shed was up to my ankles,' she said.

'Mud or not, your car might have started if you had parked there. Anyway, it's safer here than going down the mountain in this weather.'

'You are such a hypocrite!' she raged. 'You pretend to care when you didn't even try to stop me leaving. If my car had started, I would now be out on the roads with you none the wiser if I were safe or not.'

'If your car had started, I would have followed you down the mountain to make sure you were safe,' he replied.

'I don't believe you. You'd say anything to pacify me.'

'Why would I lie to you? You know I love you. I want us to make the best of another few days together. I am sure you will see the charm of this place.'

'What will I do when you sit in a corner and write for hours every day?'

'You told me you would like to start writing a book yourself. What better time to start than now? Every night you could read to me what you have written during the day.'

'How will that be good to my morale? You will criticize everything I'll write. How many times have I heard you utter after you have read a book: "another author with nothing to say, another one churning inane verbal diarrhea." Why will you be kinder to me?'

'I will be very kind and helpful. I want you to give writing a go. You are funny and interesting and I can't wait to see what you'll write about.'

The snow kept falling outside while the fire roared inside. Vivienne sat on the window seat with her writer app open, ready to record her words. The task to pop out fully formed sentences out of the blue was daunting but she couldn't ask Dean to give her some ideas. She had decided that she was going to write in short paragraphs, little episodes from a woman's life. She would include things from her own experience and hear say. But wouldn't it be lovely if a voice in her head would dictate what to write about?

She sat for ages watching the mesmerising snowflakes piling on the window ledge. Dean had been right, it was safer in the cabin than out on the roads.

'How much food do we have?' she asked.

'We have a two week supply of fresh food in the fridge freezer plus I have dried powdered food and tins to last a year. There is bottled water for a month and there is an electric powered water well by the shed.'

'Wow, I feel like we could survive an apocalypse. By the way, what is an electric water well?'

'You drop a bucket in the well, it collects water and then you press a button and the bucket gets rolled up.'

'Is it working in this weather?'

'It should. There is a sort of shed around it. Anyway we have a water tank and bottled water before we need to go to the well.'

Dean had cooked the entire time that Vivienne had been at the cabin but only now was she appreciating the military precision with which he was running the place.

Today, they had tinned vegetable soup with toasted bread and chicken with cauliflower cheese.

They both went back to writing, each with a huge mug of hot punch.

'What is in it? Hopefully it will start my creative thinking, not make me fall asleep,' Vivienne smiled while taking a big sip.

'The usual: pineapple juice, water, rum, sugar, spices. It warms you up like your own internal stove.'

The day had gone, both Vivienne and Dean giddy with their new found understanding. One of them couldn't wait to start writing and being bold, the other one couldn't wait to start reading and being kind.

'I am ready for your feedback,' Vivienne said cautiously the following evening. 'I have written three thousand words of a novella called Sixty scenes of Elsie.'

'Is it a Fifty shades type of book?' Dean teased her.

'Absolutely not, it's inane verbal diarrhea to quote you.'

'Forget that quote and let me read it.'

1

Elsie was at work. Today was a year since she had started her employment at Panod and the boss wanted to evaluate her performance. She was the only employer, she was answering the phone and not much else. In her opinion, her boss, who had just turned fifty, was old. He had a wife that Elsie hadn't met and a mistress who she had met and who was twenty six, just two years younger than her.

'How was your time here?' he asked when she had sat in front of him.

'I think it went ok,' she replied. 'I have

attended the computer course you asked me to and practiced my German language online.'

'But are you happy? You seem very quiet and subdued.'

'It is a lonely job with only me in the office'.

'Other people would kill for such a job. No one to bother you', he laughed. 'How is your social life?'

'Not very sociable,' she answered. 'I have some old school friends and I am close to my family'.

'Boyfriend?'

'Not at the moment'.

'This is your problem then', he said getting closer to her. 'Claudia, my girlfriend needs sex at least thrice a week'. He bent and tried to kiss her.

'To be honest I don't think working here it's what I want,' Elsie said in a strangled voice. 'I'm very bored and I need something more challenging'. She stood up.

'But why? I was thinking to take you with me to Germany, now that you can speak the lingo a bit more. You could have met with some of my associates. You really are quite somber for lack of a better description and I don't think you will find someone as understanding as I am to take you on. Even my wife with whom you only spoke on the phone during this year, said to me a few times "why did you employ that dullard as your secretary?" And I have in fact, a German graduate who asked me for a job recently.'

'Then, thank you for employing me. It was good to know you and I won't come back from tomorrow. Do you want me to stay to the end of the day or shall I go now?'

'You can go now. You are a strange girl and I haven't expected you to quit and leave me so unexpectedly'.

It was an unpleasant surprise for Elsie too, how the day had veered into weirdness and how quickly from being employed she had found herself out on a limb. But she couldn't bear sexual innuendos. She was quite strange in this regard and she had accepted it a long time ago.

2

Maybe it had all started when she was nine years old and she had to sit in the back of the car with her sister and a family acquaintance. This man had touched her inappropriately during the drive and she had been too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. The drive had ended up in an accident. Her mother was driving as her dad had had a few drinks. She had lost control of the car and the car ended in a ditch. They had to wait for other motorists to stop and help push the car out of the ditch and than the acquaintance man drove the car as her mother didn't want to go back at the wheel and her dad was still tipsy. Elsie had a vague thought that maybe her mortified embarrassment had caused the accident. She had become at that early age very aware of her centre of pleasure though wrong and improper she thought of it. Through her childish views she also ascribed indignity and wrongness to the act of touching one's sex and attributed badness to men. During the following years, her view of the wickedness of men was reinforced by the newspaper articles that she read where rape and violence against girls was rife. But despite all that, her favourite reading material were love stories and romance novels. How else was she to balance the baseness of the many men with the continuation of the human species, with love and acceptance? Surely women should be cherished as if they didn't exist or if, suddenly, they all killed themselves the humankind was dead as well.

3

Of sex and deeper insights Elsie had been talking about with her good friend Laurie since they were both ten. Laurie had told her one day about rich countries which take advantage of poorer countries putting their people under foreign oppression.

'Why are there rich and poor countries? Wouldn't it be better if we were all the same country with the same language?' Elsie had wondered.

'Pfft, it's not possible! Haven't you heard of the tower of Babel?' Laurie asked archingly. 'They tried for a common language in the olden ages but the effort ended up in a mighty fight and a cacophony of languages. No one wanted to listen to anyone else'.

'How do you know so much?' Elsie was in awe.

'I listen in to my parents and grandparents talking among themselves', Laurie said unashamed. 'And I can tell you all about sex too', she added triumphantly. 'You know we girls have a hole through which we pee and the boys pee through a bit of meat hanging out down there? Sex means that the boy puts that piece of meat in your hole!'

'Sounds disgusting! Why do you need the boy anyway for that and not just put in the hole a piece of meat on its own? Is it like a plug and you cannot pee anymore?'

'I don't know, I bet it's uncomfortable. My parents will be horrified to know what we're talking about', Laurie said with a grin.

'You hear the most interesting things', Elsie complained. 'My parents don't talk about anything in my hearing. Ahh, just once I pretended to sleep and I heard about a still birth. In fact it was sad, they were sighing and the baby was a boy who had looked asleep and my older cousin who was the dad had cried and cried and was distraught. This is what I heard. I was sorry I listened. Are you ever sorry to hear things you're not supposed to hear?'

'Sad, what you've overheard, but no, I'm not sorry, it's better to know things and be prepared for the future'.

4

The future comes quicker than expected or this is what Elsie was thinking while waiting for her driving examiner. She was as ready as she could be after a three months intensive course over the summer before she had turned eighteen. Her instructor had been an annoying man prone to outbursts of "you'll never pass the test, ten mistakes in a row again", compensated by the willingness to let her go through the same drive again, even if it meant fifteen minutes more of his time. Elsie felt like she was radiating fear vibes instead of having an aura of confidence about her. She had started doing a yoga class over the summer, besides the driving, and on every free moment she had, she was remembering to breathe deeply, check her posture and to repeat on and on, "I am calm and I am centered". The examiner was cool and collected and didn't blink an eye when he had asked Elsie to turn left and she had started signalling right and had engaged on the right lane. She was committed to the turn and apologized when he said "I have asked for a left turn". The rest of the driving test went on ok, despite her sweaty hands and her fluttering heart. She had passed.

5

"Why am I here?" Elsie wondered. The monotony of the class was grating on her nerves. She had hoped she'd enjoy going to university but it wasn't to be. The previous day, a Sunday, she had attended the wedding of a girl from her course. The newly weds were both twenty and have had a shoestring celebration with biscuits, cake and cheap prosecco after the ceremony. They had invited colleagues from their respective universities, the parents and not many others. The girl was back in class today, proudly displaying her wedding band. Was she enjoying the class or would she have preferred to be away in honeymoon? They were not really friends, the two of them. Finance and marketing, what a bore it was; not even good prospects for boyfriends in that class. The married girl had known her now husband since their highschool years.

The rotonda of the building where their lecture was, was three floors above ground level. At break, Elsie felt butterflies along her legs if she so much as looked down from the railing. How would it be the flight or more aptly the fall from that height? She could imagine the commotion if someone fell and died there but also the short lived memory of the event. Crowds gather quickly but don't stick together for long, dynamics forever changing, people embarrassed to have been there.

6

A funeral when Elsie was eleven had disturbed her greatly. Mona a classmate had died in a traffic accident. She had crossed the street without looking. Their teacher had arranged for the whole class to pay their respects by going to the funeral parlour as a group, leaving together from school. Some parents had joined the sad procession and they had made their way two by two with shuffling feet and handfuls of flowers. The sadness was prevalent, they wouldn't even whisper among themselves. At school everyone had written notes of farewell and even written on Mona's seat and desk where she had often sat. None of them have yet seen a dead body and some of them felt a low thrill to being close to death, a thing always talked about furtively as if it could be avoided if spoken about rarely. Elsie dreaded it, she had looked at the last class picture from last year and she had noticed that Mona was second from the left on the row and Elsie was second from the right on the same row. Would this mean anything? Would she be the next one to die as they were placed symmetrically on that row? She didn't want to see the dead body as death would show itself more real than when not knowing the ravage it created. The funeral parlour had a viewing room at the back and a big reception area at the front. Everyone was filing past Mona's grandmother and then went in the back room, left their flowers and filed back out. The grandma was telling in shushed tones to one of the grown up helpers that they had to put a wig on poor Mona's head as the accident had been horrendous. Elsie felt faint and barely managed to ask the boy behind her to take her bunch of flowers too as she couldn't go in after all. She joined the others outside where she had to listen to the sobbing accounts of her peers. Mona had been dressed as a bride in a white puffed sleeved gown with a white veil on her face and a little sparkly crown on her head. You couldn't see much more than the dress and the veil they said but there was sad music played in there so all the girls were coming out crying their eyes out.

'Did you give the family my flowers?' Elsie asked Dom when he came out. He wasn't crying and just nodded.

'We just put them in a small cart. We didn't give them to the family. Her parents and older brother were sitting on some chairs, all in black, talking to Christine and Marianne'.

Christine and Marianne had been Mona's best friends. They were coming out now and the other girls surrounded them.

'A van hit her. It couldn't stop in time, she had come out from behind a parked car. We should all put together money and have a bench put up at school in Mona's memory. This is what I told her parents', Marianne sobbed.

The bench had been bought. Mainly with money from Elsie's parents as the momentum had been big at the beginning but it didn't carry on to completion. The plaque read "For Mona. We remember moments together, smile because they happened".

7

Elsie liked to swim. Not competitively but recreationally. She had saved enough to pay for a month subscription to the best swimming pool in town belonging to an expensive hotel. As an outside guest you were allowed to go only between one and three in the afternoon when probably the hotel guests were lunching. One of Elsie's friends had mentioned this pool to her and took her alongside once. During the summer, the big glass windows could be opened and you could sit under an umbrella on a deck chair. Elsie had felt like being away in holiday in her own town. The weather had been good and she was sporting a lovely tan. She had also read twelve novels in the twenty four days she had been coming to the pool. She swam for about thirty minutes and then sat reading for the hour and a half left. It might seem unbelievable but she hadn't seen anyone else coming to the pool more than two days in a row. Either the hotel catered for one night stays, or the guests indeed preferred to take their lunches at one or maybe the swimming pool was not popular, but she hadn't made a single contact since starting her membership.

She had told herself at the end of that day's session that she wasn't bothered by that fact, but really, how hard could it be if she said hello to someone while sitting by the side of the pool? The chance of seeing them again was minuscule so why wouldn't she say hello?

'Hello?'

She looked around startled and saw a young couple paying for their parking at the meter.

'You look lost? Do you want a lift down to the Metro?' the young guy asked. Metro was the main shopping center and only 15 minutes walk away but Elsie felt that this was the moment to do something out of character. Besides, there was another girl present.

'Why not, if it's not any trouble?'

'No trouble at all, jump in. You can sit in the front if you want'.

She had sat in the back, already regretting accepting the lift. "I will never do it again", she vowed to herself. They had reached the Metro center but they didn't stop to let her out.

'Hey, you said you'll drop me off here', Elsie said awkwardly.

'Don't worry, I drop Cilla off first and then drop you off'.

Elsie felt dread pooling in her belly. Was she going to be raped and murdered at only twenty two? Should she jump out of the car? It seemed overdramatic but maybe necessary?

Cilla was dropped off with a kiss in a part of town not really that familiar to Elsie.

'I should get out here as well', she braved to say.

'Don't be silly, I said I'll take you to the Metro', he said taking off.

'Are you scared of me?' he looked back at her through the mirror. They were driving back the way they came.

'I am. I took you at your word that you'll drop me off at Metro and instead I'm still in a car with a stranger. Not knowing what he's going to do'.

'I'll take you to the Metro as I've told you'.

She had sat rigidly until they had reached the Metro center once again. He stopped the car and turned to Elsie putting his hand on her knee.

'We are here, a kiss for the driver?' he smirked.

Elsie tried the door, it opened and she jumped out.

'Not even thanks?' he laughed through the open window. Elsie didn't look back.

8

Elsie's first job had been as a marketing rep for a local company, Suflo, that produced three hair shampoos (for greasy, normal and dry hair), one colourant (red) and one conditioner (all types of hair). She had hoped her job would be to create a new logo and branding and to do the online advertising. It wasn't to be. She had to contact and visit hairdressers on a radius of 50 miles. Their selling point was the use of locally produced sun flower honey and sun flower oils. Elsie had tried the red colourant on her brown hair and she had liked the result. In fact, it was her main selling point as she had a picture of her hair before and then everyone could see the after: now, she had shiny auburn hair.

When not on the road promoting Suflo, the day at the office started at seven in the morning. Elsie had a twenty minutes walk to the office but she mostly drove. On that particular day, she had felt like walking, the car battery was temperamental and she had to jump start it twice in the last ten days. It was booked at the garage for the following day. Even in April, it was still dark at 6.30am and about half way into her walk, Elsie was regretting not having tried to start the car. She had heard some footsteps behind her but by the time she had turned to look she had been pushed forward by a kick between her legs. She had on a dress and a jacket and the kick had been painful. She had seen the attacker, a youth with a cap on, but she couldn't even scream. She had just said weakly 'what do you want, are you mad?' and had ran. The youth didn't follow and she was relieved but still she had cried all the way to work, wallowing in self-pity and what if scenarios where he had a knife and had killed her. She didn't tell anyone; she couldn't utter the words 'I was assaulted'.

'I think it's a good start,' Dean told Vivienne. 'I am curious what else you will come up with. Did you write it using your own life experience or someone else's or is it just your imagination?'

'A mixture of everything. Are you embarrassed by your writing? I cringe at the thought of you or anyone else reading my words.'

'People reading your words is what you would expect if you write something. Only if it's your private journal, people won't or might not read it. Otherwise you have to toughen up. Not everyone can make a living out of writing but everyone can write as a challenge to themselves or as an experience or because they feel that they have something to say that burns to be let out.'

'I thought I had something to say but sitting down to write it, I found almost nothing to say. A brainless void had taken over my mind making me stare stupidly at my phone.'

'Well, you have overcome the void and you have written an interesting beginning to Elsie's life. Let's see what else happens to her.'

The following day, Vivienne wrote some more and stared at her phone even more. She wanted to show Dean that she would persevere but sixty scenes of Elsie seemed very ambitious. She should have said she would write only twenty scenes. Writer's block was a real thing and infinitely worse than inane verbal diarrhea. At least then you would write something, anything was better than nothing.

'Let's go out for a snow fight maybe I'll get my creative juices running,' she said at one point in the afternoon, feeling deflated.

The snow was crunching beneath their feet, the light was bouncing sparkling over the white ground and a woodpecker was beating the time rhythmically on a nearby tree. What a simple life. Who needed to go back to the city and why would you?

Dean had already built an arsenal of nicely shaped snowballs while Vivienne was twirling happily letting the weak rays of the sun to highlight her auburn hair.

Three snowballs in a row flew towards her and landed squarely at her feet.

'That was your warning,' Dean called out to Vivienne who screamed and started haphazardly to make snowballs and throw them simultaneously. She was way off mark, her snowballs were breaking apart as soon as she was launching them.

In contrast, Dean was meticulously throwing snowball after snowball all hitting closer and closer to a frantic Vivienne.

'I give up,' she screamed when two snowballs got her. Instead of running inside she launched herself in Dean's direction and jumped on him knocking him down. She was laughing and trying to shove as much snow as she could on his face. They ended up wet and bedraggled but happy and cheerful.

'It's not bad at the cabin,' Vivienne said that night, huddled closely to Dean. 'But I still find it very remote. The silence scares me.'

'The silence in itself is not scary, the lack of other people is scary,' he said.

'I am scared that someone could break in and we are so vulnerable here.'

'I have a gun under the bed,' Dean said. 'What's the difference if someone breaks into your house in Redbourn to breaking in here at the cabin?'

'I just don't feel very safe here. I feel safer in Redbourn,' Vivienne whispered.

She fell asleep cocooned in his arms and woke up refreshed and ready to continue her writing. Later on, she was pleased to give him to read the next two thousand words.

9

First kiss happened at seventeen.

'I want to set you up with a friend of mine,' Julie had told Elsie. They were junior year of highschool.

'Why now? Who is he?'

'He is a neighbor from my street, Luc. I'd go for him myself but I just got together with Rob. Luc is really sweet and funny. Come over on Saturday and I will introduce you.'

Elsie wasn't holding her breath. She wasn't looking for a boyfriend. She didn't want to commit to anyone at this age or to pander to someone's ego as it was the case with Julie and her Rob.

She found out during their date that Luc was not even fun to be with. Elsie had accepted that she was shy and didn't say much but his monologue to which she just murmured 'interesting' from time to time had been, in order, about the length of his teeth straightening dental plan, his love of recycling and the hardship of his life since his mother had died two years ago. Hearing that, she had felt sorry for him and had decided she'd let him kiss her at the end of their walk in the park.

'I can't wait to finish school and move out from my dad's,' he was saying. 'My dad taught me a lot about self-sufficiency and savings but we have nothing else in common. Sometimes we have a contest of how many days in a row we can keep the central heating off. In the summer it's off permanently anyway, as we have each mastered three minutes cold showers and we wash dishes in cold water too. In the winter, we keep the temperature at 15 degrees to make sure pipes don't burst and walls don't get mouldy but otherwise, we try to not put it up any higher. I lost the contest this winter. I had to put the heating up to 18 degrees when I was home in holiday from school. We had snow if you remember and the house didn't feel 15 degrees, it was bloody freezing even with two jumpers on. I absolutely had to put the heating up.'

'What was the forfeit?'

'I had to cook for two weeks in a row. Usually, we do one week me, one week dad. We are both quite lonely even living together if you know what I mean. When I move out in a year's time, I want to have a girlfriend to share my life with and maybe my dad will then be able to bring friends home if he wanted to.'

'Do you think your girlfriend will be happy about no central heating and three minutes cold showers?' Elsie asked bemused.

'We'll be warm together in bed,' he laughed.'

'How can you move out next year? Do you think you'll get a job? And where will you live?'

'My dad plans to sell our two bedroom flat and buy two one bedroom flats. He is willing to get a mortgage if necessary and pay it until I have an income. In fact, I plan to go to university so he will let out my would be flat.'

'Then what about the girlfriend, how is she fitting in?'

'We either study together so we live together or she works or whatever she does but we still live together.'

'Right. Well, I plan on going to university myself but not to have a live in boyfriend.'

'Are you planning on having many different boyfriends?'

'Who knows? I don't have one now and if I'm not attracted to someone then they won't be my boyfriends.'

'What about if I kiss you now and we see how attracted we are to each other?'

'Yeah, let's do it.'

They stepped off of the alley on the grass and touched their lips together. Elsie had a roaring in her ears and her heart was pounding. They moved their heads so they didn't bump their noses and Elsie gave his lips a couple of pecks. He tried and managed to lick her lips a few times which was the moment when Elsie decided she had had enough.

She moved away mumbling how lovely it had been. In all honesty, she didn't care to repeat the experience with Luc again.

Elsie had to field questions from Julie all week about her date. Her steadfast answer was 'very enjoyable'.

'He is going out with Rob's sister!' Julie hissed one morning.

'Who?'

'Luc, who else? We had a double date last night and he and Tammy seemed obnoxiously in love. It could have been you!'

Elsie was relieved.

10

Direct messaging to Laurie Arnold, 'I'm Elsie, your childhood friend from Issen. I so want to know how you are doing. I am now myself settled in the capital city maybe we can meet again.'

Laurie had moved away from their home town at the start of highschool and they had lost touch completely in the ensuing twenty years. Elsie had been distraught when she had heard the Arnolds were moving, crying in her room, feeling left out in a dead end town without a best friend anymore. They had vowed to write to each other but it had never happened. Elsie didn't even know her address. With the advent of Facebook and finding people online, Elsie had looked Laurie up many times and now had contacted her. She found it was nerve racking to connect with someone from her past out of the blue. The simplicity of their friendship in childhood didn't mean they'd find what to say now. She also didn't want her image of Laurie altered. Elsie had always kept her as a model of cleverness and daring. What if life hadn't been kind to her? At least she was alive.

A few months previously, Elsie had had a shock when she had found out that the handsomest boy in her highschool year was dead. She had thought of him during the years wondering what he was doing and how he had changed over the years and to hear that he had died in a climbing accident was a harsh blow. You lose touch with people from your youth but you think of them of being there, somewhere, inhabiting the same universe and trying their best.

11

Sex, ski and skate.

'I have a new lodger,' Sandy told Elsie. Sandy had worked at Suflo as the marketing manager for more than ten years. She was supplementing her income by letting out a room in her house.

'Great. Who is it?'

'A young man working for the big pharmaceutical in town. He has moved here for the job.'

'Really? Doing what?' Elsie didn't mind her home town but her long term plan was to move to the capital city. Anyone deciding to move to Issen was lacking drive.

'He is a biochemist, he works on a team developing an Alzheimer's drug. I'm well impressed so I'd love if you would take him out to show him the sights. He is bored stiff at weekends.'

'How long has he been staying with you?'

'Two months now, but I didn't want to interfere until I saw what he is about. He is a decent fellow.'

'I don't mind but tell him this is not a blind date.'

Elsie and Damien went skating that Saturday. Every winter the town square was fitted with a skating rink. It was very popular in the evenings when you needed to have booked in advance. For the other times you could just turn up. Damien was a pleasant man, sporty and tall and he could really skate. He had put his arm across Elsie's back and for two hours he had dragged her along at a steady pace, did turns around her, walked backwards and had told her about his time doing ice hockey while growing up in a mountain town.

'Let's go skiing next weekend,' he said. 'I know a good, quiet resort an hour and a half away from here. Have you been to Cozal Valley?'

'I did. How do you know about it?'

'Cozal is only an hour and a half from my town too but from the other direction. Not as good as going abroad to ski and the slope it's only two kilometers long but it can be fun.'

Elsie was dubious about that. She remembered it as crowded with dispiriting long queues at the ski lift.

'It would be great,' she heard herself saying.

The road to Cozal was picturesque and Damien was a careful driver. He seemed to be familiar with the area as he was greeted like an old friend by the owner of the chalet where they were staying for two nights. He had booked a large room with two twin beds.

Elsie, even now, at twenty-three years old, felt like she would be disappointing her parents by sleeping in the same room with a man she didn't know that well or loved. But why not do it? She was an adult holding a job, he was nice and had a job too, so maybe they were greatly suited.

The day was beautifully crisp so they got kitted at the reception with skis and boots and ski passes and off they went. The first ski down, Damien showed off his brilliant skill with impossibly sharp and tight turns and lethal speed. On the second run, he had insisted she'd hold onto him for them to ski down together. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time. After two more runs together and two more on her own, Elsie had returned to the chalet. Damien came back a couple of hours later and after a dish of risotto and two glasses of red wine brought to their room, they were both sitting on their respective beds with the TV on.

'Are your muscles sore?' he asked her. 'I can give you a massage.'

'That would be great.' Elsie was wearing a t-shirt and pyjama shorts and had turned herself face down on the bed. Damien was patient and twenty minutes later he was still massaging up and down her legs and her back. She offered to reciprocate so they ended up lying in bed together, Elsie massaging lazily his back. He said he loved having his back stroked gently with her nails. Then, they continued the massage face to face, shoulders and legs and then Damien touched gently Elsie's breasts.

'Do we continue?' Damien whispered.

'Yes, do you have a condom?'

He nodded and got it and both restarted the massage and now the mutual exploration.

The overall experience was good and Elsie didn't mind a re-do. She didn't feel awkward with him and so the first boyfriend was in place.

'I like it. The narrative flows well and I want to know what you will come up with next,' Dean said.

'I commend anyone who writes for a living,' Vivienne declared. 'I find it magical that some people can come up with ideas and then flesh them out in fully fledged novels. The fact that a person doesn't like a book doesn't take away from the achievement of the writer.

'You are my superstar, I envy your clever mind,' Vivienne said giving Dean a languid kiss.

They were still in a warm embrace when the door rattled. A couple of kicks followed and then laughing and shouts of 'let us in or we break the door'.

Dean dragged Vivienne silently to the bedroom. He took his gun, telling Vivienne to stay there quietly while he went back to the front door.

'I have a gun. Who is there?' Dean bellowed.

He could hear mumblings behind the door.

'We just want to have fun. We shoe skied here from down the road.'

'Beat it, go back where you came from.'

Some expletives and half hearted kicks on the door later and the thugs left whistling and booing loudly.

Dean rang the police describing the incident and what Vivienne had seen looking outside from behind the curtain.

There had been three young men with beanies pulled down to their eyes who to top up their aggressive behaviour had tried to scratch Vivienne's car before finally departing.

A police patrol had turned up after about an hour to reassure them that they were making inquiries to find the thugs and that they will keep patrolling the area.

'Please keep calm. The rowdy troublemakers were probably just local youths who acted stupid,' the police officer told them.

Vivienne's car had been lightly scratched with a key on the driver's door but the snow and ice had acted like protection against more extensive damage.

'You were right. This place is unsafe,' Dean acknowledged after the police patrol left. 'I was scared I will have to open the window and fire my gun.'

'When did you get a gun? I didn't know you had one. Are you allowed to keep it under the bed?'

'I have it in a locked box under the bed. I've always had a licence for a hunting gun but the gun or hunting don't define me. In fact I didn't hunt at all in the last twenty years. I just keep my licence running and I take the gun with me when I'm at the cabin for my peace of mind.'

'I am glad you had it with you. And you sounded so scary and angry when you shouted at them that you had a gun and to go away.'

'I was scared and so angry that I put you in danger. I will try to sell the cabin and then buy again something in Redbourn.'

'You can move in with me,. See how we deal being together permanently without a second home to escape to.

'Don't rush to sell the cabin, maybe it's fine to keep it as a holiday place,' Vivienne said.

'I'll think about it. I'm looking forward to the snow melting.'

'Me too. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish my Sixty Scenes of Elsie in Redbourn, there are forty nine scenes left.'

Dean smiled and Vivienne hugged him.

The end for now