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‘Why?’
‘Because you’re acting...differently. And I think I get that way, every now and again, when one particular patient gets under my skin.’
He slowed, but didn’t stop.
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ she pressed him gently.
They continued walking in silence. Everywhere oddly quiet after weathering that storm in the hospital.
‘A baby boy. Nineteen months,’ was all Sol said, after what seemed like an age.
She didn’t answer. Instead she simply fell into step with him, and hoped that it was enough. She understood only too well.
It was another age before he spoke again.
‘It’s odd, the way it gets to you sometimes, don’t you think?’ he said, his head down and his hands thrust into his pockets.
The question was more rhetorical than anything, Anouk knew that, but she answered anyway.
‘You mean loss? Death?’
‘We deal with it every day. It’s so easy to become desensitised to it.’ He shrugged. ‘But after an incident like that...’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I think it’s the sheer volume of it. All at once. It makes it feel too much.’
Again, they walked in companionable silence for minutes—though it felt like a lifetime, lost as she was in her thoughts. It was only when he stopped at a shop window that she realised they had made it to the lower part of the town. Slowing down, she backed up, but she wasn’t prepared.
‘What is this, Sol?’
‘You asked me about the Christmas village scene.’
‘This is it?’
‘This is it.’
She turned to take in the scene. Even through her loathing of this time of year, she could at least admit it was spectacular. Little trains ran in circles around the quaintest village set-up; a snow-covered village green with tiny figures walking, ice-skating, or simply strolling the wintry streets in the warm glow of the orange/yellow lights.
Little old-fashioned shops lined the painstakingly constructed hillside road, which, if she looked closely, Anouk thought might be polystyrene blocks, but they looked for all the world like snowy inclines. Meanwhile, a miniature cable car ran up and down another polystyrene hill scene.
‘This is what the kids work so hard to raise the money to buy,’ Anouk murmured. ‘For you, and for Malachi. Why?’
There was a beat of silence.
‘Why, Sol?’ She pressed her fingers to the glass, as if proximity could solve the riddle she was sure existed.
‘It’s become a tradition,’ he offered simply.
‘What makes it so traditional?’ she repeated.
There was no logical explanation for why it should matter to her to know.
Yet it did.
The still night began to hum with anticipation. She turned her head to watch him but his gaze was fixed on the scene, not on her.
‘Please, Sol?
He scowled, drawing in a deep breath before answering.
