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Sarah stared at the news article on her phone, hardly able to believe it. It had been snowing for three days straight, and the steep road down into Llandrigg had been completely cut off from the outside world. The morning after it had started, Sarah, Mairi, and Owen had all piled into her trusty Range Rover to head over to the inn; the vehicle’s wheels had cut through the scant few inches, no problem, but that had changed now. Now, there was nearly a foot of snow, and school had been canceled through Christmas, and she and the children were stuck at the inn, stranded, unable to get home—and without anyone else able to get here.
Christmas was officially canceled.
When the snow had first started, Ellie had been as optimistic as Sarah.
“Snow for Christmas!” she had enthused, when Sarah had come into the kitchen that first morning, brushing flakes from the shoulders of her coat. “We’ll have enough for the children to make snowmen, even! Isn’t it wonderful?”
By evening, when the snow hadn’t let up, Ellie’s indefatigable cheer had started to falter just a little. “It’s getting rather deep… I hope the roads will be cleared in time for the guests?” She’d glanced anxiously at Gwen. “Surely they will be?”
“I should think so,” Gwen had replied, but she’d looked as worried as Ellie. “But we’ve never had this much snow before.”
The next morning, the electricity had cut out and the roads became completely impassable. There was talk of the government declaring a state of emergency, and a volunteer foodbank had been opened at the church. The guests were due the following day, and Ellie had had to write painful emails explaining the situation.
In any case, most of the guests had been watching the news and realized what was going on—all of South Wales, as well as England from Birmingham to Bristol, had been affected, although not quite so badly as Llandrigg, down in a steep little valley, with treacherous, icy, snow-covered roads. They’d been more than willing to cancel.
“I can’tbelievethis!” Ellie had wailed, the night before their guests had been meant to arrive, and now none were coming. “After all our work…”
“We can still enjoy it,” Matthew had told her bracingly. “We can have the best family Christmas ever! We’ve got tons of food, and firewood, we’re warm and safe… it could be worse, Ellie.”
She’d stared at him in disbelief, and he’d given her a contrite look.
“I know it’s a huge disappointment, Ellie, of course I do.”
“You could say that,” she had replied rather shortly, and Sarah couldn’t blame her for her irritation. Ellie had been working flat out for two months, and all now for seemingly nothing. It had been a very bitter pill to swallow.
Sarah slid her phone back into the pocket of her dressing gown as she moved about the kitchen, cracking eggs into a pan on the Aga, which was thankfully oil-fired and so hadn’t been affected by the power outage. Everything else, had, though, and they’d been using candles and a couple of oil lamps to light their way, which at least had seemed exciting to the children. Everyone was still asleep, but she thought it would be nice for them to wake up to the smell of eggs and bacon frying, on this day which had been meant to be so important, when their guests should have been arriving.
As disappointed as she was for Ellie’s sake, Sarah could acknowledge she felt a little relieved that no one was expected. She’d been more than ready to make the big Christmas push, but the thought of a quiet Christmas with her family—minus Nathan, admittedly—felt like a blessing. Just like their impromptu sleepover, it was a moment out of time, and one she desperately needed. She was still trying to figure out where she went from here, and while she had few vague, barely formed ideas, she could use the time and space to flesh them out a bit more, to let her mind wander, her thoughts coalesce.
“That smells good!”
She turned to see Mairi slouching into the kitchen in her pajamas, and her heart lifted with hope. Her daughter had not been on speaking terms with her since Nathan had moved out, although she’d thawed a little in the last week or so. Sarah hoped it was a sign of better things yet to come.
“It does, doesn’t it?” she agreed as Mairi curled up in an armchair in the corner of the room and Daisy jumped into her lap. “I thought everyone could use a good fry-up.”
“Is Aunt Ellie still disappointed that no one’s coming?” Mairi asked as she stroked the little dog. “She seemed pretty gutted last night.”
“Yes, I think it’s quite hard for her, after all the work she’s done.”
“But it doesn’t really matter so much, does it,” Mairi continued, “if they’re moving to New York?”
“Well, it’s not definite, that they’re moving,” Sarah reminded her. That particular bombshell had been dropped on her a few days ago, when Matthew had admitted he’d had a job prospect and they would be flying over in January, assuming the snow stopped by then…!
Sarah had been surprised and unsurprised at the same time; she’d realized she’d never totally accepted her brother running the inn as his career. He’d been too ambitious for that, and yet in an entirely different way from Nathan. It had never been about status or money for Matthew, the way Sarah had come to realize it had been for her husband. He’d simply enjoyed his job. She was not surprised to discover he’d been missing it, but she was saddened to think of them leaving Llandrigg.
“How do you feel about them possibly moving?” she asked Mairi. What with her daughter’s sullenness toward her, she hadn’t had a chance to talk through it with her properly. “You’ll miss Jess, of course?”
“Yes, but…” Mairi hesitated, her head lowered, her gaze on the little spaniel curled up on her lap. “Don’t freak out or anything, Mum, but I’ve been thinking about doing something different for A levels, anyway, so I wouldn’t be at school with Jess.”
“Oh?” Sarah realized she wasn’t freaked out the way she once might have been, but simply intrigued. “And what is that?”
“Well.” Mairi took a deep breath as she lifted her head to look at her. “I hate how stressed I get about academics. And it’s not because of you or Dad, not really. It’s because… I find it all so hard.”
“You do?” Sarah couldn’t hide her surprise. “You mean, harder than normal? But you’ve always been a straight-A student, Mairi.” She bit her tongue, not wanting to make her daughter think she still had those expectations for her.
“I know, but it never, ever came easily to me,” Mairi confessed. “And the truth is, I don’t like it. I don’t like studying, I don’t like trying to get my head around all these complicated concepts… and the thought of doing A levels… of having to stress out about even more exams… I don’t want to do it. I’m not sure I can.”
Not do her A levels?Sarah thought she’d come a long way from how she’d been, so ambitious for her children, but A levelswerekind of important. It was hard to get a decent job without them. Still, this was the most Mairi had talked to her in a long while, and she wasn’t about to mess up the first proper conversation they’d had in weeks.
