It was all going
to melt soon. By this time tomorrow it
would all be gone. It was so completely freakish. Almost a foot of snow in the early hours and
throughout the morning, and now mid-afternoon, cars were driving reasonably
easily through deep slush. Yet, if you
wanted to get the car off the drive, you needed to clear the pavement.
She’d done that.
And now she had an interesting pile of snow. “We should make it into a snowman,”
she’d said to Jeff and Lester.
“Mum, I’m a bit
past that, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.” She
remembered when Lester had been a little boy and had got so excited about the
snow. Now he was just miffed that he couldn’t go off on his mountain-bike.
“It’s not worth
the effort. It’ll all be gone in a matter of hours.” Jeff shook his head.
“Well, I’m going
to do it.”
She’d actually
enjoyed shovelling the snow into a big heap. It had been better than being
cooped up inside and the exercise not only kept her warm but also made her feel
good. She didn’t want to stop.
She formed and
honed the lump of snow into something vaguely human-shaped. She straightened
his side, moulded arms and a square head with ears on it. She plumped his
cheeks, shaped hands, and then fingers. She added, subtracted and
sculpted.
Soon two pairs of
eyes were looking at her through the window. The front door opened. “I’ve found
these round the back,” said Jeff. “I thought they might do for his eyes, nose
and mouth.” He handed her some of the dark pebbles off the Japanese
garden.
Lester appeared at
his side. “I know what else.” He dashed inside. He came back with the matching
plaid scarf and ear-muffs Great Aunt Tilda had given him last Christmas.
“And I know what
we need now.” Abigail was adding the finishing touches as the two men in her
life looked on. “Go and get my sunglasses. The big round ones.”
Jeff came back
with them. She placed them carefully on the snowman’s face. “Perfect,” she
said.
“Not bad,” said
Jeff.
Lester took
pictures on his iPhone.
When Abigail woke up in the night and looked through
the spare bedroom window to see how well the snow was thawing, her snowman was
decidedly slimmer. By then next morning his head had rolled off and the scarf,
muffs and sunglasses were lying on the ground. By the following afternoon he
was just a lump of snow that was barely recognisable as something someone had
made.
“It doesn’t
matter,” Abigail whispered. “You were still worth it.” Tomorrow would come soon enough and she would
have to be all po-faced and straight-laced at the station. Even a copper
deserved a bit of fun now and again.
