Page 70 of A Snowfall of Silver

After we have thoroughly scandalized Lou’s neighbours for several minutes, Kit notices that I am not wearing a coat.

“You’re shivering!” he says.

He takes off his blue scarf and wraps it around my neck. It is warm and it smells like him.

“You should go back inside,” he says, though his arm remains wrapped quite tightly around me.

“Not yet,” I reply. “I’ll get my coat. Perhaps we could go for a walk?”

He pushes my hair back. “I’d like that.”

“I’m going for a walk!” I call in to Lou as I snatch her coat off the hook.

“Don’t take my—”

“Byyyyye,” I call, closing the door.

Kit laughs, and he pushes my frozen, fumbling fingers aside, buttoning the front of my coat. There are soft woollen gloves in the pockets and I pull them on. He takes my hand in his, and we set out.

“It’s been snowing,” I say, finally noticing that a thin sheen of soft white has settled over the road.

“All day. Didn’t you see it earlier?”

“I’ve been avoiding the outside,” I say. “Much easier to mourn your broken dreams indoors.”

He squeezes my hand. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks. “Not that you have to,” he adds hurriedly. “It’s just… I’ve been worried about you. And so have the others.”

“Have they?”

He nods. “You weren’t yourself at all the last few days of the tour. I wondered if it was because you’d been onstage and then you had to go back to being the wardrobe assistant…” He trails off uncertainly. “But you seemed so unhappy, and so far away, I didn’t know how to help. Even Mr Cantwell was worried about you, said you’d seemed in a strange mood. I believe his exact words were, ‘disturbingly quiet and much less irritatingly buoyant than usual’.” He flashes a lopsided smile and lets out a long breath. “I thought you might not want to see me. You were so distant at the end. We didn’t even properly say goodbye.” My heart twists at the flash of unhappiness in his eyes. “And then Robert left your postcard at the stage door, and I thought, maybe you wouldn’t mind seeing me after all.”

“Thank goodness for Robert.”

“You can say that again. Apparently, he caused quite the stir at the theatre, by the way.”

“I can imagine.”

It’s early evening and it’s starting to get dark now. The lights strung above us in a looping zigzag shine white against a royal blue sky. We’re walking further into a residential bit of the city, and the windows in the tall houses glow, warm and welcoming. Some contain glimpses of decorated trees, of brightly coloured paper chains, and jewel-like glass ornaments.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to be back onstage,” I say finally. “It was that I didn’t.”

Kit frowns. “I don’t understand.”

I take a deep breath. “All my life I’ve wanted to be an actress. It’s been my North Star, the thing I’ve thought about, worked towards for as long as I can remember. But when I was onstage that night I knew it wasn’t right. I wasn’t right.”

“You were good,” Kit says. He sees me shake my head. “You were,” he insists. “You had hardly any rehearsal, you had no warning, and I don’t think anyone would have noticed.”

“Maybe I was passable,” I say, “but that’s not enough. Not for me.”

Eventually, he nods. “I can understand that.”

I reach for his hand once more, tangling my fingers with his.

“I feel all … untethered, as if I’ve lost a huge part of myself.”

We walk on further, our bodies pressed close together, leaving matching pairs of footprints in the snow.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.