The Banker's Niece 30: Winter

An icy blast hits Jane as she gets out of her car in the carpark behind Courtney Manor. She shivers and zips up her red knee-length down-filled coat. As she crosses the cobbled stable yard, white specks skim through the air in front of her. Grey clouds bloom on the horizon, so dense they look like paint put on with a trowel.
    The coat is new and having its first outing, like the pink velvet t-shirt she wore two days ago at the party on Saturday. (Oh dear. The party.) Because the coat was new, she was nervous about wearing it, but for once, she thinks, she might have judged the Devon weather correctly. This is winter at last and the coat is perfect.

    It’s the only thing that is right however.

    Over the last ten days she’s spent precisely one day at work, and that was five days ago. For the rest of the time she’s been semi-comatose in bed nursing her head and her guts. Or disgracing herself in front of her colleagues in one way or another.

    And now, as she opens the back door of Courtney Press and is greeted by the familiar gust of warm, slightly stale air, she has the sense that she’s in the wrong reality. Her feet are touching the ground but her mind is elsewhere. Something inside her has come untethered. She doesn’t want to be here at all.

   

‘I’ve a treat for one of you two this morning,’ says Henry.

    Sam makes a face, and in spite of herself Jane wants to giggle.
    Neither Sam nor Henry has made any mention of the party and she hopes that they at least didn't notice anything. She does still have to talk to Lauren however - who of course noticed everything - and that's something she's not looking forward to.    
    Sam is looking effortlessly cool as ever in a baggy emerald-green jumper with frayed cuffs. Behind her the billowing curves of Dartmoor are lost in whiteness. Is it cloud or snow? The hairs on Jane’s arms prickle. She thinks again of Mole and the Wild Wood*.

    ‘Colin Fletcher –’ continues Henry.

    Sam groans.

    ‘Colin Fletcher’, repeats Henry, ‘is coming down today to “talk money” and he wants to take one of you two “lovely ladies”, as he puts it, out to lunch.’

    ‘Jane,’ says Sam.

    ‘Sam,’ says Jane.

    ‘Jane, I think, given the success of Spiders,’ says Henry, tapping his pen. It's his only sign of annoyance this morning - so far. ‘We need to capitalise on that. See what other “non-fiction” ideas he has.’

    What is it about Colin that makes Henry talk in inverted commas? Perhaps he doesn’t like the man either. That makes three of them then.

    ‘No,’ says Jane.

    ‘No what?’ says Henry.

    ‘No, I won’t go to lunch with Colin Fletcher,’ says Jane.

On the scale of things that happen to women, or even on the scale of things that have happened to her, it doesn’t come anywhere near the top, so it surprised her at the time how upset she was  and how long it took her to recover, and it surprises her now that she’s still affected.

    She and Colin had been to The Bell in Dulverton, ostensibly to ‘throw a few ideas around’ (Henry’s words) about future projects. In reality, Colin spent the whole lunch complaining to Jane about his love life.

    On the way back, a mile or so from Courtney Manor, he pulled into a track leading to some woodland. Then, while Jane was still trying to work out what was going on, he grabbed her chest with one hand and stuck his tongue down her throat.

    Gagging on the stench of beer and sweat, she somehow managed to unclip her seatbelt, open the passenger door and fall out of the car. She scrabbled away as fast as she could, got to her feet and ran, thanking God that she was a trousers and boots sort of woman, not a high heels and tight skirt one.

    Colin accelerated after her in his car, threw her bag out of the window and shouted, ‘Bitch. I thought you’d be grateful.’

    Back at the office Lauren helped her clean herself up and tried to persuade her to go to the police.

    ‘And tell them what?’ asked Jane. ‘Nothing much actually happened.’

    ‘They might have a file on him,’ said Lauren. ‘His behaviour might escalate.’

    Jane suspected she was right, but she couldn’t do it. She blamed herself for letting Colin drone on at lunchtime and giving him false expectations. She couldn’t face having her own morals put under scrutiny. She couldn’t face talking about the incident and having to remember it again and again in detail. She wasn’t even sure there had been an incident. Wasn’t it just part and parcel of women’s life?

    So, except for Lauren, she didn’t tell anyone.

‘Whyever not?’ says Henry.

    ‘He smells,’ says Jane.

    Sam sniggers.

    Henry’s head snaps up and he looks at Jane for the first time that morning. She doesn’t meet his eye.

    ‘He’s got a goatee,’ she continues, gaining momentum. ‘His teeth are yellow, he’s got stains on his trousers –’

    ‘Typical author then,’ says Sam.

    ‘Jane,’ barks Henry. ‘I always thought you were a professional. You can’t let personal feelings –’

    ‘And he assaulted me last time we went out together,’ she says.

    ‘Assaulted you?’ says Henry.

    Something unfamiliar rumbles in her chest.

    ‘Yes me,’ she retorts.

    ‘Whyever didn’t you say something at the time?’ says Henry.

    The rumble in her chest is making her breathe more heavily. She has to speak in short bursts.

    ‘Because I thought you wouldn’t believe me. Because I thought you’d take his part. Because I didn’t want to antagonise him. Because I knew he made a lot of money for the company. Because I was embarrassed. Because I’d only just started working here. Because I didn’t want to make a fuss.’

    She can hear her voice becoming shriller. If she had the time, she’d copy Maggie Thatcher and practise lowering her voice to make it sound male and authoritative. But she doesn’t and this will have to do for the moment.

    ‘Well if that’s the only problem, you take your car this time,’ says Henry.

    ‘Henry!’ shouts Sam. ‘You can’t say that.’

    ‘No, it’s not the only problem,’ says Jane, standing up. The rumble inside her has turned into a roar. She doesn’t care what her voice sounds like any more. ‘I’ve had enough of being an editor. I’m fed up with massaging authors’ egos. I’m fed up with writing other people’s books for them and them getting all the credit. I’m fed up with other people’s books. I’m fed up with being grown-up and sensible and well behaved. I’m fed up with everything. I’m off. Goodbye.’

    She gives the door of Henry’s office a good slam behind her. At least she can do that properly.

She slews down Henry’s drive, which is already powdered white. At the end she pauses. Left takes her south and home. Right takes her north, towards Exmoor and the unknown. She turns right. Moly would be proud of her*.

    She zooms over crossroads, not bothering to look at the signs. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t want to know. She just wants to get away.

    Each road is steeper and narrower than the last. She drives in a daze, whisking past farms and hamlets, trundling over tiny stone bridges, creeping through forests as dark as night. The landscape is nothing like the Devon she knows. She feels as if she's gone back in time, to an era when humans had barely started to put their mark on nature. 
    Sleet turns to snow. The wipers pile the snow into drifts that collect at the bottom of the windscreen. Clio's engine races as she loses her grip on the roads.
    They rattle over a cattle grid and suddenly there are no features at all. Just naked hills all the way to the horizon. A white ocean. For a moment she can't breathe.

    They swoop through the white ocean as snow falls so thickly she can hardly see ahead. Clio slides from side to side, up and down. Wind catches the car and tries to turn it over.
    Jane's stomach hollows. Where is she? What has she done? Should she stop or should she go on?

    The road dips abruptly. Jane knows this only because first she feels weightless and then she’s thrown against the steering wheel. She tries to brake but Clio presses on, scrambling over a series of bumps, and Jane has the impression they’re not on a road at all.

    A wall of whiteness at least as tall as the car rears up in front of them and Clio heads for it as if it were a waterhole and she a wildebeest dying of thirst.

     They plunge into the whiteness and judder to a halt. The engine cuts out. There's total silence. A blue light fills the car.

    Jane turns the ignition off and then on. Clio gives a polite hiccup. Jane jiggles around in her seat trying to shake the car in case something has come loose, waits a few moments for Clio to catch her breath, then tries again. There's not even a hiccup this time.

    She pulls the door lever and leans against the door. With a crystalline scrunch, it moves quarter of a centimetre. She tries the passenger door and that doesn’t move at all. She presses the button that opens the boot and it clicks instead of burping as it usually does. She turns round to give the tailgate a push. It doesn't budge.
    She can't start the car and she can't get out.

    She takes her phone out of her bag. There's no signal.

    She thinks of people stuck in avalanches. Don’t they have to stick their ski poles out in order to get some air? 
    She can't open a window without the ignition but she could try and open her door again or even smash some glass, but then she might be inundated with snow and/or freeze to death.

    Which would be worse, she wonders. Dying of suffocation or dying of cold?
    And does she really care?
    She slumps forward, rests her head on the steering wheel and closes her eyes.

    

* From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

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