Postcard Perfect

Sarah closed the door briskly behind her. Heating the house was expensive, Phil kept telling her. It's not like she didn't realise that—she could see the figures on the quarterly bills just as well as he could—Phil just seemed to gain some odd kind of anxious comfort from saying it out loud.

Maybe she should speak aloud the things she was anxious about. Perhaps she would start to relish her worries as Phil seemed to relish his. My bottom wobbles when I don't wear control underwear, she said, but only in the voice in her head. Would she really enjoy that particular anxiety if she said it out loud? She wasn't ready to find out.

She took off her hat and ruffled her hair out in the hallway mirror. It fell back flat against her skull and she turned away to remove her boots.

“Is that you, sweetie?” he called from the living room.

“No,” Sarah answered. “It's just your wife. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Has it started coming down yet?” he asked.

“Not yet, but the sky looks full of it. And it's nobbling out there.”

“Is that a meteorological term?” Phil called.

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling then caught her own expression in the mirror. Not a flattering look. “Yes,” she replied, “along with 'brass monkeys'.”

Phil's shiny head appeared in the doorway. “Did you put the car in the garage?” he asked.

“Yes. And did you put dinner in the oven?”

“Yes. Shouldn't be long.”

Later that evening they sat on the sofa, his arm around her.

The weather reporter was gesturing animatedly towards the large, swirling white blob in her graphics. It moved inexorably eastwards. “The snow we have been expecting for the past day or so has reached us. This is the current picture across the region, with heavy snow fall expected in all areas. Not just on the high ground either—we can all expect to wake tomorrow morning to considerably more than a sprinkling of the white stuff.”

Sarah glanced at the window. Phil had drawn the curtains tightly. She got up and peeked out. “Yes, it's started,” she told him.

“Yippee,” he said.

“Misery guts,” Sarah said.

She turned back to the window and tucked the curtains behind her. He couldn't moan about draughts then. Plus she wouldn't have to see her own face in the glass. She could watch the change of scene unfold instead. Their garden was beginning to shine with reflected light from the streetlamp. The flakes came down slowly in the still air and settled together on lawn, path and flowerbeds. Already the dark patches of ground were being filled in with fat snow, a white jigsaw puzzle of cold. Their neighbour's cat watched the weather's progress from under its usual bush, wide eyes glinting madly.

“Come and look, Phil,” she called.

She listened for the sigh of the sofa. Eventually she heard him get up. He joined her on the window side of the curtains. “Hmm. Beautiful.”

It was. Even the ugly gate of the house opposite was beginning to look postcard perfect. “Yes,” Sarah agreed.

“I wasn't talking about the snow,” Phil said.

She looked at him sharply, but he wasn't laughing at her. He was smiling at her gently with his eyes. The lines around her eyes softened and she gave him a small smile in the snowlight. She stepped closer. He drew her closer still and kissed her hair softly while they watched the world turn white.