A skinny man in a long grey coat shovels snow out of the entrance to the Bank of Friendship. The paths around the park have been cleared and gritted but the thick snowfall seems more virginal than in the rest of town. Uggy ran ten kilometres this morning and now her right foot hurts. The beach was harder than the pavement. She stands in the doorway blocking a gaggle of eager toddlers in like a flood defence about to be overwhelmed. It’s just after lunch and the temperature’s gone up to three degrees so they’ve decided to take the kids out to build some snowmen.
Uggy escorts them, one by one, past a patch of ice that the skinny man’s still working on. Jess and Sophie bring up the rear of the group, chatting to each other about their weekend as if the children aren’t even there. She’s sick of them, sick of all of the people she works with. She needs to get away from here.
The boys and girls run and stumble on to the snow-covered grass, clad in their huge coats, hats, scarves and the nursery-issue yellow high-visibility vests. Two of the littler ones, Ian and Rocky, bend down on to the floor and appear to be listening to the sound of the grass cracking as other children walk on it. Jess hauls them up to their feet, trampling their blue-eyed curiosity. Elsie, such a pretty little girl, one of the trendies’ children, brushes snow off the shoulders of her embroidered coat. And Prue runs circles round a snowman that someone’s already built singing, ‘Circle, circle, circle.’
‘Didn’t her mum want her kept in?’ Jess asks Uggy, chewing gum.
‘She can’t be in the room all of the day when the other children are playing in the snow.’
‘Not what the mum said, though.’ Jess hates Uggy because she’s not overweight.
‘I asked Lisa.’ She knows that will shut Jess up and it does. She goes back over to her best friend Sophie to gossip about their foreign co-worker.
Uggy looks over to see Prue about to bite into a stone she’s taken off the front of the snowman. Uggy runs over, almost slipping on the way, and grabs Prue’s wrist to stop her. Prue goes for another bite, so Uggy takes the stone from her and puts it in her coat pocket. Prue stamps her feet in indignation and Jess and Sophie laugh at her. The little girl smiles wide and toothy at how hilarious she must be. Uggy’s expression remains frozen.
Holding Prue’s wrist in her narrow hand, she looks up at a copse of leafless trees about fifty metres ahead of them. They seem long-dead against a desert of snow. A man stands amongst them. A big man in a plaid shirt.