Free A Lesser Evil by Lesley Pearse Page A

made her turn her arms like pistons.
    ‘Where’s Elvis tonight?’ she asked laughingly as the record finished.
    ‘New year on its way in, new music,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to work on Cliff Richard, or Duane Eddy.’
    ‘Duane Eddy doesn’t sing,’ she giggled. ‘And you don’t look anything like Cliff.’
    ‘Then perhaps I’ll be Ray Charles,’ he said, and turning away, swiftly picked up two beer-bottle tops as impromptu sunglasses and burst into ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’.
    ‘Idiot,’ she said affectionately. ‘But let those steaks burn and I’ll stop loving you.’
    ‘I’m too full to go anywhere,’ Fifi said with a groan as she staggered away from the table an hour later. She lay down on the bed, undoing the waistband on her skirt.
    Dan looked at her and laughed. ‘I thought you wanted to dance in the fountains!’
    ‘That was before steak, chips and mushrooms,’ she said. ‘Do you really want to go out?’
    Dan went over to the window. ‘Well, I thought I did,’ he said, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘But it’s snowing!’
    ‘No!’ Fifi exclaimed. ‘You’re just saying that to make me get up.’
    ‘It is, and it’s heavy too,’ Dan insisted. ‘Come and see.’
    Fifi got up reluctantly. ‘If you are having me on I’ll punish you,’ she said. But as she got to the window she gasped when she saw Dan was telling the truth.
    There had never been any snow to speak of in Bristol, not since 1947. Fifi was seven then and she remembered going sledging day after day because the schools were closed, and building a huge snowman in the garden. Grown-ups harped on about that terrible winter for years after, but it had never been repeated. If snow did fall it was light and usually gone within a day or two.
    ‘Good God,’ she exclaimed as she watched it swirling against the window. ‘It’s like a blizzard.’
    As they were on the second floor and it was dark, they couldn’t see if it was settling on the ground.
    ‘I won’t be able to lay bricks if it does settle,’ Dan said. ‘Let’s hope it’s cleared by morning.’
    When they woke the following morning the light in the room was grey and sinister and there was no sound of traffic in the distance. Fifi got up, and to her astonishment a thick carpet of snow lay over the whole of Bristol.
    Her initial reaction was delight, for everything looked so beautiful, like an old-fashioned Christmas card scene. She called excitedly to Dan to come and look.
    Like her he was entranced, but he looked worried too. ‘I’ll go down to the site, but the chances are there’ll be no one there as I doubt if there’s any buses running. Damn, this would happen just as I was starting a new job.’
    ‘It won’t last,’ Fifi reassured him. ‘Shame I only have to walk to work, I’ve got no excuse for not being there. We could’ve gone to Redland Park and played in the snow.’
    Bristol’s centre was virtually deserted. No buses were running and few people had even attempted to drive in as many roads into the city were impassable. Fifi was amused to see how the few very determined people who had braved the snow to get to their work were reacting. Bundled up in thick coats, boots, hats and scarves, they were acting like intrepid pioneers, yelling out warnings to others about areas they’d passed through that morning.
    Fifi enjoyed her walk to the office, taking a childish delight in making footprints in clean snow. Everything looked so pretty; even waste ground that was normally an eyesore of rubbish and weeds had become a winter wonderland. But the sky was like lead and everyone was predicting there was more snow to come.
    Only one of the solicitors and Miss Phipps, the accountant, had managed to get into the office, so at three in the afternoon as it began to get dark, they went home.
    Dan was already there when Fifi got home, making a stew for their dinner. He looked glum and anxious as he told her that the foreman on the building site had told