Free Ice Diaries by Lexi Revellian Page A

laughing.
“You bastard! That’s not very nice.”
    “Like Sam said, you have to make
your own entertainment round here.”
    I fixed him with a cold eye. “Listen
to me, Morgan. Never do that again. I don’t care who else you
take the piss out of, but lay off Greg. Is that understood?”
    He stared at me for a moment. “Okay.”
    I got up and helped the others move the
furniture ready for the Scottish country dancing. Morgan didn’t
stay for it. He sloped off alone to the flat in Bézier. Nina
said, “Of course I can see you had to take him in, Tori, and
naturally we’ll all do our bit to help him, but I can’t
say he’s much of an addition to our community. I for one won’t
be sorry when he goes.”

    When I got back a couple of hours later
feeling warm all over, relaxed and cheerful – country dancing
always has this effect on me – he’d drawn the curtains. I
slid open the patio door. Morgan said, “Hi,” and turned
away again. He was lounging on the sofa in the glow of a lantern.
Several empty beer bottles stood beside him on the floor. He did not
look like a man who’d remembered to minister to the stove.
    As I riddled, emptied the ash pan and
added wood I said over my shoulder, “You should have stayed. It
was fun. You missed the best part of the evening.” I adjusted
the air intake and straightened up, brushing off my hands, ready for
bed.
    “Not necessarily.”
    He stood, reached out and grasped my
hand. His hand felt warm, dry and strong. My body overreacted to his
touch after its year of celibacy; a shiver shot up my arm and fizzed
through my blood like electricity. He drew me gently towards him,
staring into my eyes, his other hand sliding across my shoulder and
beneath my hair on the back of my neck, giving me goosebumps. He
smiled a lazy smile at me that took years off him.
    “Hey, Tori …” he
murmured. His head bent towards mine.
    A sudden unbearably vivid vision of
David made me want to cry. I couldn’t speak, just shook my
head.
    He let go of me.
    I went to bed.

    Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

CHAPTER 8

Trails

    I woke early the next morning to a pale
grey sky and the sound of Morgan moving stealthily about. One way and
another I didn’t want to talk to him. I lay doggo until I heard
the patio door slide open and shut again, then leapt out of bed and
flung on my clothes. Today I would follow him and discover what he
was up to. No time for breakfast, so I put a tin of baked beans and a
spoon in my pocket and gulped some water before leaving the flat.
    There had been a blizzard overnight,
the first snowfall for days. I’d woken in the small hours and
heard the wind howling, sculpting the snowscape into new undulations.
As I stepped outside, a stiff breeze, brilliant sun and icy air made
my eyes water. I hitched my scarf over my nose and put on my dark
glasses. Morgan had headed left, following the balconies round. I
stayed well back. He glanced over his shoulder two or three times,
and I shrank against the building. He didn’t see me. Then he
turned to his right and set off across the snowy waste in a straight
line south. For the best part of a mile in that direction not much is
tall enough to show above the snow, then you come to a group of City
high rise office buildings rising from a scurf of roofs, as
monolithic and functionless as Stonehenge, casting enormous shadows
on the snow. Taller still, the Shard arrogantly spikes the sky, but
that’s beyond the frozen Thames. Morgan was making a bee line
for the Gherkin. If I went after, he’d see me in that wide open
space when he checked behind him. Better to follow his tracks later.
I wanted to surprise him.
    I walked back home and made myself
porridge and had a wash. I realized virtually nothing of Morgan’s
was in the flat; not his backpack, no spare clothes, none of the
things he’d scavenged – just a toothbrush and a few tee
shirts and boxers. Half an hour later, I set off again toiling
through the soft new snow which made