Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
She went across to the bathroom. It smelt threateningly damp from where the water had washed under the floorboards and into the joists.
Julia stood in front of the mirror for a long time. She rubbed cream into her face and brushed her hair until it crackled with static. She cleaned her teeth, then took her nightdress off the hook behind the door and put it on.
She stared solemnly at her reflection in the mirror. She told herself, You will have to make your life for yourself. You can. Felix believes it, too. You can’t expect anyone else to help you, because they have to help themselves. Mattie. Felix. Josh. Betty and Vernon, even. That’s the truth, isn’t it? She had almost turned away, but she added, If what you want is Josh Flood, he won’t come to you. You will have to go to him. That’s also the truth.
She went back to Felix’s room and she was smiling properly now. He smiled back at her and lifted the covers. She lay down beside him and he fitted himself neatly against the curve of her back. It was comforting to have him there. She felt that she had reached the end of a complicated journey.
‘Thank you,’ Felix said, with his mouth against her ear. And then, ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ Julia answered.
They fell asleep together, the first and last time.
There was the cottage, in the angle of the wood. Julia stood with the frosty grass crackling under her feet and looked at the lights in the windows. It had taken her almost a month to decide to come. In the end she had left the square on impulse, caught a train to the country station, and walked from there along the icy lanes. It was almost dark, and she had fixed all her attention on finding the way. Only when she saw the lights did she wonder what she would have done if there had been no one there.
She wrapped her coat tighter around her and ran the last few yards. She knocked so hard on the door that her knuckles stung.
Josh opened it. Yellow light spilled out from behind him and lit up her face.
‘I’m here,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘Can I come in?’
Josh laughed, and his breath sent up a smoky plume between them.
‘Julia, Julia. Yes, you’d better come in.’
Across the room behind him Julia saw two pairs of skis propped against the wall, ski poles and heavy laced boots, a scatter of other equipment she didn’t recognise. Josh was busy. Now that she was here, she was suddenly furiously angry.
‘Why haven’t you been to see me? Do you think I don’t matter? That you can appear and disappear, just as you like?’ The words hurt her throat as they came out.
He stared at her then. Julia’s eyes glittered and her cheeks were reddened by the cold.
Slowly, he said, ‘No, I don’t think you don’t matter.’
Julia stared at the long, sharp blades of the skis and her taut shoulders suddenly dropped. In a different voice she said, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have come here. Girls don’t do things like that, do they? But I wanted to see you so much, and I didn’t think you’d ever come, so what else could I do? I know you think I’m too young. I came to tell you I’m not. I’m old enough to know my own mind.’
Her face was turned away from him, her eyes still fixed on his skis. Gently, Josh held out his hand. She ignored it, and he fitted his fingers around her wrist. ‘I think you do know your own mind,’ he whispered. ‘The question is, whether I know mine.’
She turned to look at him then. They watched each other, wary.
Josh was thinking that ten minutes ago, with his Long Lanyard ski bindings and his new Subito boots, everything had been simple. It wasn’t simple now, and it would grow steadily more complicated. All the risks that he had sensed and shied away from in Julia Smith were intensified now, and Josh was elated to realise that he didn’t care. He looked at Julia’s rosy cheeks and burning eyes. It was right that she was here. Better than right, much, much better. It was perfect.
‘You know I love you,’ Julia said.
Josh took her other hand. ‘I think I must love you too. Just a bit. A little, tiny bit.’
She jerked her chin up. ‘That’s enough. To begin with, of course.’
He pulled her closer and kissed her. She smelt of cold air, clean and delicious. He wanted to go on smelling and tasting her, but Julia drew away from him.
‘Are you going away?’ She pointed at the ski gear and an open canvas grip on the floor.
He nodded. ‘Into the Inferno.’
Julia rounded on him. ‘Don’t talk in riddles. I was plain and honest with you, wasn’t I?’
Josh laughed, still holding her hands in his. Julia was completely and beguilingly unlike any of the other women he knew. He admired her sharpness. He really did love her, he thought. Perhaps even more than a little bit.
‘It wasn’t a riddle. The Inferno is a ski race. In Mürren, Switzerland. Next Sunday.’
Switzerland. Saw-toothed mountains against the blue sky, and Josh. Julia remembered the square, and her fear of the silence that would choke it as soon as Felix left. And her typewriter, crouching under its black hood, waiting to recapture her on Monday morning.
She didn’t hesitate any longer. ‘Take me with you,’ she begged him.
With anyone else, Josh would have snorted with laughter. No one took any diversions to the Inferno, he would have said. But simple responses like that had slipped out of his reach now. He sighed.
‘Yes, you can come with me,’ Josh said. ‘We leave on Wednesday morning.’
He saw the delight and disbelief leap together in her face, and he thought how lovely she was. It would be his pleasure to show her the mountains.
‘I’ll be ready,’ she promised him.
‘What about your work?’
‘There are thousands of jobs,’ Julia answered. ‘But only one chance to do this.’
At last, she thought. She was in motion too. You have to make a life for yourself.
‘I haven’t got very much money,’ she said awkwardly. Just a bit, that I’ve saved. How much will I need?’
‘Oh Jesus, I’m not a millionaire,’ Josh groaned, ‘but I guess you can come along at my expense.’
She smiled at him, a brilliant smile. ‘Thank you.’
They went to the timbered pub for a celebratory drink, and afterwards Julia insisted on being driven to the station in the black MG. Josh protested, but she was adamant that she wouldn’t stay. Julia was intrigued to discover that suddenly she wielded power too.
‘Wednesday morning,’ she beamed at him, and reluctantly he let her go.
On Thursday morning they were in Switzerland.
At the little station at Lauterbrunnen Julia gazed upwards. The peaks of the Bernese Oberland reared massively into the sky. In the course of the long train journey the world had lost its familiar shades of earth and mud and winter grass and had turned monochrome. Everything here was spidery black, or grey, or glittering white, and the air tasted thin and sharp.
She waited quietly, breathing it in.
Josh was across the platform beside the mountain train. He was tenderly stowing his ski bag into a little open wagon already bristling with skis. If he could have slept with them beside him in the couchette berth last night, Julia thought with amusement, he would gladly have done so. Since yesterday morning she had discovered that she was as bad a