Junction X by Erastes (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

snowman; fighting on my side against them until we were all soaked to the skin; lying warm and pink on the floor in front of the fire, his hair damp against his cheek; and sipping the hot chocolate that Valerie had made him.

I had no chance that day to show him that I’d known the night before that I’d hurt him. But he showed no sign of it. Neither of us showed any sign of anything. He was just my children’s friend that day.

When all was quiet that night and Val and I sat together on the settee watching some unmemorable film, she said something about him, and I remember changing the subject. I found it hard to discuss him with her, even then, just as later I found it hard to discuss her with him.

It snowed through the night and continued as I got ready for work, but even as I struggled down to the Junction with my suit in a case, I had a fair idea that there was little chance of me getting to London. With every step I took, the snow was knee-deep.

The scene at the station told me all I needed to know; the track itself was covered, and, although there were men, digging in Herculean optimism, at both ends of the platform, it was clear that nothing was coming from the terminus. I stamped around for a while on the empty platform, then took advantage of the solitude to investigate the tunnel where the door to the flats was situated. It was locked, of course, so I went home.

I didn’t get to work for more than a few days, but my job was—to some degree—manageable by phone, and I also had some holiday due to me, which I took at the end of January. I was lucky that my secretary lived in London and was able to get in to the City with few problems. I went down to the station every day, but nothing was moving. For weeks, the news told us that trains all around the country had been disrupted, buried under snow as deep as twenty feet in some places. The schools opened late, too. And the children complained that all their classes were held in the hall where heating could be turned up full, rather than to heat separate classrooms. There were stories on the news every night of rural families who were cut off, and the army had to be mobilised to fly provisions out to them.

The roads were clearing quicker than the railway, and, from reports back from others who had risked the journey, were slightly more reliable, but Val wouldn’t hear of my risking myself on the roads, which was touching. Alex took it upon himself to make sure the twins got to school all right. They’d set off, all three of them, bundled up to the ears with scarves and hats, with Alex holding tight to each of them. After the first two days, when it became clear that the weather was not going to change, Alex had the brainwave of taking his sledge and pulling them behind him. Hard work for him, but he said it kept him warm.

The benefit of this arrangement was that, throughout that first week (and most evenings, during the Freeze), he came to the house every day. Valerie had insisted to his parents that, as he was minding the children in the morning, he should have his tea with us. He left school later than the children and at first objected, but she was difficult to argue with. No, she would say, she wouldn’t hear of him leaving until he was dry with at the very least a hot drink inside him. I realised, as I heard her fuss over him, that she had become very fond of him.

Consequently, he had his tea with the children more often than not, and I found excuses, sneaking into my own kitchen like a burglar, to pop in and talk about trains, or nothing much. All too brief, and all too monopolised by the children—but now and then, when they’d said their excuses and thundered upstairs, I had just enough time to slide my arm around his waist or to kiss his hand. He was always more wary than I, never losing himself in the moment like I did—and I suppose it was just as well.

The next week, some post began to filter through and I drove into town several times to check the post office box. I remember now the thrill I got seeing the lease as I pulled it from the envelope. I signed it on the spot, getting the custodian to witness for me, then practically ran (or rather slid) down to the post office and sent it back. It seemed forever until anything returned, and I couldn’t tell you how long it seemed, for each day was the same: cold, wet and white.

But finally the keys arrived; they fell out into my hand, icy brass with a large luggage label attached with “Number 8” scrawled in a clumsy hand. Just two little keys, but they seemed like treasure as they weighed in my hand like guilt. I pressed them into my hand, watching the white shapes they made in my half-frozen palm; I dug them into my flesh to make them real. It seemed to dilute them when I had them copied for Alex, as if my secret was spreading a slick of lies across the world.

From this time on, there was rarely a moment without guilt. I’m not going to write about it endlessly, but it was there, polluting everything I touched, everything I said, everything I did. I lived with a woman I loved, but I longed for a youth I adored. It had all seemed simple to me at the beginning. I would take a lover and keep him separate; but, as the claustrophobia of that winter’s freeze drove us all closer together in our Blitz-spirit