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SEVENTEEN

It’s snowing when Ash wakes up on Tuesday morning, a soft, lazy snow, the type that looks like it won’t settle.

She stands for a few minutes at her bedroom window and watches the flakes floating past. She wants to run and tell someone: “Look! Snow!” But there’s no one to tell.

She can hear her mother’s voice drifting from her study off the landing—on a Zoom already and it’s not even nine o’clock.

By the time Ash leaves for work an hour later, the snow has all but stopped and she feels a pinch of disappointment.

Snow changes things, even for just a short while, makes the world seem different, a run-of-the-mill Tuesday memorable.

And now she has nothing to pin this day down with in her memory, nothing to stop it feeling like yet another pointless twenty-four hours in her already pointless existence.

“I’ve been obsessively googling him,” says Marcelline when Ash walks into the shop. “Your mum’s new chap.”

“Oh,” says Ash, surprised. “What did you find?”

“Nothing much. And I did a reverse image on his profile photo. But nothing there either.”

“Do you think he’s dodgy then?” Ash asks.

“Dodgy?” says Marcelline. “No. Why would I?”

“Because you googled him.”

“Nope. Just being nosy. I google everyone. Don’t you?”

Ash shrugs. “I guess.”

She’d shown the ring to her mother that morning.

“Oh,” Nina had said. “That’s weird.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Where did you say you’d found it?”

She couldn’t tell her she’d found it deep inside the pile of her mother’s bedroom rug whilst snooping around looking for traces of her mother’s lover. “It was on the landing outside your room, just sitting there.”

“Wow,” Nina had said, turning the ring around with her fingertips. “How did I miss that? I guess it must be Nick’s.”

“But…” Ash had paused, blinking hard enough to make black shadows in her vision. “It’s a wedding ring, don’t you think?”

“Looks like one.”

“And he hasn’t been married?”

“No. He hasn’t. Although it was only two weeks before the wedding that his fiancée died. Maybe they’d already bought their rings and now he carries his around as a memento?”

The theory was sound and Ash had nodded. “Yeah,” she’d said. “That could be it. Anyway, you should let him know you have it. He must be worried. Give him a call?”

“No,” Nina had said. “He’s at work. He won’t be able to talk.”

“He might.”

“No, I’ll just message him.”

Ash had wanted to put him on the spot, to hear his explanation for the ring and for it to be fresh.

“I’ll call him. Give me your phone.”

Nina had looked at her with narrowed, questioning eyes. “Er, Ash. It’s fine. I said, I’ll message him.”

Ash had backed down. There was no way to explain to her mother what was going through her mind without sounding like a needy, insecure child who couldn’t deal with the fact that her recently widowed mother was seeing a new man.

Now she tucks her phone away in her pocket, gets to her feet, and says to Marcelline, “I’m going to go into the back, do some steaming.”

The afternoon is slow and only three customers come in.

One buys a Dorothy Perkins summer dress, another buys three pieces of identical knitwear, and the other is a regular who arrives with two glossy carrier bags full of castoffs and stays for tea, which kills an hour of the day until finally it is five thirty and Ash can pull on her jacket, sling on her bag, head back up the hill to the big white house, and chalk up another pointless day waiting for everything to make sense.