Twisted Winter by Catherine Butler Read Free Book Online

years old, and tall for his age – tall enough to reach door handles. He has a rubberylittle mouth and big, wet blue eyes. He wants to hit everything in the world against everything else. If you don’t let him, his eyes get wetter, and his scream goes right through your brain.
    He’s my brother and I love him. Of course I do. But sometimes loving him feels like just one more thing I do because it’s my job.
    He adores clean rooms. He rushes around them like some grimy, stumpy spirit of Undoing, throwing pot plants on the floor and stamping on biscuit packs. Once he left a toy truck in one of the teacups, with a live slug in the driver’s seat. I’m not making this up. And he’s two, so whatever he does is
my
fault.
    Once I dared to suggest to Mum that maybe Dill was
too
hyper. But no, apparently he’s just ‘being a boy’ and ‘letting off steam’. I didn’t ask what was supposed to happen to
my
steam. No, I just swallow it down, so that I can be the ‘nice smiley girl at reception’ and Mum’s little helper.
    Or at least I did until this winter, when the snows came and changed everything.
    * * *
    We’re not exactly a winter destination. Our hotel is on the cliff path, with views down to Windmouth (fading spa town) on one side, and Creve (failing fishing village) on the other. From October onwards, the wind from the North Sea does its best to blow us somewhere more sensible inland. It always fails, but I’m rooting for it.
    Low season means more free time for me, but this winter I spent every spare minute wrestling with my GCSE work. Mum didn’t stop me, but whenever she caught me studying her face went neutral, and I knew what she was thinking. Mum has always wanted me to leave school after my GCSEs, and work in the hotel. Worse, I know it isn’t just because she needs the help.
She thinks I’m wasting my time
. She doesn’t think I’m smart enough to bother with university. She thinks I’d drop out, or waste three years of my life for nothing but a big, fat debt and an unclassified degree.
    I didn’t tell her how badly I was doing. I didn’t tell her that my brain froze up whenever I tried to prepare coursework. Blank paper, blank screen. Time and again I lost the staring competition. A barrier in my head stopped me filling them with words. I might aswell have tried to write across the sky. By December I was going spare.
    The snow arrived one evening by stealth. First tiny ice-crumbs spiralled down, flecking my lashes and sleeves while I took out the rubbish bags. After dusk came small, soft tufts that melted on the sills and damp tarmac as soon as they landed. Then followed big fat flakes, blue with the late evening light.
    Doors, windows, just a whirl of snow. Sorry, we are not receiving transmission from the world at present. You are between channels.
    Next morning, when I peered out of the window of my attic room, the sheer beauty of the world outside knocked the breath out of me. There was thick snow everywhere, heaping up on the windward side of the cars and buildings. It hung over the edge of the cliff in a smooth, crazy, cartoon way. The sky seemed full of sun. The snow was so white you could feel it throughout your head, like toothache but without the pain.
    For half an hour I sat there looking at it, completely happy. It was the white I’d been scrubbing to find under the chipped china and worn-out tiles. Perfect. Flawless.
    Of course it didn’t stay that way. Dog-walkers, hikers, postmen, delivery men, they all started to rut and spoil my beautiful snow. The buggies from the surrounding golf course took their usual short cut through our land to get back to their club hut, leaving deep tracks.
    Dill had never seen snow properly before. He wanted to zigzag all over it, and fall in it, and throw it. Most of all, he wanted to
spoil
it. He seemed to find every pure, beautiful patch, and then take pleasure in