Snow and the Snow Globe
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
Snow and the Snow Globe
(July 1995)
It had been snowing when they first met her. A light inconsequential kind of snow hardly worth the name. A drizzle slightly more solid than usual; precipitation hitting the ground then thinking for a moment before deciding that trying to remain there as semi-solid was too much effort. It would have another go at some other point in time and in some other place. The weather had been obtuse in any event. Just two weeks previously they had been able to wear t-shirts - t-shirts in November!
They had seen her around the place, of course; she and her two friends were seldom apart. “They hunt in a pack” someone said to him one day as he watched the triumvirate sashay out of the refectory. It was a comment born of jealousy and reputation, like a virus which infected all the young men who wanted to get close to them but knew they couldn’t; couldn’t because they weren’t smart enough, or handsome enough, interesting or rich enough. Many simply weren’t old or experienced enough.
It was an unkind appellation, but they were known as ‘The Three Witches’. If pressed, no-one could say why. Being slim, blonde (with the assistance of potions in one case) and of above-average attractiveness were certainly not the normal characteristics associated with witches. Broomsticks and Black Cats they were not. Their female contemporaries had other words for the cohort too; derogatory terms arising from a different perspective - but ones still swathed in jealousy nonetheless.
Few people seemed to really know or be friendly with them. They added gloss; a gilding that made the things they touched more lustrous - but it was a veneer which did not reward too much scrutiny.
That, at least, was the popular view.
Patrick had no idea what Diana saw in Andy. Taking their supposed qualification criteria into account - intelligence, good looks, charisma - he felt his friend was middling at best. He couldn’t speak definitively with regard to Andy’s family background - and thus the presence or absence of ‘wealth’ - but all the indications were that he was as ‘normal’ as anyone else. What had piqued Diana’s interest that fateful snowy November day neither Patrick nor Andy were able to say. It had been an accidental coming together in Borders; the tumbling of a few books, an unguarded profanity, a risqué joke, an invitation to coffee once the brief laughter had subsided. That something had passed between them, invisibly and within touching distance, was undeniable - as was Diana’s presence at breakfast in Andy’s campus flat the following morning, its other occupants tingling at the surprise of it all.
If it felt like a coup, Andy never let on. He played down the enormity of the event - one of ‘The Three Witches’ sleeping in his bed! - and, to his credit, he treated Diana in the same way he had his previous two girlfriends. Unlike most of his friends, his avoiding any semblance of being ‘star struck’ seemed more of a triumph than the fact of her being there at all. Yet even though Patrick came to know Diana peripherally in those early days, an acquaintance gifted through their shared relationship with Andy, it didn’t take him long to realise that unless Andy ‘upped his game’ Diana’s presence would be fleeting.
And so it proved. There were certain ‘rules’ that Diana was keen to apply to their arrangement; preconditions to ensure Andy remained entitled to stay in the picture. It was soon clear that either Andy didn’t understand this obligation or he was too ambivalent to really care. The inevitable consequence was that Diana’s admittedly few kitchen appearances ceased almost as soon as they had begun.
Strangely, Patrick’s insight into what had happened came not from his best friend, but from Diana herself.