I saw him again today. The little boy. Out in his front garden, knee deep in snow, adding a fresh layer of white flakes to his giant ball.
Such a sweet little thing he is, in his patterned mittens and matching woolly hat. I’d put him at about seven years old, although I suppose he might be older and just a bit short for his age.
I’m a 38-year-old childless woman, and no expert on the subject.
But if I were to have a son one day, I’d want one like him.
Freckle-faced and boisterous and all boy.
I first saw him on Monday, the morning after the first big dump of snow.
He and I both live in the same dreary south London suburb, a place usually devoid of charm. But this unexpected blanket of white had rendered our soulless neighbourhood temporarily beautiful, transforming it overnight into a sort of magical Narnia.
I was walking to work at my boring PR firm, not appreciating the magic as much as I should have been.
Truth be told, I was annoyed that my train had been cancelled, my hands were cold and I was thinking about my wedding as usual – all the boring “wedmin” I still hadn’t done, like getting a quote from a third caterer and making a final decision on the (extortionate) Portaloos.
Six months to go but apparently “locking down” the right toilet is key. By the time I looked into it, Jason’s top two choices of company were already fully booked for next summer. I can hear his reproachful voice now, with its accompanying sigh, after VIP Thrones turned us down.
“It’s really not that much to ask, Rachel. Please try to send your emails out on time. I’ve got so much on my plate right now.”
Jason always has a lot on his plate. He’s 42 and a successful lawyer, although he still hasn’t made partner at his firm, which irks him. Even so, I’m lucky to have him, as my mother never fails to remind me.
“I’m just being honest, Rachel. Rich blokes his age have a lot of options. He could easily have gone for a younger model. You’re lucky he chose you, love, because I hate to say it but it’s now or never if you want to have a child.”
For someone who “hates to say it”, my mother says that an awful lot.
Today is the fifth day in a row I’ve seen the boy. On Monday, when he began making his snowball, it was a fairly modest affair. If I had to guess, I’d have said that he was envisaging it as part of a snowman, either the body or the head.
But then it snowed again, on Monday night and all day Tuesday, and at some point his plans changed. He got more ambitious. The snowball grew bigger and bigger, and when I saw him on Wednesday morning, the frolicking had stopped and a look of deep determination had appeared on his freckled face.
It was clear to me what had happened. This snowball, now taller than he was, had become his job. His purpose.
He could no longer roll it, but used a series of stacked boxes as a makeshift ladder, painstakingly adding handfuls of compacted snow to the sides and top. Every now and then he would walk back towards his house and observe the monster from a distance, assessing its roundness and squinting critically for flaws. Other local kids would stop as they passed to admire it.
When, exactly, had that happened to me, I wondered, casting my mind back over my two-year relationship with Jason. When had it been my Wednesday, my tipping point from excitement and joy to “this is my job now; my purpose”? When had marrying Jason gone from being something I wanted to do, to something I had to do? Something I was doing, whether I wanted to or not. Because I was “lucky to have him”.
Because I was 38 and this was my last chance to have a child. Because if I didn’t book Perfect Porta-Potties right now, we might lose them too, and then poor Jason’s full plate would become even fuller, and who knew what might happen then?
I’ve realised a few things since I first saw the boy. One is that weddings are a bit like a heavy snowfall. For one fleeting, magical moment, they turn something ordinary and dull and often depressing into something beautiful: a wonderland. All of a sudden, I’m not past-her-sell-by-date Rachel with a boring job in PR and a boyfriend she’s never really loved. I’m The Bride. I am the star of the show, a vision in white, a person whose dreams are clearly and publicly coming true.
Just like the little boy is no longer simply a little boy living in a run-down south London semi, but the ruler of a magical white kingdom, creator of the mythical Giant Snowball of Elwood Road.
I’d already made my decision before I walked home tonight and saw him again. He was standing outside, but this time his dad was with him, the two of them shivering under the glow of the street lamps. The snowball was so vast now, it was half as high as the house. I hung back and watched as the father passed his son a garden hose.
“Ready?”
The boy nodded. And smiled, the first real smile I’d seen since Monday. His dad turned on the water, and the boy pointed the hose at the snowball and laughed with delight as the giant began to melt.
Five days to make. Five minutes to destroy. And he was loving every second of it, God bless his heart.
I will have a little boy one day. On my own.
And when I do, the first thing I will buy him will be a pair of brightly patterned mittens.
MB Shaw is the pseudonym of bestselling author Tilly Bagshawe. The first mystery in her new crime series, Murder At The Mill (Trapeze, £8.99), has just been published. See Express Bookshop.
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