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Feet beneath her rear to keep her butt off the frozen floor, and hair spanning her back to keep that off the equally frigid wall, Brook scraped the last of the macaroni and cheese from the bowl her mother had allowed her.
For around the previous fourteen hours, her flesh had stood in perpetual prickles, each and every downy hair across her body erect and defensive. With each of her shivers, the spoon had clashed with ceramic, and she’d lost half of its scooped contents en route to her mouth.
As she chased the dropped pasta around the bowl, the overhead door opened, and steps too heavy to be her mother’s tapped the stone. Lowering her scraps to the floor, she angled her head to better see who’d descend, though she should have recognised Clive’s boots before he rounded the corner.
He
