‘Can you … can you warm them up for me?’ she found herself saying. He grinned, and took them and buried them under his four layers of clothing and her eyes popped wide open as she felt his bare back, his flat muscular stomach, his hairless chest.
‘Oh!’ she said.
‘Better?’ he said.
‘So much,’ she said, even though they stung as warmth drew back into them.
‘Oh God, are you really going? Now?!’ she added. She looked up at him.
‘Oh, my mother would be disappointed if I don’t. My sisters will think it is funny.’
‘Yes, but it’s not like you’re going home for Christmas, is it?’ she said, inching closer, her hands warming and unable, it turned out, to stop themselves from running up and down the smooth brown skin of his muscular back. Jesus, she found herself muttering under her breath.
‘Is this very Quakery?’ she said as she touched him.
‘Do I have to keep explaining?’ he said, smiling.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I see it.’
‘What do you see?’
She looked up.
‘A religion. Without a church.’
The rustle of the leaves in the wind, the quieting sounds of the birds, the deep muffling of the snow.
‘This is your church.’
He nodded.
‘This is my church.’
‘There are things you shouldn’t do in church,’ she said, suddenly mischievous. He looked at her, eyes glinting.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘This is my church, nobody else’s.’
‘That’s true. So you can make your own rules.’
He smiled.
‘I should tell you my name,’ he said.
‘Oh, you should!’ said Carmen.
‘It is not a very good name for me.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘It’s Obedience.’
‘Obedience is your name?’
‘It is. My sisters called me Obi and I thought they were saying Okay and, well, here we are.’ He grinned. ‘So I have left my family, travelled across the world, studied nature, and … ’ He stroked her face very gently. ‘Well. It turns out I am not a very obedient person.’
Carmen smiled.
‘Oh, me neither.’
‘Is your mouth cold?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes,’ said Carmen.
And under a tree that was centuries old when Mary Queen of Scots was a child, that had seen plotting and murder and history pass beneath its boughs, that was so old Pontius Pilate’s father could have known it, one more event in time was added: the best of many, many, many kisses that tree had seen.
They stumbled back up the muddy track, completely wrapped up in one another, Oke pulling his suitcase.
‘What was your plan for getting to the airport?’ said Carmen.
‘There has to be a railway station,’ he said. ‘Look.’
They followed the map, but Carmen didn’t feel optimistic. This wasn’t a road to a brightly lit station; this was yet another muddy track up the side of the pretty village.
But somehow, wrapped up in this man, she no longer felt cold and she no longer cared, despite their dying phones’ flashing warnings of transport disruptions and yellow and red warnings for snow and ice; cancellations and delays.