When the fire was blazing — ‘as I never doubted it would,’ said Alex — Luke took some logs from it and started fires in the kitchen and the two bedrooms. Soon these too were burning brightly and in each bedroom a mattress was propped against chairs to dry out near the fire, even though it was not clear whether the mattresses were damp or just cold. It seemed likely that in a few minutes the house would go up in flames but it seemed more important to generate as much heat as possible.
Luke began cooking while Nicole and Sahra sat drinking or dashed upstairs to check that the mattresses weren’t on fire. The fire in the living room was roaring. The water began running hot. Alex rolled a joint and then he and Sahra took a bath.
After dinner they checked the mattresses, decided they were dry and made the beds. Sahra put hot-water bottles in both beds and then they sat in the living room not speaking: sleepy, enjoying being by the fire which Luke prodded and rearranged constantly even though the thick bed of red embers meant that it was self-generating. A new log — part of a fence post — gave off a tiny jet of deep green flame: ‘because of the wire at the top there,’ said Luke, tapping it with the poker.
Apart from the track leading up to it to they had no idea what lay beyond the house.
What lay beyond the house turned out to be fog. When Nicole got out of bed in the morning and pulled back the curtain she found that the window was blurred with condensation. The view did not improve when she wiped it. The condensation was outside as welclass="underline" fog. Alex disputed this at breakfast. Fog, he claimed, was not condensation, but since he was unsure what fog was they settled for Nicole’s definition.
Luke had become obsessed with the fire, with keeping it burning at all times. He spent the morning bringing in logs and piling them by the side of the fire so that they would dry out and catch as soon as they were thrown on.
‘It’s the caveman thing,’ explained Alex. ‘He’s got back in touch with the prehistoric origins of his desire to regulate temperature. Vulcan, that’s what we should call him.’
Sahra and Nicole decorated the house with streamers and silver and red tinsel. The living room looked so nice that Alex went out and chopped down a Christmas tree. They wedged it upright in a pot of earth, decorated it with the fairy lights and angel-hair.
It was not until midday that they were ready for a walk in the forest. Quite a production: sweaters, boots, scarves, hats. . Alex had forgotten his gloves and had to unwrap one of his presents early. Then he rolled and lit a joint. At last they were ready to set out. The stillness was primeval, as if history had never happened. The fog was so thick that even nearby trees were indistinct. Nicole was wearing a red embroidered hat with ear flaps that made her look like a Mongol invader. Blurred and mossy against the grey, it was by far the brightest thing in the forest. No animals were straying. The calls of birds were eerie-sounding. Sahra shook the branch of a small tree. There was a long pause and then a few drips fell to the ground. Nicole could see Luke walking ahead. She turned to speak to Sahra and when she looked back he could no longer be seen. She called to him — ‘Vulcan! Vulcan!’ — and he walked back towards the others through the fog that had engulfed him.
‘We should stick together,’ Nicole said, surprised by how quickly she had lost sight of Luke. They walked on, had a sense, sometimes, of moving up or down a slope but apart from gradient nothing changed: just the greyness and the darker greyness of the trees. Luke had been hoping vaguely that they would become lost. Until they became lost, it seemed to him, they had not really given themselves to the fog; until it obliterated everything it was still only a species of mist. And then, gradually (even the speed of realization was in keeping with the blurred, indefiniteness of the fog) they did become lost.
‘Does anyone know where we are?’ said Nicole.
‘No idea.’
‘Nor me.’
‘Nor me,’ said Luke, understanding now that everyone had been slightly hoping that they would lose their bearings. Each of them had been content to give themselves to the directionlessness of the fog because they had all assumed that someone else in the group would not have done so and would be able to steer them back to safety. The idea of being lost was nice but now they were faced with the need to become unlost. Being so stoned did not help. Sahra was conscious of her damp feet. Soon it would grow dark.
‘What shall we do?’
‘I’m not sure. Panic?’
‘My impulse, of course, is to start blaming someone,’ said Luke. ‘Nicole!’
‘The problem,’ she said, ‘is that the fog is not thick enough.’
‘Not thick enough?’
‘In Siberia the fog is so solid that as you walk through it your body makes a tunnel. It remains intact for hours, long enough to trace your way back home.’
‘If we had anything to tie we could tie it to trees to avoid going through the same place twice.’
‘If we had a ball of string we could unravel it.’
‘If we had a compass we could look at it and be none the wiser.’
‘If we had a bar of chocolate we could divide it into four and eat it. For energy.’
‘I have chocolate,’ said Nicole. ‘Who would like a square? Except for Luke, I mean.’
They decided to keep on walking even though they had no idea of where the house was or which way to go. After half an hour nothing had changed. It was growing dark. Usually when it gets dark the light changes, deepens, but here the descent into darkness was marked by a gradual dimming of the already dim light. It seemed possible that they would have to spend the night outside and wait for the fog to clear. They walked silently, anxiously. Earlier in the day they had wanted the fog to press in on them, to shroud their vision still further; now they were trying to peer through it, hoping it would suddenly disperse.
They continued walking — ‘What else can we do?’ said Luke — and then, when they had almost lost hope, Nicole saw a light in the distance. Hardly enough to be seen, just a faint square of yellow. And it was not even ‘in the distance’: it turned out to be less than fifty yards away. Within minutes they were home. The timing was perfect: they were getting near to temper loss, recrimination and tears but, like this, the afternoon took on the exhilarating cast of a catastrophe narrowly averted.
Luke threw more logs on the fire and started the fires in the bedrooms. He and Nicole took a bath and then, by a tacit understanding, both couples went off to their bedrooms and made love. The house was silent. Nicole and Luke lay under the heavy duvet, watching shadow-flames writhe around the room. Across the corridor Sahra lay in the crook of Alex’s arms and then they fell asleep. When they woke Alex’s arm was numb, dead. Luke got up and made tea and turned on the Christmas-tree lights. The angel-hair made the lights glow soft and wispy. Alex came down. They heard the bath running, footsteps, Sahra and Nicole’s voices, splashing. Nicole lay in the bath, Sahra sat on the toilet, chatting, laughing. The two women thought nothing about being naked together but neither appeared naked in front of the other’s boyfriend; the two men — who were sitting at the kitchen table, chatting, laughing — never appeared naked in front of each other.
It was Christmas Eve.
In his Christmas stocking the next day Luke found underpants, socks and a purple baseball cap.
‘Do you like your presents?’