WUTHERING BITES

Chapter Nineteen: Promises

Chapter Nineteen

Promises

Meanwhile, Kate was unreasonably cold in the Alps.

Her roommates were chattering away by the fire, three to a room. They'd only known each other for a few months but already they were friendly, Kate thought, especially after she'd shown them the picture of her and Heath. On cold afternoons after deportment class and flower arranging and French cooking and "How to Entertain Diplomats" or "How to Behave When Greeting the Royal Family" tutorials were over, the girls socialized.

They turned their iron upside down, pulled out the small milk pan they hoarded for this very occasion, and made hot chocolates by pouring milk into the pan and sitting the pan on the underside of the iron to heat the milk. Their drinks were laced with the cream and marsh mellows they bought in the tiny convenience store in town. The girls sipped hot chocolate as they talked. The topic of discussion was usually Kate, Heath and their "everlasting love".

One of Kate's roommates, Tracey, was from California. She spoke in an accent Kate loved and made LA seem like a place Kate would definitely like to go one day. Daisy, the shorter one with dark hair, was from London.

'Oh, he's really cute,' Daisy said.

'Yes, he's hot. I would...definitely,' Trace replied with a wicked smile.

Kate smiled. 'Well, neither of you can have him, he's all mine,' Kate said, snatching the photograph, knowing she'd probably never have the pleasure of another image now that Heath was in the process of transition.

'Are you sure?' Tracey asked mischievously. 'All alone in London after your brother treated him so...scandalously?'

'Yes, it really was terrible to throw the foster child...out like that,' Daisy added. 'My mother would never treat a foundling that way. It just looks really bad to the outside world...'

Kate had told them the whole story (well, the parts she could repeat – nothing about Heath's transition) but they somehow always got the details wrong.

'Heath is so hot,' Daisy said, glancing at the photograph of Kate and Heath taken just days before they ran away from Hareton Hall. Kate looked at the picture nostalgically.

'Gosh your house sounds so romantic, tucked away opposite a frozen park...' Daisy added.

Kate unfolded the letter she had received from Heath by way of Annabelle and re-read it as she stirred the milk pan, making sure a plastic skin didn't form.

'Only one more week,' she thought '...before I'm free of this place forever.'

The girls had been sworn to secrecy and Kate had worked out the route she would take from the school, down to the convenience store across the sleet road to the bus stop, down the mountain road to the train station, through the tunnel in the mountain...across the channel then on to London.

The café was in Dean Street. From the corner table you could see the cobbled pathway that led towards Covent Garden. Art students and opera singers busked there in the hub of shops and cafes and people.

It had been a long three months and in that time Heath and Kate had communicated using letters and postcards.

In the pre-internet nineties, Kate and Heath needed Annabelle as their intermediary.

The cards and letters Kate wrote Heath during their enforced separation lined the wall of the tiny room he'd taken. They began to arrive less than a week after Heath and Kate separated. Kate found a local bakery near the school where she walked to in her lunch hours and religiously posted a card to Heath using Annabelle's address. Sometimes at night after Heath had eaten food brought home with him from the pub (always some kind of red meat or chicken), he fell asleep reading the names of the cards on the wall.