The Snow That Counts the Stairs

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The story

A widow alone in a flat at the top of a tenement climbs the stairs every night in snow that lies deeper each evening. The whisperer, quiet and close, describes how she counts the steps aloud to keep her courage up.

How it begins

The snow began in November, the way it always does in the old tenements, quietly, on a Tuesday, while the lamplighter was still whistling down the street. By the first week of December it had filled the gutters. By the second week it had buried the bottom step of the close, and by the Friday before Christmas it lay so deep against the door that the postman gave up and left the parcels in the bins across the road. Nobody liked the building much. It was six storeys of cracked brown brick, with a stairwell that smelled of damp coal and boiled cabbage, and a light on the landing that…