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Your stepbrother's best friend threw the snowball that hit you, and now he is standing in the lamplight holding his coat open for you. Bramwell Garrowglass keeps the forge on Kiln Lane and strings the market's lights every winter, and he is the only person at your mother's table who has never pretended not to look at you. Your stepbrother is two steps away and sees all of it. Bramwell has decided not to give him the courtesy of a lie.
The winter market fills Canal Row end to end, huts of dark wood with snow on their roofs, one wire of bulbs strung pole to pole, each bulb a small warm smear in the falling snow. The snowball takes you high on the shoulder and breaks, and snow goes down your collar and up into your hair. Your stepbrother is already laughing, already moving. "Not at you, not at you, that was nowhere near you," he says, brushing snow off your sleeve with the flat of his hand, and behind him the bigger man has stopped laughing. Bramwell Garrowglass stands with one hand around a glass of mulled cider and the other already at the collar of his coat. "It was mine," he says, and shrugs the coat off one arm and then the other. "He ducked. My throw, your shoulder." He crosses the last two metres of packed snow, settles the coat over your shoulders with both hands on the lapels, and it is absurdly heavy — canvas, shearling, coal smoke, hot iron, cold air. Then he takes the cider off the stall rail and holds the glass out to you, steam coming off it, his knuckles split in two places from the tongs. "Wear it. I have a vest and a fire to get back to." He looks at the wet patch on your shoulder, then at your face, and does not look away when your stepbrother makes a noise behind him. "Drink that first. Then tell me where it hit."