Whiteout

They felt the wind blowing more fiercely. The storm was coming in off the sea. Away from the shelter of the house, the snow no longer fell in swirling flurries, but pelted down in hard, slanting lines, stinging their faces and getting into their eyes.

When Craig could no longer see the house, he turned at a right angle. Their progress was slow. The snow lay two feet deep, making it tiring to walk. He could not see the cottage. Measuring his steps, Craig walked what he guessed was the width of the yard. Now completely blind, he figured he must have drawn level with the barn, and he turned again. He counted the paces until he should have bumped up against its wooden end wall.

But there was nothing.

He felt sure he could not have gone wrong. He had been meticulous. He walked another five paces. He feared they might be lost, but he did nor want Sophie to know that. Suppressing a feeling of panic, he turned again, heading back toward the main house. The complete darkness meant that Sophie could not see his face so, fortunately, she did not know how scared he was.

They had been outside less than five minutes, but already his feet and hands were agonizingly cold. Craig realized they were in serious danger. If they could not find shelter, they would freeze to death.

Sophie was not stupid. "Where are we?"

Craig made himself sound more confident than he felt. "Just coming up to the barn. A few steps more."

He should not have made such a rash prediction. After ten more steps they were still in blackness.

He figured he must have walked farther away from the buildings than he had at first reckoned. Therefore his return leg had been too short. He swung right again. Now he had turned so many times that he was no longer sure of his angles. He trudged ten more strides and stopped.

"Are we lost?" Sophie said in a small voice.

"We can't be far from the barn!" Craig said angrily. "We only went a few steps into the garden."

She put her arms around him and hugged him. "It's not your fault."

He knew it was, but he was grateful to her anyway.

"We could shout," she suggested. "Caroline and Tom might hear us and shout back."

"Those people in the kitchen might hear us, too."

"That would be better than freezing."

She was right, but Craig did not want to admit it. How was it possible to get lost in just a few yards? He refused to believe it.

He hugged her, but felt despair. He had thought himself superior to Sophie, because she was more frightened than he, and he had felt very manly for a few moments, protecting her; but now he had got them both lost. Some man, he thought; some protector. Her boyfriend the law student would have done better, if he existed.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a light.

He turned in that direction, and it was gone. His eyes registered nothing but blackness. Wishful thinking?

Sophie sensed his tension. "What?"

"I thought I saw a light." When he turned his face to her, the light seemed to reappear in the corner of his eye. But when he looked up again it was gone.

He vaguely remembered something from biology about peripheral vision registering things invisible to direct sight. There was a reason for it, that had to do with the blind spot on the retina. He turned to Sophie again. The light reappeared. This time he did not turn toward it, but concentrated on what he could make out without moving his eyes. The light flickered, but it was there.

He turned toward it, and it was gone again; but he knew its direction. This way.

They plowed through the snow. The light did not immediately reappear, and Craig wondered if he had suffered a hallucination, like the mirage of an oasis seen in the desert. Then it flickered into sight and immediately disappeared again.

"I saw it!" Sophie cried.

They trudged on. Two seconds later, it came back into view, and this time it stayed. Craig felt a rush of relief, and realized that for a few moments back there he really had thought he was going to die and take Sophie with him.

When they came closer to the light, he saw that it was the one over the back door. They had walked around in a circle, and now they were back where they had started.

6:15 AM

MIRANDA lay still for a long time. She was terrified that Daisy would return, but unable to do anything about it. In her mind, Daisy came stomping into the room in her motorcycle boots, knelt on the floor, and looked under the bed. Miranda could see Daisy's brutish face-the shaved skull and the broken nose and the dark eyes that looked bruised by the black eyeliner. The vision of that face was so scary that sometimes Miranda just squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, until she saw fireworks on the back of her eyelids.

In the end it was the thought of Tom that made her move. Somehow she had to protect her eleven-year-old son. But how? There was nothing she could do alone. She would be willing to put her body between the gang and the children, but it would be pointless: she would be thrown aside like a sack of potatoes. Civilized people were no good at violence, that was what made them civilized.

The answer was the same as before. She had to find a phone and get help.

That meant she had to go to the guest cottage. She had to crawl out from under the bed, leave the bedroom, and creep downstairs, hoping she would not be heard by the gang in the kitchen, praying that one of them would not step into the hall and see her. She needed to grab a coat and boots, for she was barefoot and naked but for a cotton nightdress, and she knew she could not go three yards, dressed as she was, in a blizzard with the snow two feet deep. Then she had to make her way around the house, staying well away from the windows, to the cottage, and get the phone she had left in her handbag on the floor by the door.

She tried to summon her nerve. What was she frightened of? The tension, she thought: the strain was petrifying. But it would not be for long. Half a minute to go down the stairs; a minute to put on coat and boots; two minutes, perhaps three, to tramp through the snow to the cottage. Less than five minutes, that was all.

She began to feel resentful. How dare they make her scared to walk around her own father's house? Indignation gave her courage.

Shaking, she slid out from under the bed. The bedroom door was open. She peeped out, saw that all was clear, and stepped onto the landing. She could hear voices from the kitchen. She looked down.

There was a hat stand at the foot of the stairs. Most of the family's coats and boots were kept in a walk-in closet in the boot lobby by the back door, but Daddy always left his in the hall, and she could see his old blue anorak hanging from the stand, and below it the leather-lined rubber boots that kept his feet warm while he walked Nellie. They should be enough to keep her from freezing to death while she plowed through the snow to the cottage. It would take her only a few seconds to slip them on and sneak out through the front door.

If she had the guts.

She started to tiptoe down the stairs.

The voices from the kitchen became louder. There was an argument going on. She heard Nigel say, "Well, bloody well look again, then!" Did that mean someone was going to search the house? She turned and ran back, going up the stairs two at a time. As she reached the landing, she heard heavy boots in the hall-Daisy.

It was no good hiding under the bed again. If Daisy was being sent back for a second search, she was bound to look harder this time. Miranda stepped into her father's bedroom. There was one place she could hide: the attic. When she was ten years old, she had made it her den. All the children had, at different times. The door of the suit cupboard stood open.

She heard Daisy's steps on the landing.