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  “Oh aye. Aye,” Mr Hughes muttered, laughing nervously. He looked less than convinced, however.

  The adults fell to talking about arrangements for the house, keys and such like, so Samuel sat down at the table and gazed about him. He had never seen a kitchen quite like this one before. There seemed to be so much wildlife for a start. A rabbit sat on a kitchen counter nibbling a lettuce, and the whole pack of dogs now seemed to be lolling under the table. There was also a cockatoo in an ornate cage, and Samuel was sure he saw a horse walk past the window.

  “As I said before, we’re a community here,” Mrs Morton was saying. “We all pull together. Look out for one another. That sort of thing.”

  Isabel drew her feet under her nervously. “Of course,” she murmured politely.

  It was a bright and colourful room. The cabinets were all painted soft pale blue and yellow, and there were wooden dressers stacked to the ceiling with hand-painted pottery. A large red Aga heated the room nicely. There was a rocking chair and a long wooden table with bowls of fruit and candles and model aeroplanes and paintboxes scattered across it – evidence of Mrs Morton’s children.

  By the time Mrs Morton led them across the courtyard to view their new home, the sun had come out and burnt away the mist.

  “Of course you’re seeing the cottage at its best,” Mrs Morton explained, as she unlocked the front door and pushed it open. “The sun doesn’t always shine quite so flatteringly up here. It can be pretty bleak in the winter.”

  Samuel and his mother looked about them. The interior of the cottage was fairly run down, but it was large and spacious and had potential. There were fireplaces in every room, and Isabel was already having fantasies about lighting a crackling fire in each, as well as tackling that truculent stove.

  She approached the mantelpiece and wiped a finger along its dusty surface, her face inscrutable. Mrs Morton watched her uncomfortably.

  “It’s in need of a lick of paint and some cheering up,” she apologized, glancing guiltily at the bare flagged floor of the kitchen. “What you see is what you get, I’m afraid. It’s so hard to know what people want in the way of original features.”

  Isabel turned to Chris Morton and smiled.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  “It would be a long-term let of course,” Mrs Morton went on. “So long as we were all agreeable, I see no reason why the period of the let should not continue for as long as is convenient. I have no other plans for the cottage.”

  Then she left them to unpack.

  It was a sturdy little cottage, long and low, with whitewashed walls and three tall chimneys, surrounded by beech trees, which partly sheltered it from the wind, for the winds were fierce up on Sheriffmuir and roared and banged about the chimneys all year long. It had a big garden, bordered by a crumbling stonewall on one side, with a white picket fence at the end, beyond which lay the hills and Dunadd Wood. On either side of it lay the outhouses, stables and barn. At the end of the garden was a small burbling stream, whose sound would become familiar to Samuel in the weeks and months ahead as he fell asleep at night.

  “I think we’ll be happy here, Samuel,” Isabel said confidently, once they were alone. She turned to him with a look of calm certainty on her face.

  They had no idea what a severe winter lay ahead.

  Woman in the Mirror

  “Reports are coming in of arctic weather conditions sweeping across Europe, expected to hit the British Isles later this week …”

  The day before Christmas Eve, it began to snow. Icy winds blew about the cottage and rattled the windows and doors.

  Next door, Chris Morton looked out of the kitchen window at the big flakes falling from the sky, and sighed.

  “It looks like we’d better make up a couple of beds for you in the tower room” she said grimly, turning to Granny Hughes. “Just in case. We wouldn’t want to be snowed in without you.”

  Granny Hughes thought wistfully of her new centrally-heated flat down in the village, and wondered if there was any possibility that she and her husband could contrive to be snowed out rather than in. Timing would be the important factor, but timing always seemed to work in Mrs Morton’s favour in the end, as if the powers that be knew whom to obey.

  The television showed pictures of a frozen Europe, telegraph wires and electricity pylons damaged by the polar ice screeching across the continent. Then they lost reception and had to rely on the radio. Temperatures dropped to well below freezing. Chaos was sweeping the country.

  In the middle of the night the blizzards worsened. When they woke on Christmas Eve, the drifts had reached the windowsills and beyond, darkening the rooms inside. Getting coal from the barn was a struggle in itself, but Samuel managed it somehow.

  At one point Mrs Morton struggled through the blizzard in her thick black cape to check up on them. When they opened the door to her, there was a barrier of waist-high snow, which had been swept against the side of the cottage.

  “I just came to see you’re surviving,” she shouted above the wind. “We’re being buried alive. If you need anything, just come across.”

  “Would you like to come in?” Isabel asked.

  “No, I’m on my way to feed the horses.”

  “Do you need any help?” Samuel offered heroically.

  “Stay indoors,” Mrs Morton warned, and then she was off with a wave, heading towards the stables.

  “Well, this is different,” Samuel said, peering out of the window at an almost complete white-out.

  A trace of doubt had crossed Isabel’s face.

  “I hope I’ve done the right thing, bringing you here.”

  By Christmas morning, there was a lull in the storm. The wind stopped howling and the world lay still under a frozen white blanket, more than a metre deep. The Siberian winds had sculpted the snow into an ocean of white that covered the entire moor.

  At dusk, as the trees cast purple-black shadows onto the snow, Isabel suggested they should go next door to wish the others a Merry Christmas. Samuel had met the Morton children briefly up at the boating pond, but they hadn’t been particularly friendly. Charles, the eldest, was short and stocky with wild curly black hair, and had accused Samuel of trespassing on his mother’s land. He had then disappeared into the thick pine trees behind the pond, without waiting for a reply. He was simply engulfed by the darkness of the forest, never to reappear again for the rest of that afternoon. So they hadn’t exactly got off to a good start, despite their mothers’ assurances that they would get on like a house on fire.

  His brother, Sebastian, was thin and fair with a slightly whimsical expression. He seemed laid-back, and inclined to please his brother in order to keep the peace. Fiona, the youngest, had been the friendliest of all. She had greeted him with the words “Those two idiots over there are my brothers. But don’t bother about them. You get used to them after a while. I’ve had to.” She had sounded utterly scornful.

  With her icy blue eyes, and short hair as white as spun sugar he thought she looked a bit like a Viking. She had invited him to join their barbecue, cooking sausages in a small pan over an open fire, which they then ate with their fingers. He found out that their father had died several years ago, although no one seemed to want to talk about it. Mrs Morton was bringing up her three children on her own, with the help of Granny Hughes and her husband. At least they had this in common, Samuel thought. Absent fathers.

  So as he crossed the courtyard in the darkness with his mother, he felt more than a little apprehensive about meeting Charles and Sebastian again.

  Although the wind had dropped, the trees still roared above them. The house looked taller and more imposing at night. Its huge white tower loomed above them menacingly, and Samuel glanced up at its windows, feeling watched.

  There was no answer to their knock on the outer door, apart from the barking of the dogs, so they took off their boots and coats and made their way down the long dark corridor.

  Mrs Morton was in the kitchen, fetching
glasses.

  “Ah, you’ve come,” she cried. “We were just about to go across and fetch you.”

  She handed Samuel some of the glasses to carry and they followed her past the grandfather clock in the hallway, and up a flight of spiralling stairs. The drawing room was on the first floor and a bright fire was roaring at one end.

  Samuel looked about him. An impressive Christmas tree stood in one window. He’d seen its lights glittering from outside in the dark. The room was vast, with a grand piano at one end and a huge fireplace at the other. There were long bay windows on either side, overlooking the wild-looking gardens and the moor beyond.

  Mrs Morton had explained to Samuel and his mother when they first moved in that Dunadd used to be a farmhouse. Bits had been added over the years, including the round tower, which made it look like a castle. Previous owners with grandiose ideas had simply kept on building, hence its strange shape, and many passageways and corridors.

  The room Samuel was now standing in was filled with dusty bookcases and stuffed animals in glass cases. Antique pictures, framed in heavy gilt, hung on the walls. There were no comfy sofas to sit on, as in Samuel’s house, just ancient hard-backed chairs, stuffed with horsehair that prickled and itched when you sat down. No one was sitting anyway. They all preferred to stand.

  Samuel examined the birds in the cases, their glassy eyes cold and staring.

  On top of the piano were some silver-framed family photographs. There was a wedding photograph with a young Mrs Morton in bridal white, smiling at the camera, then a later photograph of her looking sad and drawn in black. There was also one of Fiona wearing a sunhat and sipping a forbidden glass of wine. Samuel gazed at the photograph.

  “Had a good look?” a voice said.

  He spun round. Fiona was standing right behind him.

  “I’ll let you off. What d’you think of the blizzard then?” She nodded her head towards the window. “Not bad, eh?”

  He shrugged. “At least we’ll get to miss school.”

  “You wish! My mother would shift the snow herself, all the way to the A9, if it means we can still go to school on time.” Samuel laughed quietly. “You think I’m joking, don’t you? She would! She’d hire her own snowplough or something.”

  “I’ve never known Sheriffmuir to be quite this bad,” Mrs Morton was exclaiming on the far side of the room. “It snows every year, but this beats the record.”

  “It’s minus twenty degrees, I think,” Isabel murmured.

  “Well, we’ve got our white Christmas anyway,” Mrs Morton added, a little too brightly. “Poor Granny’s been very depressed,” she went on after a while. Samuel thought of Granny, and tried to imagine her being anything other than depressed. “She’s been talking of worse to come. Insists this is the worst it’s been since 1947. She’s usually spot on. She’s been very low, I’m afraid, very low.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Isabel murmured politely.

  While the adults chatted next to the roaring blaze, Charles and Sebastian sidled off into the library, which opened off the drawing room. This seemed to make Mrs Morton nervous and edgy. Samuel glanced through the half-open door and saw a dark cavernous room, its walls lined with heavy books. It was another part of the house, which had been added about four hundred years earlier.

  “Don’t go in there, boys,” their mother said sharply. But they took no notice. She seemed a little agitated. A cold draught swept in from the far room, and crept like a snake around their ankles. “It’s so chilly in there you see, without a fire,” she complained fretfully.

  Samuel drew closer to the fire, and began examining the ornaments and pictures on the tall mantelpiece. Above the fireplace hung a huge elegant mirror. He caught his reflection in it, and stared at himself. There he was, in this splendid room, surrounded by all its pictures, ornaments, bookcases and stuffed animals. He glanced away for a moment, in search of Fiona, and when he looked back at the mirror he froze. Close behind him, in the reflection, stood a woman who hadn’t been there before. She had black hair, coiled and drawn back from her face, and wore a long, dark-blue plaid dress. Her fierce dark eyes were fixed on his, giving him the most penetrating stare. He turned round slowly, expecting to see her standing right behind him, but there was no one there. When he looked back at the mirror, she had gone.

  “What’s the matter, Samuel?” his mother said, watching him. “You look a bit pale.”

  He turned to face the adults. Mrs Morton’s eyes were on him as well.

  “Er … nothing,” he murmured. Had he just seen what he thought he’d seen? His blood ran cold in his veins, like ice.

  He moved away from the fire, and looked about the room, peering into every corner, starting nervously at every shadow, but there was nothing. No sign of a woman in a long dress.

  I’m going mad, he thought.

  Fiona was watching him. She came and stood beside him.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t I be?” he snapped.

  “No reason. I just thought you looked a bit …”

  He gave her a quick glance, but she looked away.

  “They watched the Battle of Sheriffmuir from this spot you know, right where you’re standing now,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The people who lived here three hundred years ago. My ancestors.”

  Samuel stared at her, this strange girl with the icy-blue eyes.

  “It swept for miles,” she went on. “They were slaughtered where those trees are.”

  Samuel gazed out at the moonlit moor and the ghostly tree branches draped in sparkling white, and tried to imagine a battle taking place below, men fighting hand to hand on the windswept hills and hollows. Would the people living here then have heard their cries, and seen them fall?

  Behind him the lights suddenly flickered and went out. There were oohs and ahs from the direction of the chairs where Isabel and Mrs Morton were sitting. The whole house had been plunged into darkness.

  “Don’t worry,” Chris Morton called in a commanding I can cope sort of voice. “Power cut! We’ve got candles.”

  There was a bit of scuffling and the sound of matches, followed by a small burst of light. Mrs Morton had lit a candle on the table next to her. The group gathered close to the fireplace, for comfort and reassurance as much as anything else. Firelight flickered across their faces but the rest of the room was filled with shadow. As candles were lit on the mantelpiece and danced into life, Samuel tried not to look into the mirror again, for fear of what he might see.

  Then the beam of a torch appeared on the landing.

  “Don’t worry, Granny,” Chris Morton called out. “Just a power cut. I hope this is just a temporary blip and won’t last long.” But she didn’t sound confident. The sudden loss of electricity had a strangely calming effect on the two families, and they played a long game of monopoly on the hearthrug. Charles was accused of cheating by his brother and sister, but won the game all the same.

  Towards midnight Samuel and his mother left and made their way through the dark house with the aid of a flickering candle. Shadows stretched and lengthened along the oak-panelled walls as they felt their way along. At one point Samuel heard a door closing. He turned, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, but the passageway behind him was empty.

  He had the inexplicable feeling that he was being watched.

  As they opened the door onto the snowy moonlit moor a sudden breeze extinguished the candle, but they didn’t need it any more so they left it on a shelf inside the boot room. Samuel felt a wave of relief on leaving the house.

  Above them a figure stood at the library window, watching as they crossed the courtyard.

  The Longest Winter

  On Boxing Day, the blizzards grew worse. When Samuel woke up the cottage was freezing. He crawled from under his duvet, and pressed the light switch once, twice. Nothing happened. The power was still off.

  It was Samuel’s job to gather coal
from the barn, so when he was dressed, he pulled on his wellies and ventured outside with the tin bucket. It was wild outside. When he reached the safety of the barn, he paused to get his breath, and listened to the wind howling and screaming past the open door.

  Back inside the cottage Isabel was strutting about the kitchen wearing several jumpers but still shivering. “Where’ve you been with that coal?” she complained. “Let’s get that stove roaring, I’m dying for a cup of tea,” and both of them set to work.

  So this is my new life, he thought, remembering Edinburgh wistfully. And he hadn’t even set eyes on his school yet. He decided to go and see what was happening in the big house.

  Despite the blizzards Isabel had already set up a studio workshop in one of the outhouses, and as Samuel pulled on his boots, she dashed across the courtyard to it, dressed in her overalls and looking dazed with creativity. Granny did not really believe in artistic pursuits of any kind, and strongly disapproved of Samuel’s mother neglecting her duties in order to “knock up some silly object in her workshed.”

  “Call that work?” she snorted loudly as Samuel came into the kitchen. “Lot of nonsense, that’s what it is.”

  Samuel thought it best to make no comment.

  “The boys are buried away somewhere I think,” Granny informed him, “but Fiona’s about.”

  Then she produced a biscuit tin from a cupboard and slid it onto the table.

  “Help yourself,” she instructed him gruffly.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, reaching for the tin.

  “Now away you go and find her. She’ll be glad of the company, I’m sure. There’s a fire lit upstairs,” she called after him.

  Samuel made his way slowly along the dark hallway and up the spiralling staircase, trying not to think about his experiences of the night before. The house was freezing without any of the radiators working, and there was little enough natural light, it being such a dark winter’s day. Upstairs in the drawing room Fiona sat close to the flames, bathed in their orange glow.