‘Get out of my way.’ The ugliness of Alec’s tone took even me by surprise. ‘Just get out of my way. I’m not putting up with this. I’ve come to visit my daughter. I’m not being ordered around by some jumped up cripple.’

Blood rushed to Douglas’s face. He looked so broad and strong standing there. For a second I thought he was going to punch Alec Kemp but, keeping control, he blazed at him: ‘Your daughter doesn’t want to see you, and having seen the way you behave I’m not at all surprised. Now take yourself out of my house and don’t come back until you’re invited here.’

Perhaps that was the first time Alec noticed Douglas’s size and strength instead of only seeing his leg. After staring at him for a few seconds, he turned silently and walked back to the front door.

Before Elizabeth could disappear I caught her arm. ‘It’s not been long,’ I said. ‘She’s not ready yet.’ Elizabeth nodded, face half covered by a lace handkerchief. I moved closer and whispered, ‘Come on your own another day.’ She gave a tiny nod before following her husband out into the flurry of flakes.

Douglas slammed the door behind them. ‘What a complete bastard,’ he said. He turned to me, embarrassed, needing my approval. ‘Sorry.’

I went and put my arms round him. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. That just about sums him up. Thank you for what you did.’ We kissed, briefly. Then I pulled away from him. ‘I’d better go and see what state she’s in.’

The tears which followed this went on for days, and I could give her no comfort. It had punctured the great reservoir of feeling in her and she cried and cried, clinging to me in a storm of grief, ‘Katie, oh Katie . . .’ her body racked with it. She wept when alone, and when I saw her afterwards her face was puffy and distorted. Sometimes when I looked in on her when she was sleeping there were tears slipping out from beneath her closed lids, rolling down the angle of her cheek towards her hair and the pillow. She couldn’t eat. She cried herself sick.

At first I was relieved by this outbreak of emotion. Then I began to panic. I didn’t know who to turn to. I wondered if her weakened body could stand such an onslaught of pain. Alone with her, the silence of the snow around us, I feared she might die and I would be responsible for having kept her here without looking for help. I held her tightly, sometimes for an hour or more, making soothing sounds, caressing her and pouring my own emotion into her.

‘I can’t bear it,’ she cried to me. ‘My baby. My tiny, tiny boy. I feel as if they’ve torn my heart out of me.’

Sometimes she took a pillow in her arms and rocked it with her body, trying to find some comfort. I couldn’t bear to see it. I could feel the movements of my own child so clearly now. Sometimes I cried with her.