‘Hang on, let me see if there’s an alternative route.’ I scanned through my various apps as Henry crawled through the slush. ‘No. This is definitely our best bet. The further east we go the worse it’s going to be. The options are a huge pile-up, a closed bridge, or joining the traffic jam. At least here the cars are moving. And just to be clear, the shack is not an option.’

Right on cue, the cars up ahead rolled to a stop. Henry joined the queue, waving his thanks to the man who’d held back to allow him in. The man gave an ironic, ‘what can you do?’ wave of his chocolate bar and settled in behind us.

Half an hour and three hundred metres later my fretting started ramping up to panic.

‘We aren’t going to make it home in time.’ I clicked frantically on the apps, but nothing had improved in the last thirty seconds. ‘I promised I’d be back for the Christmas Eve buffet.’

‘We’ve still got hours until then. Things will get better the closer we get. Won’t they?’

‘I need to call Walter.’

A brief and jarringly frank conversation with the only person I knew who knew more about the weather than me, and I slumped back into the seat, pulling my bobble hat down over my face.

‘Ungh.’

‘Okay. How bad is it?’

I reluctantly pushed my hat back up. ‘So, there’s this shack…’

Once the decision had been made, there was no pressure to hurry. Walter had assured me that the storm currently settled over a wide area stretching from Yorkshire to Nottingham wouldn’t be budging until it had blown itself out in the early hours of the morning. Driving through snow was one thing. Skidding along icy roads in a raging blizzard was plain foolish. Having finished the flasks that Melody had refilled for us, along with the pastries she’d packed us for breakfast, we decided to find somewhere to stock up in preparation for a long day and potentially longer night.

Another treacherous half-hour later we pulled into a service station crammed with other seasonal travellers sheltering from the horrendous conditions. I headed to the shop first, rejoining Henry in the coffee shop queue just in time to hear they’d run out of coffee.

‘Peppermint and liquorice tea are the only hot drinks left,’ the frazzled barista snapped, eyeing the long snake of people still behind us.

‘Fine,’ Henry replied, holding out our flasks. ‘We’ll take as many as you can fit into these.’

We queued at another outlet for two shrivelled-up baked potatoes with grey chilli. Failing to find an empty table, we chose a spot in the far corner away from the worst of the chaos and sat on the floor using our coats as a picnic blanket.

‘Bit of a change from last night’s dinner,’ I said, picking out a chunk of undercooked onion.