It was so often so dark in the cottage that day merged into night and neither dawns nor noons were apparent. In Marion’s mind the tiny events of one day became muddled with the tiny events in another. She often felt dizzy and was vaguely aware of sitting long hours on the log seat, her aching feet on the hearthstone, in a kind of stupor. Past events came and went through her mind, but none she could place in any chronological order, even if she tried, which she did not. Feel like my mind is frozen solid, she thought in a rare moment of self-awareness. Sometimes she roused herself with the intention of struggling down to the water-place with a bucket, only to realize that she had already done so, for there was the bucket, almost full, standing under the eaves. She sometimes found herself fetching an armful of small logs for the fire only to find that several were already piled up by it, drying out. She knew she was eating little, but felt too lethargic to get herself food. She knew she slept little at night, but so much of the supposed daylight hours they all spent on the bed under the covers, dozing the time away. Alice, usually so active, seemed to sense her mother’s stillness and imitated it – or perhaps she too was in the state of half-hibernation which they all called ‘getting through the winter’.

There had been snow soon after the Christmas frosts had gone. One day Marion was trudging back across the Common after a brief visit to the Hall for more spinning wool. She had looked in at Peter in his workshop and found him with many bloody scratches on his arms tying and weaving blackthorn twigs to a harrow for use in the coming spring, and he was nagging Paulo, who with red chilblained fingers was trying to hold the hard branches in place.

‘Tom says it looks like snow,’ she said, ‘any time now.’

‘Likely,’ said Peter, his mind on work.

‘If it does snow thick, you’ll stay at the Hall?’

‘Oh, it won’t be that thick, I’ll be home before it gets dark. Press it down harder, Paulo.’