Afterwards, he could never quite be sure why he paused as he opened the back gate, whether it was a noise that made him turn and walk over to the brick-built coal bunker, or simply an instinct that the missing children – if there were missing children – wouldn’t stray far from home. He brushed the snow from the top and lifted the wooden cover, and two dirty, tear-streaked faces stared back at him – a boy of about fourteen and a girl, younger, but not by much – who gripped her brother’s hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ the boy said, entirely unprompted, and just for a second Penrose thought that he was making a confession. ‘Ma was so angry. I was too late to save the others.’

9

EIGHTEEN CHRISTMASES LATER

10

11

1

The older she got, the more it seemed to Josephine that the only possible way to enjoy Christmas was to avoid it altogether. Every January, she promised herself that she would do things differently the following year – fewer presents, cards sent only to the people she actually liked, food that at least one person in the house might eat – but by the time December arrived, the pressure of expectation had begun its slow tyranny. The pile of winter books that for some reason she thought she would have time to read sat untouched by the fire, ready to be returned to the shelf; the hall table was covered in lists, a perpetual reminder of everything she still had to do before she went away. The Christmas-loving Germans had a lot to answer for, she thought as she picked up her gloves, and that was before anyone even mentioned the war.

It was easier to appreciate the festive spirit outside in the streets, where the responsibility for creating it wasn’t hers. The landscape around Inverness always looked beautiful at this time of year, but a prolonged spell of seasonal weather had given the town a timeless magic which would have graced any greetings card, and she took a circuitous route from Crown Cottage to enjoy it. The air was exhilarating, and she pulled her fur tighter around her as she walked slowly down the hill. There was no preamble to a Scottish winter, she thought; the cold began fiercely and bitterly, just as it meant to go on, scarring the landscape and leaving everything bleak and 12exposed. South of the border, the seasons changed gradually, almost apologetically, but here she couldn’t remember a single December that hadn’t announced itself with a flourish.

Christmas was less than a week away and the shops in Queensgate were busy, but the atmosphere was one of unhurried contentment, and she browsed for a while before heading for the post office. There was a long queue at the counter, and she cursed the friend in Suffolk whose card she had forgotten until an envelope with an Ipswich postmark landed smugly on the mat that morning. She took her place in line, and soon found herself standing awkwardly between the woman who ran her local paper shop and one of her father’s Castle Street tenants, whose name she couldn’t remember. ‘Are you at home for Christmas, Miss Tey?’ the newsagent asked, when there was nothing more to say about the weather.