No, he wouldn’t allow me to die. He wouldn’t, no matter what has passed between us.

There is another possibility, of course. She could be imagining the figures at the window. Hallucinating. Does that mean she’s dying? As she thinks that, her vision blurs.

Snow-blind already?

Either scenario is terrifying. She tries to plead with him again. ‘I’m sorry, I – I won’t say anything,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘Please …’ She puts a shaking hand out to him. He frowns slightly, hesitation in his eyes. But then he crosses his arms.

Terror surges through her, making her strong. She forces herself to push up from the water again, despite the growing heaviness of her trembling limbs and the strange pain starting to seep through the core of her body. She twists around, long hair shimmering in the frigid water around her, shaking fingers feeling across the ice to find a stronger wedge to pull herself up on.

But there is none, the ice is too thin. So she tries to smash her hands into the ice instead. If she can plough her way through, maybe she can reach the bank again and scramble back up.

The pain is excruciating though and her hands feel like boulders.

And then the ice breaks.

Hope surges. Maybe the rest of the ice will break. She can swim through it! She tries to propel herself forward. But her legs can’t move, the remaining ice firm.

She pinches her eyes closed. Don’t fail me now, she pleads with her body. Please please.

But all she can see is ice heaped upon ice, and all she can feel is the frozen water pulling her beneath the surface.

She should have known it would end like this, here in the very place where it all began. As she’d looked across the frozen lake all those years before towards the lodge, Christmas lights twinkling in its windows, she’d known, somehow, she’d be tied to the place for ever. She just hadn’t realised it would be her death tying her to it.

And she hadn’t realised he would just watch as it happened.

She closes her eyes and imagines a scrabbling of boots, a deep breath, his hands grasping her and pulling her out. She imagines looking up under iced eyelashes to see his soot-black hair, his eyes taut with concern. And then safety on the lake’s banks and in his arms.

But he’s still just watching.

Snow falls around her and she remembers another time when it snowed like this. She hears the laughter of children; red cheeks and icy smiles. Her memories are running to her, calling her name, pulling her into a bottomless past. She opens her arms to them as her head sinks beneath the frozen lake …

Chapter One

Amber

Winterton Chine

12 December 2009