At some point, I sat up in bed, switched on the lamp and reached for the notepad Reg had given me, to write about the pine martens and ptarmigan I’d seen here and en route. I liked to keep track of the animals I saw, scribbling down little facts and figures I read in books or that I’d picked up along the way. It helped me relax when I didn’t have my camera at hand to soothe me. But that evening it just made me more frustrated as the lines blurred in front of me from tiredness.

Eventually, I managed to fall asleep, curled up on my side. But then something woke me. I sat bolt upright in bed, blinking into the darkness. It was a sound. A scream maybe?

I switched my lamp on, flooding the room with light, slid out from beneath the thick duvet and jogged over to the window.

Another noise. More a loud sob this time and it was definitely coming from outside. I pulled apart the heavy curtains and looked out into the darkness. It had stopped snowing but the ground looked even more blanketed with the white stuff, suggesting the snow had turned heavy while we slept.

My eyes searched the darkness then came to a stop when I noticed a figure at the edge of the loch in just a dressing gown and slippers, short dark hair to the nape of her neck.

Heather.

I yanked my jeans on, which had been drying on the radiator, pulled a jumper over my head, rushed downstairs, grabbed my boots and let myself out. Heather was still there, arms wrapped around her thin frame as she stared out at the loch, sobbing. I ran to her and put my coat around her shoulders. She was freezing to the touch and trembling.

I thought of the way Dylan had looked out at the loch earlier too, how all of them had.

At that moment I felt a deep chill in my bones, a different type of chill from the bitter wind that was whipping my hair against my face.

Something had happened out there.

Chapter Eight

Amber

Winterton Chine

17 December 2009

Over the next few days, the winter turns bitter throughout the UK and snow even starts to fall. As it always does when it’s cold, Amber’s left hand stiffens painfully, buzzing with the memory of past pain. She visits Lumin every day in the hospital, hoping each time the young girl will remember something to bring her home. But the memories come in dribs and drabs, small things from her childhood like throwing sticks into a fire and playing in the snow with two dogs.

The frustration clearly begins to get to Lumin.

‘You look exhausted,’ Amber says as she walks in one morning, a bag of muffins made by her mother swinging at her side.