Which was ironic in its own tragic way. Because no one would ever have called Umiko Wada impetuous.

What looked like an unusually tall wayside post at first sight revealed itself to be a signpost as she drew closer. But the snow had blotted out whatever was on the sign and she couldn’t stop to investigate. She wasn’t confident of starting again if she did. She pressed on.

Then she saw something that gave her no choice but to stop: a gate across the track, with a low snow-capped wall stretching away on either side.

She came to a halt, took the stick carefully out of drive and gently lifted her foot from the accelerator, fearful for some reason that the engine might cut out. It didn’t.

She glanced about before climbing out of the car, but there was no one anywhere around, just wind and snow. It seemed colder than ever when she emerged into the open air. She didn’t have George’s anorak to shield her from the weather now.

She hurried round to the fastened side of the gate and felt a wave of relief when she saw it wasn’t padlocked. Shifting the bolt took all her strength, though. The steel felt as if it was freezing itself to her skin. She had to raise the gate slightly with one hand and pull at the bolt with the other before it slid across. And it did so with a jolt that carried her off her feet.

She scrambled up and walked the gate open. There was a chain that had to be looped over a post to hold it in place. That done, she slithered back to the car.

She’d driven only a short distance beyond the gate when, looking ahead, she saw a building.

Three gables sprouted from a long, low-roofed structure, hummocked with snow. The gables were wood, but the other walls appeared to be rough stone. There was another, squarer-roofed building that looked as if it might be a barn away to the right.

One end of the main building was in a poor state of repair, but the part around the front door looked well maintained. Wada had thought initially a light was shining in one of the adjacent windows, but there was no sign of it as she drew closer and she concluded it was probably a reflection from the car’s headlamps. She braked to a halt near the main door and studied the windows one by one. Nothing moved. Nothing glimmered.