After a week of digging, two bodies were recovered from the wreckage of the house. The doctor said he thought that the miller’s son and his mother hadn’t suffered much, that it would have been a quick death. Misha remained missing and was thought to be dead. The search for him was called off. The villagers would have to wait until the spring for the snow to return his body. Only Vanda went on digging.

People said, ‘That’s what happens when you have a guilty conscience.’

‘I know why you’re silent,’ Lena said to Edith. ‘It’s because there are no words to describe the grief you feel.’ Lena took her hand. ‘Misha’s alive,’ she whispered. ‘He will be back.’

It seemed most unlikely to Edith. For what good reason would he disappear into the mountain during an avalanche?

Lena’s mother came again to the cabinet maker’s house, full of righteous indignation. She’d heard of the last words of the miller’s wife.

‘I’ve made your room ready and found your old cradle in the attic,’ she said.

Lena said nothing but she went home with her mother.

What was said can’t be unsaid, thought Edith, and Lena’s mother would have had to dig a deep grave within her to bury the knowledge of who the father of her grandchild was. She would sow many small lies over the truth.

For once Edith’s father had employment. Two bodies found, three coffins made. When they were ready, the blacksmith, who was also the village undertaker, made sure the bodies were washed, dressed in their finest clothes and laid out in the coffins that he then took on a sleigh to the church to await the funerals.

On Sunday the village gathered for the service. The open coffins lay side by side while the villagers said their farewells and when the lids were hammered down, the blacksmith took them back to the forge where they would stay in an outhouse until the snow melted and the earth was ready to receive them. One empty coffin remained with the cabinet maker, waiting for Misha’s body to be discovered.

Lena didn’t attend the funeral as the doctor had insisted she rest and keep as still as possible. He prescribed medicine that made her sleep. As for the cabinet maker, he might have been a drunken old fool, but Edith was in no doubt it was he who was responsible for seeding the idea in the fertile minds of a frightened community that the avalanche was caused by a white wedding dress. A simple notion, but one that appealed to the village elders. The butcher paid a visit to Flora to tell her she could stop work on the wedding dress as Edith wouldn’t be wearing it.