When she tried her daughter’s phone, it went straight to voicemail.

The kitchen was colder now, shadows pushing out the light. The snow was like torn feathers falling from the sky. Catherine hesitated, and lifted her car keys from the hook. She slipped on her leather gloves and wrapped a scarf around her neck.

Then she stepped outside into the white world.

The streets of Coggsbridge were almost empty, most of the early-morning shoppers seeking shelter from the weather. With its timber-framed houses and old bridge crossing the River Blackwater, the village looked Christmas-card quaint in the snow.

Catherine drove carefully along the route that Honor took to school. The thought of getting stuck terrified her, but not as much as not knowing what had happened to her daughter.

Snowflakes settled on the windscreen, the wipers a beat too slow to fully clear them. Honor had been born on a twilight December afternoon so cold the hoar frost had lasted all day. This morning’s air had the same taste of winter about it.

As Catherine scanned the streets for a slight figure in a mulberry-coloured coat, she told herself Honor would be fine. Perhaps she had been held up for an unexpected reason and missed registration, slipping past the receptionists and straight into class. She was probably in one of the science labs or the art studio, unaware of everyone’s concern.

Her eyes flicked from the road to her phone on the passenger seat, but it remained silent. ‘Come on, Honor. Where are you?’ Her muttering sounded too loud in the car.

By now, the snow was falling so thickly it had blanketed the asphalt, the trees and the tiled roofs of the houses. It had the odd effect of muffling the sound of the engine.

At the school, the playground and fields were empty. Catherine checked her watch. Less than an hour until lunchtime. Everywhere was colourless, the sky and the air filled with relentless frozen eddies.

She drove on, through the back roads this time, the fields blank and accusing. A pheasant ran across the whitened earth and burst upwards, startled by an unseen enemy. Its gold and green plumage and distinctive red wattle reminded her of festive wrappings. But there was no splash of mulberry, no discarded school bag or slender figure trudging through the snow.

Twenty minutes later, when there was still no sign of her daughter and her tyres were beginning to stick, Catherine turned the car around and headed home.

The house was freezing, and so Catherine relit the fire and boiled the kettle for tea. She would give it until two o’clock and then she would call the police.

She wondered how long it would take them to discover the brutal truth about her family history and if they would agree to keep it from her husband and daughter.