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bare feet. Behind her Luke gave a quiet murmur and, punching the pillow turned over and went back to sleep. Switching on the light in the bathroom Joss reached for her clothes, left piled on the chair. Thick trousers, shirt, two sweaters, heavy thermal socks. In the ice cold room her breath came in small clouds. On the window pane, as she held back the curtain and peered out into the darkness she was enchanted and horrified to find the beautiful, lacy designs of Jack Frost on the inside of the glass. With a rueful smile she padded across the floor and glanced through Tom’s door. Worn out by the excitement of the day before he was sleeping flat on his back, his arms above his head on the pillow, his cheeks pink with sleep. Tiptoeing to the chest where his night light burned she glanced at the thermometer which Alice had suggested they keep in the room. The temperature was steady. With a fond smile, she tiptoed out of the room and left the door slightly ajar. If he woke, Luke would hear him.
    Putting the kettle onto the stove Joss went to the back door and pulled it open. The morning blackness was totally silent. No bird song. No traffic murmur in the distance as there would have been in London; no cheerful clank of milk bottles. Pulling on her heavy coat she stepped out into the courtyard. The bulk of the old Bentley had been pulled into the coach house and the doors closed. There was nothing here now, but their own Citroën, covered in a thick white frost. The gate out into the garden was painfully cold even beneath her gloved hands as she pushed it back and let herself out onto the matted lawn. Above her head the stars were still blazing as though it were full night. Glancing up she could see a faint light shining from behind the curtains in Lyn’s room. Was she too unable to sleep in a strange bed?

    The grass was spiky, brittle beneath her boots. Almost she could hear the tinkle of broken glass as she walked across it, skirting the skeletal branches of a blackly silhouetted tree, down towards the gleam of water. In the east now, she realised, the stars were dimming. Soon it would begin to grow light.
    She stood for several moments, gloved hands in pockets, staring down at the ice as around her the garden began imperceptibly to brighten. She was numb with cold, but through the chill she could feel something else. Apprehension – fear even – for what they had done. They had had no real choice. Even if Luke had found a job working for someone else she doubted if they could have afforded the rent on a flat of a decent size and certainly they couldn’t have bought somewhere of their own. They could no longer live in London. But this, this was so different. Another world from the one they had planned together when they had first got married. She frowned, stamping her feet, reluctant as yet to go back inside. A new world, new people, new memories – no, memories wasn’t the right word. A history to be learned and assimilated and in some way lived.
    Sammy!
    The voice, a boy’s voice, called suddenly out of the darkness behind her. Joss spun round.
    Sammy!
    It came again, more distant now.
    Across the lawn, in the house, a light had appeared in her and Luke’s bedroom. The curtains weren’t quite closed and a broad vee of light flooded out across the frosted grass.
    ‘Hello?’ Joss’s voice was a husky intrusion into the intense silence. ‘Who’s there?’ She glanced round. The stars were disappearing fast now. A dull greyness was drifting in amongst the bushes in the shrubbery near her. She frowned. ‘Is there someone there?’ She called again, more loudly this time, her voice seeming to echo across the water. In the distance a bird called loudly. Then the silence returned.
    Turning sharply back to the house she found she was shivering violently as she hurried back in the direction of the kitchen. Pulling off her boots and gloves she ran inside, blowing on her fingers, to find the kettle cheerfully filling the