There was always the church, she supposed, making her way to it across the car park and the single-track road, traversing a short bridge that stood over a deep, thin ribbon of stream, slipping and sliding with none of the grace of Jayne Torvill. She tried the great arched door, twisting the rusted ring, then engaged in a bit more banging with various parts of her hand to absolutely no avail. So on it was, to the row of six adjacent cottages; she peered through the small window of the first of them, but it was too dark, the glass too dirty to see through. A knock on the door yielded the same result as every other knock she’d tried in the past fifteen minutes. She repeated the process with the remaining five houses – nothing; summer holiday cottages no doubt, abandoned until the start of the season. She returned to her best – well, only – option of shelter; the inn. And if she couldn’t find a way into it, she’d have to make one and risk the consequences. Better to be prosecuted for breaking and entering than be found frozen to her steering wheel, she reasoned.
Thanks to a delinquent spell as a teen, Bridge was deft with a lock and a screwdriver, and she always carried a toolbox with her in the car. A dysfunctional, unorganised upbringing had led her to find solace and stability in being prepared for most eventualities, although that did not extend to her having her waterproof coat and snow-worthy wellies with her today. They were currently sitting in the back of the sturdy four-by-four she would have driven if a) she hadn’t been intent on trying to show Luke Palfreyman that she was more than a match for him in the financial stakes and b) the weathermen of the UK hadn’t been such inept pillocks.
She swung open the boot, hoisted out the metal box stored in the compartment under the mat and pulled out a flat-blade screwdriver, her breaking-in implement of choice. If this didn’t work, she’d smash a window and gain entry that way, but she was pretty confident in her abilities, and rightly so; even after all these years, she still had the touch. A couple of artful prods and twists in the keyhole and there was a satisfying click. She gave the door a heavy push to open it and a rush of air came out at her with a sigh, as if it had been trapped and was thankful for its freedom.
She called hello, apology cued in her mouth just in case she’d been mistaken and there was someone within after all, but, not surprisingly, there was only silence and darkness to greet her.
Chapter 2
‘Is that the fastest the wipers will go? I can’t see the road and if I can’t, you can’t, which fills me full of confidence,’ said Charlie, for once not the happiest of passengers.
‘Yes, it is the fastest they will go, Charles,’ replied Robin, a pronounced and annoyed space between each word. Plus he only ever called Charlie ‘Charles’ when he was in a heightened state of emotion.
‘I’m only saying—’
‘Do you want to drive?’ Robin snapped. ‘I can stop the car and we can swap places. Or rather you can drive and I’ll get a taxi because your driving is bound to see at least one of us off before our time.’ He took a deep breath in an effort to deflate his rising temper. ‘Please sit back and let me handle the wheel and all the other instruments.’ He huffed, then restarted the argument. ‘The cheek of you, Charles Glaser. How long have I been your chauffeur? How many crashes have I had? Speeding tickets, parking fines? Not one. I wish this car had an ejector seat sometimes. I’d press it and gladly see you blasted into orbit.’
A charged silence hung in the air for a few seconds and then both men burst out laughing. Life had always been too short for serious disagreements between them, but gentle squabbling was part of their relationship’s DNA and had been for the last thirty-two years. Thou shalt bicker to thy heart’s content was written into their constitutional ten commandments, along with Thou shalt not hold grudges and Thou shalt compromise wherever possible.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ conceded Robin. ‘This is total madness.’
‘Who’d have known this was going to happen?’ said Charlie.
‘The bloody meteorologists should have,’ replied Robin with more than a touch of impatience. ‘It’s the 1987 debacle all over again. How come they can send people to the moon but they can’t predict this?’ He threw one hand up, and then quickly replaced it on the wheel as the car threatened a rogue skid.
Charlie cleared his throat before speaking next. ‘It’s probably not the time to tell you that there’s none in Scotland.’
‘None of what?’
‘Snow.’
Robin’s grip of the steering wheel increased as if he was holding on to something that might stop him falling off the edge of the world. He really hoped he’d heard Charlie wrong.
‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘I’m not.’
Robin’s neck started to mottle red, Charlie noticed. This usually signified his partner was about to enter meltdown mode.
‘And when were you going to let me in on this particular nugget of information, Charles? When we got up to Aviemore and noticed everyone in bikinis?’
‘I don’t mind about the snow, it didn’t matter anyway.’
Robin knew that was a lie. ‘It was the most important thing of all, Charlie.’
‘It’s forecasted though. For the new year apparently.’
‘Yes and the whole of England was “forecasted” to be mild and dry for Christmas. They obviously couldn’t forecast a puddle if they were stood in it. Are all the weathermen on acid trips?’
Robin growled like a frustrated bear, then his attention was snatched away by the satnav, which picked that moment to freeze. ‘Oh great, that’s all I need.’ He stabbed at it with a demanding index finger, spoke nicely to it then swore at it but nothing would coax it to work.
‘Charlie, get maps up on your phone. Look for the nearest town, pub, hotel, anything.’
Charlie tried, but maps couldn’t seem to pick up where they were as a starting point. ‘This is the trouble with modern technology,’ he said. ‘It works until it doesn’t.’
‘Very profound, my love and so helpful.’
‘You can’t go wrong with a paper map. I would have known where we were if you hadn’t thrown the road atlas away.’
‘It was years out of date, Charlie. It showed the M1 as a mud path.’
‘Oh, very funny.’
Robin braked and felt the car struggle for purchase on the road. There was no way he could drive up to Aviemore in this, it wasn’t safe.
‘Mad fools and Englishmen,’ he said, not quite under his breath.
‘That’s midday sun. And it’s dogs.’
‘What?’
‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, and it’s by Noel Coward.’
‘Mad fools and bloody Englishmen go out in the bloody snow two days before bloody Christmas, heading for the bloody highlands of bloody Scotland and that’s by Robin bloody Raymond.’ Robin’s neck was now completely red.
‘Shh, having a fit won’t get us anywhere sooner,’ said Charlie, attempting to pour some oil on Robin’s troubled waters. ‘What’s that over there?’ He squinted at something in the distance. ‘You know, I think it’s a sign.’