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‘We’ve got the only chimney for miles.’

‘Then there’s no contest.’ Then she shivered again as his hands cupped her shoulders under the towel, and his fingers ran down her spine, but this time with pleasurable anticipation. As he drew her closer she lifted her face for his kiss, the hunger in her rising sweet and sharp, and when she heard the shouting she almost screamed
‘No
. . . .’

She would have given almost all her worldly goods to have been mistaken, but Duncan had heard it. He stood, still holding her, listening, and in the silence it came again, his name, men calling, ‘Duncan, hey, Duncan!’

Pattie ran the tip of her tongue between her dry lips. Her throat felt dry too, and so tight that it was aching. ‘Your friends have come for you,’ she said.

‘It sounds like it.’

He went towards the front door. It seemed to her he went in slow motion, that everything was happening slowly, caught in a time lag; that even the flames in the fireplace had ceased to flicker. Then as he touched the door she jumped into action, dragging on the tights that she had brought downstairs to wash, grabbing her skirt and sweater.

‘It’s John and Barty Brunton,’ said Duncan from the front door. ‘You’ll like them.’ He waved and called, ‘Hey!’ back and went to meet them, closing the door behind him, and Pattie, dressing frantically, thought, I don’t like them very much right now. Right now I’m pretty sure they’re no friends of mine.

She struggled into her boots and jacket and then ran into the kitchen and began to tug the comb through her dripping hair. It would have been more sensible to have stayed where she was, by the fire, and gone on rubbing her hair with the towel, but she was suddenly anxious to look tidy.

She had sleeked down her hair and buttoned her jacket when the front door opened again and Duncan came in with two other men. They were muffled up in identical anoraks and gumboots, short and stockily built, with blunt-featured ruddy faces.

They had both been talking at once as they came through the door but when they saw Pattie they stopped dead, rooted to the spot and silent. A strange woman was obviously the last thing they had expected to find here.

‘Pattie,’ said Duncan, ‘this is John and Barty. They followed the snow plough.’ She smiled and wondered if her smile looked as false as it felt and said, ‘Hello.'

‘Pattie Ross,’ said Duncan.

‘Pleased to meet you, Miss—er ’ the older man took a quick look at her left hand, ‘Miss Ross. I was just saying to Duncan here that we saw the chimney last night, only we weren’t sure it was just a chimney then, and when the snowplough started getting through first light on the top road we followed in the car because we didn’t know what was going on up here.’ He cleared his throat, looking embarrassed, and rushed on, ‘This young dog never mentioned having company. Why didn’t you bring the young lady to supper with us the other night?’

The son was looking even more puzzled. Obviously Duncan had been at the Bruntons’ farm the afternoon that Pattie arrived. One of these men must have driven him back to the darkened lodge that night, while Pattie was sleeping before the fire in the old armchair, and by next morning the lodge was well and truly cut off from the outside world. Yet here she was. So how had she managed it? Unless Duncan had brought her here earlier.

She said hesitantly, ‘It is a little complicated.’

‘Not at all,’ said Duncan briskly. ‘Miss Ross is a journalist. She came to interview me while I was at your place. Her car went off the road just round the bend of the track and is still down there, and she got in here through the kitchen window.’

‘And she’s been here ever since?’ said the younger man.

‘That’s right,’ said Duncan.

‘Car out there?’

‘Yes,’ said Pattie.

‘Surprised there hasn’t been a hue and cry,’ said the younger man. ‘Well, you don’t look much the worse for it.’

It was like a dig in the ribs. He didn’t believe that Duncan had no idea Pattie was waiting for him that night. He thought they had planned to stay up here together, that he and his father had blundered on a secret rendezvous.

The expression on the faces of both men was amused and apologetic. ‘Mum’s the word,’ they were saying without speaking, and Pattie thought, now they’ve got over the first shock they’re not all that surprised. I’m not the first girl who’s stayed here. And she heard herself ask, ‘Do you think you could get me back to Grimslake?’

There was a moment before they answered, long enough for Duncan to have protested, ‘What’s the rush, you’re still on holiday, aren’t you?’ But he didn’t, and the older man said, ‘Yes,’ and the younger said, ‘Sure we can, if that’s what you want.’

What she wanted was Duncan to put an arm around her and say, ‘Thanks for checking, but we’re fine. Now the snowplough’s through we’ll be seeing you before long, but not for another day or two.’

But he didn’t. What he did do was bring the sheepskin coat and put it on her, and ask about the livestock situation and agree with both farmers that the snow storms had been a wicked business. Pattie had the feeling that he couldn’t get her going fast enough. It was as though the rescuers had arrived that first morning when the prospect of having her underfoot was infuriating him. Perhaps not quite like that. He wasn’t angry with her now. He was friendly, cheerful, but in no way was he loving.

‘We’d better see if we can get some of the stuff out of your car,’ he said.

‘Are you coming too?’ That hope was immediately dashed by his emphatic,

‘Where would I be going? I’m home.’

She wondered if he meant to be cruel, although he smiled as he said it. But of course he had never told her to think of the lodge as her home, that had been one of her crazy dreams. She said, ‘Well, I certainly would appreciate getting my hands on a few of my belongings,’ and told the Bruntons, ‘I left my case in the boot, and my coat and handbag are in the car, and my wallet and keys and everything are in my handbag.’

Trudging along the track wasn’t easy. The snow didn’t seem to be melting very fast, it was still firm underfoot. ‘Where’s the thaw, then?’ asked Pattie as she stepped outside, and the men all smiled at her and she blinked because the cold made her eyes smart. ‘Doesn’t it make your eyes smart?’ she said when she sniffed, and she could feel Duncan looking at her. She would have hated him to think she was crying because her eyes were moist.

Inside she was crying. Outside she kept walking and smiling. Even when they were walking heads down into the cold wind her set expression was cheerful. She might look like an idiot, but nobody would suspect how miserable she felt.

‘There’s my car,’ she said, pointing down, ‘sticking out of that drift.’

The Bruntons whistled ‘Phew!’ together. The older said, ‘We can get it out for you when the snow’s gone, but I don’t see how anybody could haul her up yet awhile. You must have had a bumpy ride lass.’

‘I did wonder how far down I was going,’ she admitted. She could have still been lying there, and she should feel grateful for being alive, and she would later. But Duncan was half way down the bank now and all she could think was how anxious he was to get rid of her.

She stayed where she was. The younger man slithered after Duncan and they were both wading through waist-high snow. She watched them burrowing around the car with their hands, struggling with the frozen door and dragging it open. They brought out her handbag and camel coat, shaking the snow from both, and she cupped her mouth with her hands and shouted, ‘My gloves are on the back seat!’ She might as well have the lot while they were down there. The car could be stripped before it was hauled back on to the road. It could be a wreck. She remembered the splintering, crashing sounds of that nightmare fall, how the car had finally ended up on its side, and resigned herself to its loss.

It didn’t seem to matter much. She had lost more than that. The dark man down there, although he had never been hers, had left a void that ached like a wound.

It took a long time to prise open the boot. The older Brunton stamped his feet for warmth, standing by Pattie, and looking around, fretting at the time being wasted, and she said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’ Then he grinned and told her,

‘That’s all right, lass. Can’t leave your baggage down there, can we? By gum, though, you were lucky.’

‘Yes, I was,’ she said, and wished she had gone down with the men because during all the activity of digging into her car she and Duncan would have been talking, helping each other. When they got out her case, she might have managed to laugh and say, ‘Well, I’m set up for a few more days now, and I don’t exactly have my interview. Could you put up with me just a little longer?’

But when they brought her belongings to her there was no chance. Duncan said, ‘Here we are, then, they’ll dry these for you at the farm.’

‘Of course,’ said the younger Brunton. ‘Stay as long as you like.’ So Duncan had been fixing her up with shelter. He wasn’t risking her suggesting she went back to the lodge. She said brightly, ‘How kind of you, but I think my best plan is to catch the first London train back home. Your Yorkshire moors are magnificent, but I've had enough of them to be going on with.’

‘The train would be from Darlington,’ said the older man. ‘But no rush, surely. You’ll need a good meal and a night’s rest after this.’ And they set off again, the two younger men carrying Pattie’s luggage, except for her handbag which she clutched to herself.

The Range Rover stood on the swathe of the road that the snowplough had cleared. The plough had gone. It was out of sight now, somewhere over the hills. There was no sign of traffic or life. They had walked almost silently from where Pattie’s car had crashed, and now the younger Brunton opened the Range Rover door and her case was put on the back seat and she got in beside it. ‘Right, then,’ said Brunton senior, getting into the front passenger seat while his son settled himself behind the wheel.

‘Goodbye, Pattie,’ said Duncan. ‘See you some time.’

‘I expect so.’ She managed a wide smile. He didn’t touch her, much less kiss her. He waved goodbye as though he was seeing off a guest who had almost overstayed her welcome.

All the same, when the car drew away and she looked back at him, still standing there, she very nearly cried, ‘Please stop!’ and jumped out of the car to run and fling her arms around him. But it was as though he read her thoughts, because suddenly he went striding fast over the hard-packed snow without turning round again, although she watched through the back window of the car until he was out of sight.

The Bruntons’ farm was the one she had passed on her way to the lodge, looking different under its blanket of snow although the yard around was churned up and blackened. There was another car parked by the back door.

Pattie noted the sticker ‘Press’ on the windscreen and began to ask if they could possibly take her on to Grimslake, where she might get a taxi to Darlington, when the back door opened and two women came hurrying out.

After that she was overwhelmed. The women were ‘Mother and my wife Janet,’ and when they heard where Pattie had come from they were fascinated.

They took her inside to the fire and put a cup of tea in her hand, their eyes shining and curious. Duncan was all right, the older Brunton explained, it had only been his chimney on fire. And Miss Ross was a lady journalist who had got herself snowed in at the lodge. ‘A friend of Duncan’s?' asked Janet, a pretty girl with brown curly hair and big brown eyes. Her eyes looked huge at the moment, they were so wide, and Pattie’s own lids felt as heavy as lead. She would have liked to close her eyes and shut them all out.

‘I went up there to interview him,’ she said. ‘And the snow came.’

A balding man who had a glass of what looked like whisky in his hand and who was staring hard at her had to be Press. ‘Jack Robson,
Broad Ridings Mercury
,’ he said, when his eyes met Pattie’s. ‘You’re a journalist?’

She told him her magazine and he grinned. ‘And you’ve been snowed in with Duncan Keld. Just the two of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to read your article.’

‘Buy the paper,’ she said.

‘Better be getting on.’ He grinned again and drained his glass. ‘Any sign of any cars or anything up there?’

‘Only mine that we saw,’ said Pattie.

He went out of the room with the men. She supposed he was getting his story from them. Duncan was well known. There would be a mention in most nationals about his home being cut off in the snow, and she knew there was no way of keeping her own name out of it.

‘But I thought Duncan’s young lady Was that nice little fair-haired girl,’ said an old lady, sitting in a rocker, whom Pattie hadn’t noticed till then, and Janet sounded flustered, ‘Oh,
Gran
, that was last summer—you know Duncan.’

‘I’m not his young lady,’ said Pattie. She wondered about the blonde who must have come up here and been introduced as his girl, and she asked, ‘Please could I use your bathroom?’

‘Of course my dear,’ said Mrs Brunton. ‘Do you want your case?’

Somebody had brought Pattie’s luggage in from the car. The case was damp. When she opened it everything felt clammy, and she took out her makeup bag, then snapped the lid shut. She would wait until she got back to her apartment before dealing with that. Her hair was still almost as wet as when she left the lodge, and as Janet led the way to the bathroom she explained, ‘I was just washing my hair when your husband and your father-in-law arrived.’

‘They might have given you time to dry it,’ said Janet. ‘A thing like that could give you a shocking cold. By the way, how well do you know Duncan?’ She was obviously madly curious. ‘I mean, he was here the night before the snow started and he said he was going to be working. Barney takes him up, you see, then goes back after a week or so and sees if he wants anything or if he wants to come down. He said he reckoned on staying about a month this time.’ They had reached the bathroom door. ‘But he never said a word about you being up there,’ Janet continued.

‘He didn’t know I was,’ said Pattie.