Nancy had been living in a state of low-level anxiety since the visit from the police. Looking over her shoulder. Wondering. Waiting.
She stiffened at every knock on the door, braced herself as she walked across the playground, hiding her uneasiness from Lara.
But there had been no further police visits. No cruelty in the classroom. In the playground, no one really paid her much attention at all. On the rare occasion she saw Hannah dropping Jakob, Hannah would make a point of saying hello and asking after the chickens (all fine, still laying, albeit a lot less frequently now it was winter), but everyone else seemed busy, dashing back to the warmth of their cars, houses and offices as soon as they’d delivered their children safely to school.
She’d seen Imogen only once, from a distance. Imogen had given Rosie a hug near the entrance and then left. Nancy had stayed back, watching Imogen as she departed. She’d been dressed in Narnia witch white: a long, pale woollen coat with large collar, blonde hair falling over shoulders, cream fur-lined boots.
As February came in, so the snow returned. And this time it fell thick and hard. Heron Water froze at the shoreline, opaque, jagged and cracked where the water had moved under the ice. Frost clung to the bulrushes, a frozen, speckled casing entombing their brown stems.
Nancy’s own pool froze solid – even at its deepest point – or at least it seemed that enough ice had formed to make it walkable on. She smashed a hole to check. It was lucky she hadn’t stepped on it. An inch wouldn’t take her weight.
The garden had a stillness to it, a sense of everything on hold. Life held in frozen limbo. But under the surface a beat ticked on silently. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Waiting. She felt the same beat within herself thanks to the ever-present unease that had settled inside her. When would the explosion come? Would it come?
The wintry countryside was beautiful. After taking Lara to school, Nancy would go for a walk around the reservoir, even if the snow was driving hard in her face. The soft flakes absorbed all sound, muffling the splash of a duck landing on the water, or the flap of the wings of a buzzard as it pulled back up into the air after diving down to catch some unsuspecting prey.
One day, the snow stopped. The clouds cleared and the sky was lit a pristine blue. The snow and frost sparkled with the intensity of a fine cut diamond.
Nancy was excited to get out in the winter wonderland on her doorstep. She got back from school after dropping Lara and headed straight out again, through the garden. The grass was a white blanket and Nancy smiled as she caught sight of Lara’s wild dance of footsteps from that morning. There was something so satisfying about stepping in pristine snow. She went down the steps, through the wooded area with the bare-limbed trees and out through her gate, then it was just a short walk onto the reservoir path.
There were a few more footprints here, of both the two and four-legged variety. Nancy headed east, away from the direction of the cafe. The further she went from civilization, the quieter it would be, and she wanted to immerse herself in as much untouched nature as possible. She had an idea for a new decorative glaze she wanted to try, inspired by the patterns the frost made on the leaves and the icicles hanging from the dark branches. She took photo after photo, mesmerized by the beauty of the cold, the way nature held the land in its grip. An hour passed, then two, without her even realizing. It was only when she was aware of her fingers feeling numb that she checked her watch. She had enough pictures to use for her project and suddenly the prospect of a hot coffee and a heated house was all that she wanted so she turned and headed back.
Her feet were like blocks of ice by the time she got to the path that led up to her gate and when she got to the gate itself, she could hardly open it, her fingers were so frozen. As she manoeuvred the latch, she noticed a disturbance in the snow by the fence. The fence was made of open vertical slats – Nancy relied on the bushes and brambles to keep out intruders, along with the fact her gate was a way off the main path. Under the bottom rung the snow had been flattened, indented, as if something or someone had crawled underneath. She stopped and peered into the wooded area at the bottom of her garden but could see nothing.
Nancy shut the gate slowly behind her. She walked through the trees and up the steps to where her lawn began – the large white expanse where the slanting sun, low in the winter sky, was casting gold shards as it shone through the trees.
Then up ahead, lying in the snowy lawn near the pool, she saw a darkened shape. Something inert.
She stiffened then made herself walk closer. She saw animal prints in the snow and followed them to whatever was lying on the cold ground.
It was a dog. Nancy gasped and moved towards it, tentative at first in case it was nervous around her. The black retriever lifted its head, briefly and only a short distance off the ground.
Nancy could see it was ill or injured. It was trembling. She spoke softly to it while she carefully put her fingers in its fur around its neck, searching for its collar and tag. She exhaled in relief when she found it. She’d call the owner and often, the tag had a vet number on it too. She’d call them both, get the dog the help it so clearly needed.
She flipped the tag over to see who it belonged to and read the engraved name on the gold disc.
Imogen Wood.