:href="#fb3_img_img_add4e730-bbf4-58f3-bf7b-2f9dae304340.jpg" alt="image"/>
SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE is a television presenter and journalist. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and three children. She has co-written nine non-fiction books with Trinny Woodall. After the Snow is her debut novel.
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Susannah Constantine 2017
Susannah Constantine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008219659
Version: 2020-06-21
For Betty Anderson
And for Sten, Joe, Esme, Cece and Helen
Contents
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Blinking her eyes open against the new day, Esme could tell that it had snowed. She knew by the luminous shards of light that pierced her curtains and brightened her bedroom in a strange, muffled glow. It was silent, not a sound inside or outside The Lodge. No birds singing their morning chorus, no cars grumbling along the lane, not a breath of wind to rattle the ancient windowpanes. She couldn’t even hear the housekeeper, Mrs Bee, clattering about in the kitchen making breakfast.
Esme breathed in the cold air and felt it prickle down her throat, imagining tiny ice crystals disappearing into her body. With a great whooshing noise, she released a cloud of silvery breath that billowed in the air like the smoke from a great dragon. As she burrowed back into the warmth of her crumpled sheets, her feet hit an unexpected obstacle and her tummy clenched with excitement. It was Christmas Day.
Wiggling her toes against the weight of her stocking, lying heavy as a wet sandbag at the end of her bed, it felt as if Father Christmas had been generous and her father’s shooting sock crackled with the promise of unopened presents. Flinging back the sheets, Esme leapt up, pulled on her dressing gown and flicked on the electric heater before jumping back onto her bed. Holding her father’s sock by its toe, she shook the tightly packed presents from the hand-knitted wool. This Christmas there would be eleven, one for every year that she had been alive. She counted as each strangely shaped packet of colour tumbled onto the eiderdown, some starting to come undone as they fell. Father Christmas had done a terrible job with his wrapping this year. Some of the paper had been put on inside out and there wasn’t a sliver of sticky tape in sight. Pulling out the last lumpy presents jammed at the bottom of the stocking, her fingers fumbled around the unmistakeable shapes of a tangerine and some foil-wrapped chocolate coins. She had posted her letter to the North Pole a few weeks ago, neatly written on her father’s headed notepaper. The one thing she longed for was a new riding hat, but that was too much to expect from Father Christmas. Perhaps her parents would remember. She really had tried to be as good as possible this year, but still always seemed to be in trouble. Like the time she had borrowed her mother’s hunting whip; her mother didn’t even ride any more, so Esme didn’t think she’d notice but her father did when he saw it was missing from the umbrella stand where he kept it as a showpiece. After telling him she had no idea where it was, he had found it hidden under her bed. Thunder followed. She wished she could be more like her big sister, Sophia, who always seemed to know what to do and how to behave. Or at least how not to get caught.
Esme picked up a small package, the wrapping paper cheerfully wishing her a ‘Happy Birthday’. It was hard to the touch and much heavier than she expected. Ripping off the paper, a china figurine of a dachshund sleeping in its basket fell into her hand. Exactly like the one her mother had sitting in her bathroom! She christened the figurine Doodle, and put it carefully to one side to open the next
