He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and grimaced. The brief glimpse he’d had of starkly beautiful winter mountains had disappeared almost as quickly as his unofficial taxi. The snow was falling faster now and the last of the daylight was almost gone. If this kept up he was going to be completely stranded in a matter of hours and who knew how long it would be before the roads would be clear again? If he didn’t find the key soon, perhaps they’d find his body still frozen on the doorstep when the snows finally thawed in the spring…
‘Gotcha!’ He finally closed his chilly fingers around the elusive key and dragged it out of his pocket. ‘Now all I’ve got to do is get the wretched thing to fit into the lock.’
With a grunt of satisfaction he heard the snick as the key turned but when he leant against the door it remained stubbornly closed, almost as though it were still firmly locked.
‘That’s all I need!’ he groaned in disbelief. ‘Am I going to have to break in to get out of the cold?’ It certainly wouldn’t be very cosy inside if he had to spend the next two weeks combating a howling gale coming in through a broken window.
‘The key must fit, otherwise what was the point in giving it to me?’
The envelope bearing the key and the address of this little cottage had been hand-delivered to his office just two days ago. He hadn’t recognised the handwriting and no one would admit responsibility, but everyone he’d asked had been almost insultingly eager that he should take the suggested holiday.
Another flurry of snow sifted its way down the back of his neck and for just a second he contemplated finding his mobile phone to ask for his unofficial taxi driver to come straight back to collect him. Then the thought of dragging a man almost old enough to be his grandfather out again on a night like this resurrected a little of his pride.
‘You’re not caving in at the first hurdle,’ he told himself fiercely. ‘The others might have been half joking when they sent you here, but you’re the only one who really knows how much you need to get your head together. Now, think, man. Why didn’t the key work? Perhaps the door’s warped, or something. Small wonder if this weather is par for the time of year.’
As he bent down to deposit his ungainly burden before trying again, he suddenly realised that he was still talking to himself and grimaced. Was this a new habit? Surely the isolation wasn’t getting to him already.
As he straightened up to try the key again, the increasingly vicious wind caught the end of his scarf and flipped it right across his face just as the door swung silently open in front of him. He blinked as light and warmth spilled over him like some unearthly benediction and suddenly realised that he had an unexpected welcoming committee.
‘How far have you got, then?’
Ella bent awkwardly towards the hearth to lift the corner of the tea towel and peered at the rising dough underneath it with a satisfied smile.
The bread wouldn’t be ready to go into the oven for another twenty minutes or so. Just enough time to get the fire going so that the oven would be hot enough to make a crusty top on each loaf. ‘Just the way you taught me, Granny,’ she murmured as she set the timer, feeling as ever that her grandmother’s spirit would never really leave the cottage she’d loved so much. ‘Put the bread in first, when the oven’s hottest, then pastry, then cakes as the temperature slowly falls.’
Later, she would be putting in a casserole to simmer slowly overnight, but her supper tonight was going to be at least one steaming bowl of home-made leek and potato soup with a couple of slices of hot, freshly baked bread. ‘If I can get the fire hot enough, that is,’ she grumbled as she lowered herself heavily to her knees and reached for a handful of kindling. ‘I’m moving even slower than Granny did, and she was eighty years old and riddled with arthritis.’
After the last seven or eight months, the whole baking process was almost second nature now—lighting a fire in the old-fashioned cloam oven from the briskly burning embers of the open hearth, then raking out the fire when the oven reached the right temperature to bake the bread.
Her father had wanted to replace the centuries-old hearth with a modern cooker to make his mother’s life a little easier but she’d stubbornly clung to the methods she’d grown up with. In spite of the effort involved, Ella could understand the attraction of the old ways, especially on such a cold day.
The fire was blazing brightly in the depths when she shut the oven door and sat back on her heels, glad that her grandmother had resisted. It might be old-fashioned, but the wide fireplace with the cloam oven built into the wall of one side of it was certainly the most appropriate for this sort of weather.
‘Not only does it keep me warm but I can use it for cooking my food, too, and all without worrying about power cuts or running out of gas bottles.’
The swiftly running stream that hurried past the back of the cottage provided her water, via the totally modern tanks and pipes at one end of the tiny loft. Granny had been easily persuaded that there was no good reason to carry buckets of water or make trips to the ‘privy’ when she could have the labour-saving convenience of running water and an inside bathroom.
At the same time, the force of the stream on its downward rush had been unobtrusively utilised to provide all the power she needed for lighting and a fridge. In a really bitter winter the volume of water might be diminished by ice, but so far the little diesel generator hidden away in one of the outhouses as an emergency backup hadn’t been needed at all.
Anyway, she preferred the oil lamps her grandmother had once relied on, and she had a plentiful supply of candles. There was plenty of wood split for burning, with several days’ worth neatly piled beside the fire and even a stack of peat if she got desperate.
Real pioneer stuff, as her sister Sophia was prone to tease, her pretty face screwed up in an expression of mock disgust as she examined her neatly manicured nails.
And it was just teasing, Ella knew with a renewed surge of gratitude for Sophia’s generosity. They’d both loved their visits to the little cottage and had revelled in the freedom to roam far and wide no matter what time of year they’d come. It seemed almost impossible that they would never again hear the soft burr of Granny’s voice as she bade them come in for their tea, or the stories she would tell of the creatures that shared the glen with her.
It had been her bequest to the two of them that they should share the cottage between them and it had been Sophia’s idea that Ella should stay here until she decided what direction her life was going to take.
She’d originally offered to sell the cottage so that Ella could use the money to live on, only admitting how much she’d hated the thought of losing it when Ella had turned the idea down without a second thought.
Staying here had been the best solution all round. She had chickens for eggs and she’d become almost self-sufficient once she’d got the vegetable garden going. As for the rest, it hadn’t taken long to dust off her grandmother’s spinning wheel so that she had goods to sell or barter in the way of isolated rural communities for the other things she needed.
Her thoughts were wandering happily over the little successes that had helped to bring her out of the depression that had driven her here when a sound outside the front of the cottage drew her attention.
A car? She began the struggle to get to her feet. ‘If that’s Malcolm coming to check up on me again I shall give him a piece of my mind. I told him I had plenty of everything and he shouldn’t be driving around when the weather’s
