She scrabbles at the broken ice around her to try to pull herself from the frigid water. But her fingers are like frozen wood, the ice brittle as it snaps at her touch.
She looks around frantically. She knows how this can end, has heard it a million times from people: ‘Don’t risk walking across the lake, it’s not worth it.’ But how else was she to get away?
She kicks her legs in the water, but already they have grown so weak. Just a few seconds in the icy depths and her body is beginning to shut down. She manages to twist around anyway, searching for help on the lake’s banks. And oh God, there’s somebody there!
‘Help,’ she screams. ‘I can’t get out.’
He steps forward and relief floods through her. But then he stills.
‘I’m serious!’ she shouts, icy water flooding into her mouth.
But he just continues staring at her. What is he doing? She peers behind him towards the lodge which is sprawled out on the lakefront. Golden lights glimmer, a huge Christmas tree adorns a vast window. Surely someone else can see her?
As she thinks that, two faces appear in one of the windows.
She frantically waves. ‘Help,’ she screams, voice warped with the cold. ‘Somebody help!’
But they too just stand there, motionless.
Can they see her? Yes, she’s stood at that very window many times before. It has the best view of the lake.
Why aren’t they running out to help her? Why isn’t he helping her?
Maybe they don’t want to. That shouldn’t surprise her after all she’s learnt today.
No, he wouldn’t allow me to die. He wouldn’t, no matter what has passed between us.
There is another possibility, of course. She could be imagining the figures at the window. Hallucinating. Does that mean she’s dying? As she thinks that, her vision blurs.
Snow-blind already?
Either scenario is terrifying. She tries to plead with him again. ‘I’m sorry, I – I won’t say anything,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘Please …’ She puts a shaking hand out to him. He frowns slightly, hesitation in his eyes. But then he crosses his arms.
Terror surges through her, making her strong. She forces herself to push up from the water again, despite the growing heaviness of her trembling limbs and the strange pain starting to seep through the core of her body. She twists around, long hair shimmering in the frigid water around her, shaking fingers feeling across the ice to find a stronger wedge to pull herself up on.
But there is none, the ice is too thin. So she tries to smash her hands into the ice instead. If she can plough her way through, maybe she can reach the bank again and scramble back up.
The pain is excruciating though and her hands feel like boulders.
And then the ice breaks.
Hope surges. Maybe the rest of the ice will break. She can swim through it! She tries to propel herself forward. But her legs can’t move, the remaining ice firm.
She pinches her eyes closed. Don’t fail me now, she pleads with her body. Please please.
But all she can see is ice heaped upon ice, and all she can feel is the frozen water pulling her beneath the surface.
She should have known it would end like this, here in the very place where it all began. As she’d looked across the frozen lake all those years before towards the lodge, Christmas lights twinkling in its windows, she’d known, somehow, she’d be tied to the place for ever. She just hadn’t realised it would be her death tying her to it.
And she hadn’t realised he would just watch as it happened.
She closes her eyes and imagines a scrabbling of boots, a deep breath, his hands grasping her and pulling her out. She imagines looking up under iced eyelashes to see his soot-black hair, his eyes taut with concern. And then safety on the lake’s banks and in his arms.
But he’s still just watching.
Snow falls around her and she remembers another time when it snowed like this. She hears the laughter of children; red cheeks and icy smiles. Her memories are running to her, calling her name, pulling her into a bottomless past. She opens her arms to them as her head sinks beneath the frozen lake …
Amber
Winterton Chine
12 December 2009
Winter in The Chine, as the locals call it, can be brutal. Freezing winds sweep in from the east across the English Channel, buffeting down a valley that’s carved into the land, the trees above frigid with ice. Despite this, the beach rarely ices over, except during two of the harshest winters on record: the 1962 winter and the one Amber Caulfield wakes up to on the morning the girl first walks into her life.
She considers staying curled up beneath her duvet that morning instead of doing what she does six days out of seven: walking to the beach and opening up her gift shop.
‘Nope,’ she says to herself in a harsh voice as she grabs a towel and makes her way to the shower. ‘I need those sales and those walls still need painting.’ Winter isn’t just harsh in Winterton Chine because of that east wind. The absence of summer means no tourists, Amber’s main customer base. But she’s hoping a fresh lick of paint and some other renovations will get the shop all ready for the brief Christmas rush during the annual festive market in The Chine. A market that’s due to start in just over a week.
She showers, pulls on a pair of thick leggings and long black jumper and sweeps her red hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. When she steps outside, still buttoning her long black coat, the cold hits her like a sledgehammer. She rubs at the stubs on her left hand, sore with the memory of another winter as cold as this, and walks towards the beach. It’s just a five-minute stroll from her flat down the winding road that dominates the centre of The Chine. As she walks, she waves at the familiar faces she passes: some of the mums walking their kids to school, Jim from the local newsagents, a bus driver who lifts his hand in greeting as he drives people past, on their way to the main station for another day of work.
The beach opens up at the bottom of the road, a narrow stretch of sand. Above it sits a forest, the same forest that lines the main road. A long, straight promenade lines the beach, popular with dog walkers. On the promenade are thirty pastel-coloured beach huts, three of which have been taken over by Amber’s gift shop. She takes in the way the roofs of the little huts are fringed with small icicles and shakes her head. Not a chance anyone will be venturing onto the beach today. That’ll change in one week, she’s determined it will, especially when people see the new colours she’s painted it. She strides towards it with a forced enthusiasm.
The shop is right in the middle of the row, one pink hut, one baby blue, one evergreen. Well,
