Down in the little sitting room, Robbie was tapping out a message to Lyn on his phone. The mobile signal in the cottage was patchy but he kept seeing the bars on the indicator rise when he was in the sitting room so it seemed to be the best place for a signal. There was no 3 or 4G however and there wasn't any wi-fi at the cottage which Robbie thought was strange. He wondered if perhaps Dan and Sarah hadn't got round to installing it yet. He went towards the front window and looked out at the bleak beauty of the snowy landscape as he pressed send on his message to his daughter. It was after 2pm and the daylight would soon start to fade but there was a sudden last bit of brightness from a low sun which, breaking through a gap was diffused into silver by the clouds and seemed to make the landscape feel even colder. As he looked out at the fields, Robbie saw, reflected in the window, Laura come into the sitting room.
"Are you warm enough?" He said, turning to her with a smile "I found the heating control, it's by the front door, I turned up the thermostat a bit, it felt a bit chilly"
"Oh, ok, good" She nodded in agreement and Robbie saw she looked a little pale and he noticed a slight almost imperceptible frown on her face, one he was familiar with when he knew something was bothering her. He saw it often when there was a bit of puzzling evidence on a case which she knew would be important to an investigation. He wondered what might be causing it now. He felt guilty again; perhaps she was lamenting the fact that she wouldn't get to see her family.
"Are you ok?" He said in a kind but inquisitive tone.
"Fine. Well, I am a little cold actually, despite the heating" Laura lied. She did feel cold but she wasn't fine.
"Tell you what, why don't I light the fire while you make a cuppa?" Robbie suggested
"Sounds like a fair exchange" she said with a smile and he sensed that whatever was bothering her had receded.
Robbie smiled back and watched as she disappeared into the kitchen.
He opened the stove door and checked the ash pan before laying firelighters and kindling on the grate, building a small stack of wood with a couple of thicker pieces on top. He lit a match to the firelighters and within a few seconds the kindling had caught and began to crackle and spit in what seemed excitement of being alight.
He glanced out through the front window of the cottage. The snowy fields and trees looked bleak and cold under the steel grey sky and Robbie wondered if there was more snow on the way, not that it made much difference to their travel predicament. He looked outside to the left of the cottage and saw the huge bank of snow that had completely blocked the front door. It had drifted up to the windows too but had stopped short of obscuring the view. As Robbie looked out across the fields again, something, or rather someone caught his eye.
With a start, he realised it was the figure from the night before. Robbie felt an odd unease. The figure was standing just in front of a five-bar gate that came between two walls and was the passageway between two fields. The figure, from what Robbie could make out was a young man, just a lad perhaps and Robbie saw he was wearing unusual clothes. Although dressed for the bad weather he appeared to be wearing what could only be described as britches, that were knee length, that met a pair of high-legged boots. Under his thick coat Robbie could just make out a shirt and a waistcoat. On his head he had what looked like a cloth cap without a peak and around his neck was a scarf of cherry red.
"How've you got up there through all that snow?" he said to himself and the figure as he peered into the distance. Outside the cottage Robbie heard a crow cawing and in the stove a piece of kindling popped loudly as it caught in the flames. He turned his head briefly to look at the stove and when he looked back towards the figure, to his astonishment, he saw nothing. The man had vanished.
Robbie frowned. It was impossible for someone to just vanish. The lad must have gone behind the wall, surely, he thought. There was another pop from the stove and he left the window to attend to it, turning as he went to glance briefly again at the gate and the field.
The fire was burning brightly and hot and Robbie knelt by it for a while puzzling over what he had just seen. He watched as the kindling fully surrendered to the flames before he put a log on and closed the glass-fronted door shut. He wondered if Laura had made the tea and with another look behind him at the empty landscape outside, he went into the kitchen to find her.
Laura was nowhere to be found.
For a moment he assumed she had gone upstairs but there was no answer when he called her and with a slight feeling of apprehension, he saw that there were teabags in two mugs and a kettle that had started to cool off from being freshly boiled.
With concern building in his stomach, Robbie looked out of the window. He couldn't see Laura but he saw footprints in the fresh snow that had covered the path that Dan had cleared. With a feeling of unease, Robbie surmised that Laura must have gone outside. But for what reason, he had no idea. And, more worryingly, he couldn't see her.
Quickly, he made his way to the porch and the back door of the cottage and, to his relief, he saw from outside, Laura's outline in the glass.