The back door was ajar and as Robbie got to it so did Laura and she and she pushed it open.
"Laura what's wrong?" Robbie said, alarmed at the pained frown on her face. She looked cold and shaken up, there was snow on her jumper and her hands looked red raw with cold.
Glancing down he saw her knee was cut open; blood dripped from a ragged gash onto the tiles of the porch floor and outside Robbie could see splashes of crimson dotted in the snow around her footprints.
"Come on in, you'll catch cold" he said, closing the back door and leading her into the kitchen, putting his arm around her back to guide her. She had only been outside for a few minutes but he could feel the cold clinging to her jumper.
"Here, sit down" He said, pulling out a chair "We need to get this cleaned up, love" he said, looking at her knee. There was dirt and grit around it and it was still bleeding
"I bloody slipped on the path" Laura said with an angry irritation aimed at herself but as she sat down on the chair she winced with pain. Robbie disappeared for a moment and when he returned he had a blanket from the sitting room which he placed gently over Laura's shoulders. She was still trembling a little and he couldn't be sure if it was from the cold or from shock.
Laura prodded tentatively around the cut in her knee with her index finger and shook her head. She was furious at herself for dashing out into the snow but she had found herself acting on impulse.
As she had put the kettle onto boil water to make the tea, she had glanced out of the kitchen window onto the back of the house, first looking at the garden of the little cottage and then beyond. Out in the field, halfway between the trees in the distance and the end of the garden, she had seen a figure. Abandoning the teamaking she had gone up to the window for a better look and it was then she saw that it was the girl she had seen the night before.
Wiping a trickle of blood that was running down her leg from her knee, Laura shuddered as she recollected the vision. The girl had looked back at her silently and with a blank expression on her face. Laura at first thought she was walking but as she had continued to look out it became apparent the girl was standing, not walking. She remained motionless for a few seconds while Laura watched on, and then, she had raised her hand, as if about to wave; but she hadn't waved, just kept her hand up in the air as if signaling to someone.
Laura had wondered if she was trying to get her attention and she had raised her hand and waved back at the girl but this had no effect. In itself this seemed odd, but coupled with the peculiar appearances of the girl in such terrible weather, Laura was suddenly compelled to go out to the girl and see what was going on, once and for all. Not stopping to put on a coat or her boots she had almost broken into a run once she was outside; the girl was still in the field and Laura made her way along the path, glancing at her footing on the snow that had covered the path that Dan had cleared. He had only cleared it to a point, however, and it came to a stop at a fork in the path that led one way onto a track by the side of the cottage that led down to the farm and the other way out towards the trees beyond the cottage garden. Laura couldn't get any further and as she came to a stop at the end of the shovelled snow path she slipped, pitching forward with her arms outstretched. Her arms and hands met with a deep bank of snow, breaking her fall and saving her from any injuries to her upper body, but her knees didn't fair as well and banged and scraped on the path beneath her, a frozen mud path that had been cleared by Dan's shovel and had a thin but fresh layer of new snowfall on top. The snow bank in front of her had broken her fall but the contact on the frozen gritty path ripped through her tights and she felt straight away that she had skinned her left knee. Cursing at the icy ground and wincing at the pain she got herself up almost immediately, briefly looking at her knee before shaking the snow off her hands.
It was then she saw.
The girl had vanished.
Laura had looked about wildly, searching for a figure who surely must be running, or perhaps fallen in the snow as she had. Her mind desperately tried to rationalise the girl's disappearance and she had tried to convince herself that perhaps there was a hidden dip in the field or some other reason to obscure a figure. There was no such thing, she knew this but she almost convinced herself that this must be the explanation.
It was then that Laura saw something that chilled her to the bone, beyond the searing cold of the snow and ice and wind that had started to keen around her.
There were no footprints in the snow where the girl had been.