The Darkest Evening

wouldn’t have to use the brakes and cause a skid. There was a finger sign but the village names were covered with snow. She had a moment of real fear then, a complete lack of recognition. In her headlights she saw trees on one side of the road, a thick plantation of spruce. She must have missed a turn earlier. She left the engine running but climbed out to clear the signpost. In one direction was Sawley Bridge and in the other Kirkhill. Kirkhill would bring her closer to home, so she turned right. The road started to rise and her wheels spun. The snow was so deep here that she worried she would get stuck, but there was one set of tyre tracks for her to follow now. Some other foolish soul had been here not long before her and must have made it through.
She seemed to reach the top of a low hill and, in the distance, saw a light below her, almost hidden by the blizzard. The outskirts of Kirkhill village, perhaps. There was a pub in Kirkhill, and she had a feeling that it did food and had rooms. There were worse places to spend a night. The team need never know she’d made an arse of herself. Already she was starting to relax; she could feel the fire warming her bones and taste the first pint of beer. But when she turned the next bend, she almost drove into a car that had slewed off the road and come to a stop just before hitting a five-bar gate. The vehicle was white, almost camouflaged in the snow. The foolish soul hadn’t made it through after all. Vera pulled slowly past the car and came to a stop. The driver’s door was open and it was possible that someone had fallen out. She found a torch in the dashboard and climbed down from the Land Rover. The wind eased for a while and everything was very quiet and still.
Any footprints had been covered by the blown snow, but it seemed that the driver had been able to walk away from the crash. There was no sign of a casualty nearby and, now she was close to it, Vera could see that the car was unharmed. She was about to return to the Land Rover and continue her drive, when she heard a noise. A cry. She shone her torch into the back of the car and saw a toddler, strapped into a seat. The child was wrapped up in a red snow suit and wore small red wellies. It was impossible for her to guess gender or age. Vera’s experience of small children was limited.
‘Hello!’ She was aiming at jolly, friendly, but the child started to whimper. ‘What’s your name?’
The child stopped crying and stared impassively.
‘Where’s your mam, pet?’
Nothing. Vera pulled her mobile phone from her pocket. There was no signal. Not unusual here in the hills. She supposed the driver had walked away to see if she could get better reception to call for help. Vera had already decided that the car had been driven by a woman. A small woman. The seat was pulled right forward towards the steering wheel. She must have left the child, knowing she wouldn’t get very far carrying it. Even if the toddler, staring at Vera from the seat in the back of the car, was old enough to walk, the snow was so deep that it would be impossible for the child to move through it. The red boots were so small that they were more fashion statement than practical bad-weather footwear.
But Vera was troubled. Wouldn’t a mother have shut the door, to keep out the bitter wind? She felt the prospect of a fire and beer disappearing. She lifted out the child’s car seat and strapped it beside her in the Land Rover, struggling to slot the seat belt to hold it firmly in place. It seemed a complicated sort of set-up. Parenthood must be a challenging business these days.
Vera jotted down the white car’s number plate on the back of a receipt she happened to have in her bag, then scrabbled for a clean scrap of paper. She wrote a note and left it inside the white car’s dash. ‘I’ve got your baby. It’s safe.’ With her phone number. Then she thought again and put her work business card beside it. The last thing she needed was an accusation of kidnap.
She drove on, even more slowly than she had before, hoping to catch a glimpse in her headlights of a struggling woman. She’d thought she’d come across her sooner than this. Vera swore under her breath. This was going to take longer than she’d expected. At least the child beside her was quiet, asleep and breathing gently.
The snow thinned and then stopped. The clouds broke and a slight crescent moon appeared. Vera drove round a bend in the road and suddenly she knew exactly where she was. There was a long wall covered with frozen ivy, two pillars marking the entrance to a drive which once must have been very grand, a sign with a coat of arms, faded and covered with snow. But Vera knew what was there. One word: Brockburn. The coat of arms would belong to the Stanhope family.
The light she’d seen from the hill must have come from here. At the entrance she paused and the memories came tumbling in. She’d been dragged here a few times by her father, Hector, when he’d been on his uppers and demanding that the family recognize that he too had a claim to a place in the sun. Each year they’d gatecrashed the gathering before the New Year’s Day hunt. Hector would be in his element, chatting to the local farmers who remembered him as a boy. The black sheep returned to the fold, to drink whisky out of a small plastic glass, while the hounds grew restive and the glistening horses paced outside the