Elizabeth Edmondson - The Frozen Lake - A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

Gibson pulled the car into the side of the road. ‘Ring up your friend, or send him a telegram saying you’ll join him.’ He raised a gloved hand as Michael opened his mouth to protest. ‘No, that’s an order. Finish what you’ve got to do on Pegasus, and then I don’t want to see you again until January.’

Michael got out of the car, thanked Gibson for the lift, and crunched across pristine snow to the small terraced house where he lodged. The hall had a light burning, but the rest of the house was in darkness. His landlady had left him a note. Supper keeping hot in oven, have gone over to be with Mrs Knight, she’s nervous of the snow .

Mrs Knight was nervous of everything. No doubt she thought a vagrant snowman was going to come tapping on her door, all set for a spot of icy rapine and ravaging. He screwed up the note and threw it into the embers of the fire in the kitchen. He put some more coal on the fire, and took out the plate of food from the oven. Congealed meatloaf and lumpy mashed potato. Hadn’t Freddie said the food at the Pheasant was good?

He ate his supper and sat looking into the flames as he drank a cup of tea. He was tired, he had to admit it. Bone tired, after months of long hours and no breaks. Was fatigue affecting his work? Even the simplest calculations seemed to take longer than they used to. Perhaps Gibson was right, and he needed to get away.

He shut his eyes, his mind drifting away to the frozen north. Sixteen years since he’d been there; sixteen years since he’d nearly died of pneumonia. He had been found wandering in a wood, had caught a severe chill, they told him when he was out of danger, and he came around from the lost days of fever to find all memory of the winter holiday wiped from his mind.

His chin fell to his chest, the landlady’s tabby cat jumped on to his lap, running all her claws into his legs; he stirred, and then slept.

His landlady found him there when she came back hours later. ‘Look at him, sleeping like a baby,’ she said to the cat. ‘I’ll make him a nice cup of cocoa and then wake him up so’s he can take himself off to bed.’ She looked at his face, interesting even in sleep; she liked a proper man, and his sort made you remember what it was like to be young. Pity he spent so much time at his precious work, what chance had he to meet a nice young lady when he worked all the time?

She poured the gooey brew into a cup, and shook him gently by the shoulder. ‘Wake up, Mr Wrexham, it’s bedtime, and I made you a nice cup of cocoa.’

He blinked and shook himself awake. ‘I must have dropped off. Good heavens, is that the time? Oh, thank you, how kind.’ He looked doubtfully into the cup, he loathed cocoa. ‘I’ll take it upstairs with me, if that’s all right.’

Where he took it with him into the bathroom, and tipped it down the basin.

Where was Perdita?

There were so many girls in the vast nave of York Minster, rows and rows of grey flannel overcoats, a sea of grey hats, each with its purple band. True, they weren’t identical, they came in many different heights and sizes, but then, at that age, girls shot up so, his sister could be inches taller by now.

Craning his neck in his efforts to scan the congregation, he lost his place in the hymn sheet, earning a scornful look from the tall woman in a sensible felt hat who was sitting in the seat next to him as he came in several ‘Noels’ too late. Lord, these were the same carols he’d sung at his school a thousand years ago, did nothing ever change? The carol ended, an invisible choir sang some incomprehensible verses in mediaeval English, a woman with rigid grey hair and a tight mouth, wearing a Cambridge MA gown, ascended the pulpit and began to read the story of the Annunciation.

The service wound to a close, the jolly-looking bishop in gold and pink raised his crook to give the blessing, the organist crashed into the opening chords of Adeste fideles , and the stately procession of senior and lesser clergy, headmistress, servers and choir made its way down the central aisle.

There was Perdita. One of the choir, wearing a white surplice that looked too short for her, her dark brown hair scraped back from her face in a pair of straggling plaits, her face pale and unrevealing as she sang the soaring final descant. He turned his head to watch the retreating backs of the choir. How quickly could he make a getaway? He stuffed the order of service into the rack at the back of the seat in front of him, beside the hymnal and the prayer book, and began to edge his way past his more devout neighbours who were kneeling or sitting with bowed heads in attitudes of prayer.

Dark-overcoated fathers looked at him with scorn, disapproval of his brown tweed overcoat and corduroy trousers written all over their faces. Their wives screwed up their mouths and made little mutterings of dismay at his unmannerly attempts to escape. Then he was at the end of the row and in the aisle, free to make a dash for the action end of the cathedral before he was completely swamped in the wave of schoolgirls pouring out of the front rows.

Polished brown shoes of every size trod on his feet, hockey-trained muscles shoved him out of the way, firm elbows dug into his sides; what a relief to reach a place of safety in front of the choir screen and tuck himself in beside a huge urn of festive greenery. He had kept an eye on the choir as it disappeared into the far reaches of the north aisle; surely all the girls from the choir would pass this way sooner or later.

They did, looking like chesspieces in their purple cassocks, with white surplices now draped over arms or shoulders.

‘Edwin, oh, good, I am so pleased to see you. I wasn’t sure if anyone was coming for me.’ Perdita gestured to her cassock and surplice. ‘I have to put these in the hamper and get my coat and hat. Will you wait here?’

‘I shan’t budge,’ he said. ‘I never saw so many girls in my life, they’re terrifying.’

She smiled her wide smile at him and bounded away.

A giant grey crocodile was forming in the south aisle, with gowned mistresses running up and down like sheepdogs, lining the girls up in pairs and rounding up stragglers. ‘Come along, girls, we have a train to catch. Fiona, put your hat straight. Mathilda, where are your gloves? Deirdre, how many times do I have to tell you not to stand on one leg?’

‘My stockings make me itch,’ said the unfortunate Deirdre, who had been rubbing her shin violently with the edge of her sensible brown leather shoe.

‘Deirdre! Mentioning underwear in public, whatever are you thinking of?’

His breath was visible in the cold air; it hadn’t seemed so very cold at first, but the chill had struck up through the ancient stones, and now his feet were growing numb. His nose was no doubt pink; the parents and girls milling around him nearly all had glowing noses and cheeks.

However warm the overcoats and furs, nothing could subdue the arctic chill of York Minster on a December day. The weather had been unusually bitter, even for the north of England, but he could never remember a time when he had been in the Minster and not felt cold.

Cold as charity. The words mocked him as he looked down the immense length of the nave to where the great west doors stood open and the congregation streamed out into the pale wintry sunlight. Then Perdita was beside him. ‘I’m glad you came to collect me, it’s a gruesome journey by train. Five hours in a stuffy compartment, or sitting on freezing platforms, and I hate having to change trains here, there and everywhere.’

Another of the iron-grey regiment of teachers – grey as to hair and expression rather than in what she wore – was bearing down on them. ‘Perdita Richardson!’