The Man She Should Have Married

Leaning back against him, she closed her eyes, her fingers gripping his arms as the sledge skimmed over the snow.

The hard heat of his body melted the minutes away. When she glanced up at the sky next, it was bleached of colour, and had that clarity that preceded a blizzard.

As the wind began whipping up the snow, she felt a prickle of warning. ‘We should probably go back now. It’s getting late and it’s quite a way.’

They could go off-road, but it would be risky. Drifts could make it impossible to gauge how deep the snow was, and there were hidden obstacles—ditches, rocks that could take a tyre out…

‘Just one more time?’

He phrased it as a question, but she knew it was a formality. He’d already made up his mind.

As if to prove her point, he smiled at her—that smile no one could resist.

She hesitated. There was just a fingernail of sun left in the sky. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea.’

The temperature was already dropping, and she knew from experience that in this kind of environment minutes mattered.

‘I really think—’ she began.

But it was too late. He was already pulling her against the heat of his body.

As they ploughed into the snow at the bottom of the hill she glanced back over her shoulder.

The sky was quivering.

Pulling out her phone, she felt a sudden panic as she saw that she had no signal.

‘Farlan, we need to leave before it starts snowing.’

It already was. As she spoke, fat, shaggy flakes began to drift and spin down from the sky.

Inside the car, he began fiddling with the heater.

‘It doesn’t work,’ she said quietly.

She should have said something earlier. Farlan hadn’t been in Scotland for so long he’d probably forgotten how swiftly the weather could deteriorate.

‘Which way?’ he asked.

‘Head towards the lake.’ She glanced up at the putty-coloured clouds. Hopefully they would get back to the road before the snow got any heavier.

They didn’t.

She watched, with a sense of dread building in her chest, as the windscreen wipers began to grind against the snow.

He turned to her.

‘Is there somewhere we could go? A barn, maybe?’ His voice was calm, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. ‘Some kind of shelter?’

She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing close…’ Her stomach clenched with a rush of hope. ‘No—that’s not true. There’s the bothy. It shouldn’t be locked, but—’

Her eyes found his and, reaching out, he gently touched her cheek. ‘Only one way to find out.’

It was difficult to see now. Outside the car everything was a tumbling mass of white, as if a feather duvet had burst.

‘I think that’s it,’ she said hoarsely.

Up ahead, there was a dark, angular shape. The Land Rover crunched over the snow towards it with agonising slowness, the wind blotting out the whine of the transmission. As it juddered to a standstill, Farlan yanked up the handbrake.