Dead of Winter

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To Annette, for everything we have done together.

And everything that still awaits us.

She had always loved the lake. For almost half a century this place had been her sanctuary, a world that was not free from sorrow, but a haven where evil had never gained a foothold. At least that was what she had told herself. Now she knew better.

She shivered as she perched on the edge of the pontoon, and lifted her legs out of the ice-cold water. Wrinkled skin, crooked toes, varicose veins forming thin purple spider’s webs over her calves. When had this happened? When had she acquired an old woman’s feet and legs?

When it came to the ageing process, it wasn’t possible to pinpoint a specific moment when it began. It was a change that came creeping in, just like the way the autumn leaves slowly drifted to the ground, then you woke up one morning and it was winter around the lake.

The ice had already drawn a thick chalk circle along the shore, and the bare branches of the tall trees that extended almost as far as the sauna next to the pontoon were highlighted starkly against the night sky. The colony of crows, the only residents of the holiday village these days, were observing her from above with their watchful little peppercorn eyes.

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