'When They Walked Out One Winter’s Morning' by Lynda McMahon

It was insanity but this was the only time they could get away. A friend offered them a cottage in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter. Sal didn’t think they’d get much use out of the chic, cast iron garden furniture. She could imagine being welded to it like when she’d licked the icy metal lamppost egged on by her older brother.

In the morning they awoke to that particularly dense silence which connotes a heavy snowfall. They drank their tea in bed taking in the virgin landscape and worried about what to do with themselves. Later, in the cupboard under the stairs, they found scruffy wellingtons and wondered if they dared. Sal’s were a size too big but two pairs of socks solved that. Tentative at first, they entered the almost silent world the squeak of untrodden snow the only sound. Even the birds were dumb anticipating further precipitation. Mike and Sal were totally alone. They held hands for the first time in ages reassured by the proximity of another warm, human being in that strange new world. The woods were alien but heart-breakingly beautiful, other-worldly yet familiar. Time no longer existed and it was only hunger which sent them hurtling back to the cottage. They drank steaming hot cocoa and ate tinned soup as if it was champagne and caviar. They laughed and talked and made plans. Tomorrow they would take throws outside and have their morning coffee at the pretty table before they strode off into the woods.

Back home, when people commiserated with them on their poor holiday, they looked at each other and could still see the magic of snow-filled woods and the solitude to find each other again. They had been so lucky.