He saw them in his head when he woke up in the morning, and dozing in his chair by the fire late at night he dreamed of them. He wondered when they would come back. He couldn't believe that they would ever return but he couldn't bear the idea that he would never talk to them again. And all that week the islands remained frozen and covered in snow. There were blizzards so fierce that he couldn't see the track from his window. The snowflakes were very fine and when the wind caught them they twisted and spiralled like smoke. Then the wind would drop to nothing and the sun would come out and the reflected light burnt his eyes, so he had to squint to see the world outside his house. He saw the blue ice on the voe, the snowplough cutting a way down from the main road, the post van, but he didn't see the beautiful young women.

Once he did catch a glimpse of Mrs Henry, Sally's mother, the schoolteacher. He saw her come out of the schoolhouse door. She had fat fur-lined boots on her feet. A pink jacket on, with the hood pulled up. She was a lot younger than Magnus, but she dressed like an old woman, he thought.

Like a woman who didn't care what she looked like, at least. She was very small and moved in a busy way, scuttling as if time was important to her. Watching her, he was suddenly scared that she intended to come to him. He thought she had found out that Sally had been in the house at new year. He imagined her making a scene, shouting, her face thrust so close to his that he'd smell her breath, feel the spit as she screamed at him. Don't you dare go near my daughter. For a moment he was confused. Was that scene imagination or memory? But she didn't come up the hill towards his house. She walked away.

On the third day he had run out of bread and milk, oatcakes and the chocolate biscuits he liked with his tea. He took the bus into Lerwick. He didn't like leaving the house. The girls might come when he was out. He imagined them climbing the bank, laughing and slipping, knocking at the door and finding no one at home. The worst thing was that he would never know that they had been. The snow was packed so hard there that they would leave no footprints.