aware of having cried out, but the policeman looked at me sharply. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.
I pointed to the outline and for a fleeting moment I saw the red earth and the leaf litter among twisting tree roots that the policeman was seeing. I said, ‘I can see the outline of where Mama lay, in the snow. I see Rose’s footprints leading away!’
‘In the snow,’ he repeated. ‘Can you see the two sets of footprints leading to where the body lay?’
I nodded. ‘And I see Rose’s footprints going away there.’ I pointed deeper into the park.
‘You can see her footprints in the snow?’ he asked and I nodded. ‘My people saw scuff marks and footprints in the dust when the body was first found, but those have long since faded.’ He gave me a considering look and then pointed some way to the left of the prints. ‘You see where the body lay there?’
‘It was there,’ I said, pointing to the depression in the snow. Then I saw the look on his face and realised he had been testing me. ‘Did you think I would lie?’ I asked.
He frowned. ‘You would be surprised what people make themselves see when they are desperate. Let’s find out where the prints lead.’
I did not move. ‘I think if you and the others could not see Rose’s footprints leading away from Mama’s body, you won’t be able to go with me if I follow them.’
He did not look at the ground but into my eyes. ‘I see you,’ he said. ‘I will follow you.’
Very deliberately, he reached out and took my arm. I did not know if he was humouring me, but I was glad he was by my side. I took a deep breath and set off following Rose’s footprints, comforted by the weight of his hand.
We had not gone far before it was clear she had walked an erratic zigzag path, which always seemed to change direction at the foot of a tree. Almost all of the trees about us now were pine trees or unfamiliar black-trunked skeletons with complex many-tined branches.
‘Could she be playing a game?’ said the policeman.
I shook my head. ‘I think she is following something. A squirrel maybe.’
‘A squirrel?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s hard to imagine a child running after some small animal if her mother had just died. Maybe your mother didn’t lie down until after Rose left the clearing.
I said nothing. The policeman was still trying to fit what we were doing and learning here into his world, and yet he was with me as we went on, following the steps that continued their erratic progress until they came to a stream running black as ink through the whiteness. I stopped.
‘The footsteps stop at the edge of the stream,’ I said.
‘There is a stream?’ asked the policeman. He was gazing about in the same vague, groping way as my stepfather. I noticed that the sweat had dried on his forehead and he was holding the edges of the coat together.
‘What do you see?’ I asked him curiously.
‘Only the mist,’ he said.
I stared at him. Then I looked around at the glowing white snow, radiant in the sun whose light reached us but not its heat. The pine trees wore shapeless hoods of glistening snow, and the black-trunked trees were sugar frosted. The park ran away out of sight, still and snowy, seemingly empty of life. I could hear nothing save the trickle of the stream whose current must be swift enough to keep it from icing over, and the occasional creak of a branch or the huffing sigh of snow slipping to the ground. There was no birdcall, nor the chatter of squirrels foraging, nor the delicate nibbling of deer grazing. But I could hear the faint soughing made by the wind in the bare branches of the highest trees. I sniffed, but my nose was too cold to smell anything.
‘I think,’ the policeman said presently, ‘that I can hear water, but it sounds far away.’
I said nothing, for I had remembered something. Once, when Rose had spoken of entering the park, she had mentioned a tower. I had taken no notice of it at the time, but I ought to have done, for Rose was not in the habit of inventing things. I concentrated upon the memory and it grew clearer.
‘It is not so late,’ Rose had said. ‘By dusk we could be at the tower.’