The landscape surrounding my late grandmother’s cottage was beautiful in the winter.  There was pure, un-trodden snow as far as the eye could see, and at intervals a thin and naked tree shivering in the cruel December air.  No pylons, no telegraph wires… just the snow, the trees and the cottage.

It was a romantic idea, but I never really believed it was practical.  My little brother had a lot of romantic ideas, marriage and fatherhood among them, but those particular ideas were already foundering drastically.  Emily, my beloved niece, the pearl of my world, was not yet one year old.  They were fools to take her to rural Scotland in the winter.  I only went because of her.

Emily and I caught colds by the end of the first day.  She was appalled, and I was the only one on hand to comfort her with Caitlin sulking in the bedroom (Mark hadn’t told her there was no central heating or hot water), and my brother making valiant but vain attempts to kindle a fire.

I turned my head, sneezed away from Emily and then said, ‘We’ll never make it.’

‘Gran did it,’ said Mark.

That was true - Gran did do it - but she was a better and more resilient person than all of us put together.  When the night drew in, Caitlin was anxious to get into bed and take whatever warmth she could from Mark’s body.  I was supposed to be sleeping in a single bed just off the kitchen, and Emily in the kitchen.

She screamed until Caitlin stormed out, in tears herself.  I went in and found Mark standing over her cot, looking utterly defeated.

‘You can’t leave her like that,’ I said.  ‘She’ll freeze!’

Emily was wrapped in as many clothes and blankets as they gave her in their heated London home.  I told Mark to go and find as much padding as he could, and I did the same, and we wrapped her up as warmly as possible.  But I still wasn’t happy.

‘Maybe we could leave the stove on,’ said Mark.

I crushed that idea with a look, and he went meekly off to bed.

Emily, in spite of the distress inflicted upon her by the cough and blocked nose, managed to drift off to sleep.  I stepped towards her, touched her hand and was terrified by how cold it felt.  I thought of Mark’s words: Gran did it.  She had lived there as a child, and endured winters so cold that the water she kept by her bed at night used to freeze.  The children warmed themselves with hot bricks at the foot of the bed, but I didn’t like that idea for Emily.

Gran had moved away by the time my aunts and my mother were born, but she’d had little brothers.  I tried to remember if she ever told us what they did to keep the babies warm at night, but nothing came to mind, and  I couldn’t call anyone who might know; there was no phone and no mobile signal.

I quickly realised that the only choice I had was to take Emily into bed with me.  The number of times I’d found her nearly crushed by Caitlin’s sleeping form, and had to take her away…  Well, maybe I just wouldn’t sleep.  It was too cold for that anyway.

It was going to be a long week.