Until five days ago, November had been ridiculously mild. People with time to waste had written first cuckoo letters to The Times, reporting spring flowers and nesting birds from Cornwall to Caithness. November seemed set fair to break all records. Five nights of savage frost had changed all that. Half buried in leaf mould, the girl had been glazed in a shell of ice, a frozen Ophelia. Lying dead at Stella’s feet, she was marble white, unreal, barely human at all. Pale gold larch needles made her bed soft. Because the oaks and beeches of this wood were young, their leaves dropped late in a Pre-Raphaelite glory of red and copper and gold. They were the exact colour of her shining hair. Tight-lipped, and fighting her usual battle with tears and nausea, Stella did what she had to do. She could only bear death when they were old enough. This was an outrage and it made her sick. For what it was worth, she’d recorded the cadaver temperature, tried to think, calmly, how you analysed this situation. Last night, her own garden thermometer had plunged to minus twelve. Jane, who would be eight just before Christmas, had recorded the whole month in Fahrenheit and Celsius. Like newspaper editors, Jane logged heat-waves in Fahrenheit and cold snaps in Celsius. Counting icicles, thawing out water for the birds, Alice and Jane hoped for a legendary winter. Stella loved snow and ice too, especially ice thick enough for skating, but through the deepest drifts and power cuts, she’d have patients to visit. When the snow fell, Gran urged them to think about the old people. Simon, the reckless, would have none of this. Thinking about old people wouldn’t melt snow or make the old young again. Seven years old, Simon tobogganed head first down the hill they called the Cresta Run. If Stella thought about her brother, it was always winter. He would have been a doctor too, like their father. He’d never considered anything else, they’d both been so certain. Simon wanted Antarctica.

Simon would be in his element now. Four days of frost made an eerie world. All around the dead girl, ice-crystals made spectre blossoms. Since Monday evening, the temperature had plummeted far below zero. After three spring-like weeks, this was a shock to everyone, including the reckless wildlife. As for the red-haired girl… Someone, probably several someones, would have written papers about just this kind of case. A nice little problem, almost an exam question. A little local difficulty with freak weather was child’s play, an intellectual game. But the forensic lab had closed. Instead, the police called on people like Stella, pathologist turned country GP. In the hills of the North, it pays to be versatile. Stella had crampons and her own ice-axe too

There was nothing more to do. She’d collected all the samples. Not semen, because there wasn’t any. There was no sign of a recent assault, sexual or merely brutal. The girl was still wearing her brown cord trousers, which were Next and very ordinary. Her clean white cotton knickers were M & S, bikini, sold in packs of five, not cheese-wire thongs,. She was slight, her trousers size six, her fine caramel coloured jumper an eight, her pretty cotton and lace bra a thirty-two A. Deeply conventional then, Stella thought. Zoe, her eldest daughter, wouldn’t dress like that, not even to visit her grandfather. Zoe broke all the old redhead rules, loved rainbow colour, especially pinks and crimsons and violet. Zoe, who planned to be a lawyer, made her own dazzling clothes. She’d gone back to uni flaunting her latest creation, a Chinese silk coat, all the colours of sunrise. Sleeping Beauty wasn’t wearing a jacket. Further into the forest, one of the dogs had called them to a knitted scarf, conker-brown, rigid with frost. It didn’t seem to have been used as a ligature. Studying this scarf, Inspector Mark Lazonby spotted a tiny smear of red.

‘It’s only lippy. It’s just sitting there on the surface. Wrong colour though, I mean, it’s not the same colour as her lips or her nails. Some girls might not care. She would. Look at her clothes… She’d match lippy and nails. Try to… It might not be her scarf. Anyone could have dropped it, so close to the path.’

Lazonby looked down at the carved face. Today’s mind-numbing cold made it hard to think. Something wrong, he couldn’t quite put a name to it. Trust a woman to know about lipstick, all those colours, worse than Nicki’ s maddening Farrow and Ball paint charts. Stepping backwards onto a frozen puddle, he slipped and very nearly fell. Just in time, Stella made a grab for his arm. Flashing a grateful smile, Lazonby looked down at the body again. Already, they were coming with the bag, they’d zip her up, carry her away. He thought, ridiculously, at least the mortuary would be warmer for the poor kid. He knew now why he’d thought of a carving. It was her eyes, calm and closed as a sleeping child’s or some figure on a marble tomb. This avenue of slim young trees made a nave. Thin sun filtered through a few hanging leaves. Crossing himself was a gesture from childhood. Now he had no faith at all, death was terrible.

Stella said, abruptly, ‘So you noticed too. I did check. Her eyes were lizard green. Hazel, really, but she was wearing those coloured lenses.’

‘Prescription, or party?’

Stella peeled off her gloves, dusted icy leaf mould from her cords. It was almost dark, savagely cold. She should be at home with her children, not freezing to death out here. She said, peevishly,

‘How should I know? Party, I bet. Halloween, it was Dracula red. Then we had to sort out the eye infections. The damned stupid kids swap them around. Time of death? The weather doesn’t help, but, especially with no jacket, I’m guessing she died during our little heatwave, probably afternoon, on the last day. You don’t usually get flies’ eggs in November, or minus fifteen. There were a few eggs on her. Last weekend, our garden was seething with mozzies. On Sunday, I killed three bluebottles in the kitchen. By Tuesday, the duck-pond was solid.’

Lazonby closed his very ordinary brown eyes. Like Stella, he was struggling with nausea. Since his shift began, at six a.m., he’d eaten a slice of cold toast, drunk a cup of stewed and tepid tea. Somehow, he’d lost most of the day, called to three different lonely deaths. Over eighty, all of them. In the end, neighbours had, as they say, raised the alarm. The old woman had only been dead a few hours. Both the old men had been rotting a week or more. In a few weeks now, his first child would be born and already he found fatherhood appalling. One day, his child might die alone, old and afraid, loved by nobody. He wouldn’t be there for her. The old woman, though quite fresh and wearing neat old lady clothes, had upset him most. When they’d lifted her up, she weighed nothing, bird bones and shrivelled skin. In the kitchen, they’d found half a packet of damp cornflakes, two small tins of baked beans, another of evaporated milk and a bag of sugar. The fridge was spotlessly clean, pathetically empty. On a chain around her neck, there’d been two wedding rings and a diamond solitaire. It was the size and beauty of the diamond that startled him. Nicki deserved a ring like that. All she had was a chip, a stingy why-bother tenth of a carat. Size L. He’d remembered the size, hoping to surprise her with an eternity ring when the baby was born. Some hope… Eternity would have to wait; babies cost the earth. The old woman’s rings looked smaller than his wife’s, but they were still too big for those wasted hands. Maybe they weren’t hers? Maybe that dry old body had never been married? Looking closer, though, he’d seen the faint ring of lighter skin around her ring finger. She’d worn gold and diamonds till they fell from skeletal fingers. Someone would have to trace the family. There’d be papers in the house, neighbours to ask. It looked as if the old girl had starved to death, with a ten thousand quid ring round her neck. He might be wrong about the ten. Twenty? Thirty? More? Argos didn’t sell rocks that size.

The girl who lay dead at his feet wore no rings, on her hands, around her neck, or anywhere else. Waiting for Stella, he’d studied the white hands, the careful French manicure, seen the gold watch, worn on her right wrist. So she’d been left-handed? Odd, really, that a girl with such lovely hands didn’t wear a single ring. There was a newly healed scar at the base of her left thumb. Probably, she’d cut herself on a tin, a cut that long, she’d bleed like a pig. Corned beef tin, probably, the worst kind… In first aid, they’d done every kind of accident. Bar open-heart surgery or spilt brains, he knew how to treat most emergencies. Six years ago, just out of basic training, he’d delivered two babies in the same week. So why was he so terrified for Nicki? She’d be in a superb hospital, top of every league, safer than going private. His lay-by and car park babies had thrived.

If they’d only come, now, take the poor kid away… Stella insisted there was no sign of rape or any violence, not recently. A girl this age, it was bound to be sex… Sometimes, there’d been a baby… Stella didn’t think she was pregnant now. Too soon to tell? Or too late? All around the poor kid, there were red spotted toadstools, fly agaric, deadly. Beneath the pines, ghostly in the dying light, there was something else, amanita virosa, the destroying angel. There were other toadstools too, but he didn’t know their names, only the killers. Learning anything, he economised. He knew the main constellations, key dates in history and his mother in law’s birthday. The only other fungus he knew for certain was the stinkhorn and they didn’t grow round here. The small scattered things on the icy turf looked like satsuma peel. In one metre square, he counted three dandelions, one buttercup and five pink-flushed daisies. Like the girl, they were frozen, sparkling like fruit on a Christmas table. Nicki wanted candied fruit and flowers this weekend, friends coming round, for the very last time. She’d begun to talk as if the baby would end everything, their lives over. Boy or girl, Nicki didn’t want to know, said people cared too much. Secretly, he’d hoped for a girl, but was it true? What would men do to her?

Shivering and waiting, Stella considered him, professionally, not lustfully. This was a bad habit of hers, or so Tom said, giving people the once-over, casual, furtive glances, seeing too much. Lazonby was young still, barely thirty, but already, his face was a little lined. His eyes looked far too old. Or desperately sad? He couldn’t bear to look at the girl. Suspecting the nausea, she said,

‘I’ll never, ever get used to this. It doesn’t get any better… The first body they ever gave me was a girl about this age, in the dissecting room. I threw up. I kept crying. Almost gave up the whole idea. I very nearly switched to History. Nice and safe, everyone’s dead, Black Death, Bosworth Field, the Somme, they can’t hurt any more. Then…’

Lazonby looked at her, saw, as if for the first time, not Stella Morland, local GP, only doing her job, but a woman, tears shining, appalled by this young death. Any woman, anonymous in her working gear, small and slight, almost delicate. One strand of auburn hair had come loose, curling past her shoulders. The same physical type, in fact, as the dead girl. He’d known Stella for almost three years, only when they both had a job to do. This kind of job. Until now, they hadn’t been close enough for tears.

Stella said, her voice deliberately neutral,

‘You lot have the worst job of all. Telling the families… Ending hope… Even if they’ve been fearing the worst… I didn’t know there were any girls missing.’

‘There’s always girls missing.’

He’d turned away from the body. Stay around a stiff too long and you start seeing things, you think they’re moving, see them breathing, want to keep them warm. This girl was so untouched, not a mark on her, her eyes closed peacefully, as if she’d just walked out in the woods, lain down and gently died. Nobody had found a bag, or any other ID, only that scarf, smeared with the wrong shade of lipstick. He said, through chattering teeth,

‘How old would you say?’

Mother of three, Stella had a good idea. The girl looked no older than Zoe, her eldest daughter. Even the flame-red hair was like Zoe’s, one more reason why this death was so unbearable. Like Lazonby, she turned her back on death, said, calmly,

‘Twenty? There’s a slight swelling, both sides of the lower jaw, the gums look a little sore. Probably wisdom teeth… Late teens to early twenties is the usual time. I could be wrong, we need the path results, but I don’t think this is murder. She’s too peaceful.’

Lazonby said, thoughtfully,

‘No. There’s no sign of a struggle, nothing. You didn’t get anything in her nails? Someone might have been extraordinarily careful. Or she really did lie down and die?’

‘Sudden adult death, you mean? It happens…’

He nodded. Still with his back to the dead girl, he said, harshly,

‘My sergeant was called to a case, end of June. Kid of nineteen, came home at the end of his first year at college. Next morning, they thought he was having a lie-in. Two o’clock, the ten year old brother hammers on his door. Poor lad was already stiff. But you’ll know all about that, he’d be one of yours?’

Stella nodded. Jamie Young, who’d been captain of the grammar school Fifteen and the college had been Balliol… She said, cautiously,

‘Don’t make me swear to it, but I think this is an overdose. It wasn’t an irritant, nothing that would cause cramps or vomiting. The pupils are dilated. Only moderately, it might be nothing, a dark afternoon. And there’s no ID?’

‘Only the back of her watch. Gold, well, you’ve seen it. Old-fashioned. It’s engraved, there’s a name; Miss Emily Powell. Forty years hard labour for the Great Western Railway. It might not mean anything. People sell their souls on ebay. Emily Powell could be an aunt. Great aunt? Great Great, since it’s the Great Western… We’ll check all the missing girls. Chances are, she isn’t one of ours at all.’

Then the men began to climb the steep and rocky path. Already, in the dying light, they needed torches. One of them stumbled and slipped. The searchers had found nothing, nothing else that could belong to this girl. The woodland was part of a wildlife reserve, the well trodden footpath that passed through it was a concession, not strictly public. Permissive Path, said the signposts, and Geography field trips sniggered. In hard frozen mud and hoar frost, footprints made an unreadable collage. The walkers who came here were remarkably tidy. Two hours of searching hadn’t yielded a single sweet wrapper and only one cigarette end. The two lens caps came from expensive cameras. Now the area was taped off, they’d have to try again in daylight. Disobedience had discovered the girl, two excited setters, illicitly let off the leash, bounding back with terrible news.

Stella wouldn’t stay to see them move the body. She’d seen more than enough, wanted, desperately, to be at home. She said, curtly,

‘I’m off. I should have been home hours ago. Call me any time.’

Coming down the frosted slope, she too almost fell. When they rang, she’d changed into trainers. Crampons would have been better. Reaching the car, she tried to phone Tom, but there was no signal. Of course not, she should have rung him from the hill. Her windscreen was a silver forest, the wipers locked solid. When Lazonby’s team reached the road at last, she was still scraping ice, white fingers locked around an old credit card. They didn’t see her, drove away, two cars, one ambulance. The wipers still refused to move. This weather was detestable, November at its dead-end worst. The fog wandered about, half human. She hated driving in fog. Early in their marriage, Tom had crashed on these roads, only driving back from Penrith, Zoe beside him, baby Alice in her car seat, not a scratch on any of them. He’d never had another accident; she was still afraid, would be for the rest of her life.

On Monday, Alice and Jane had scampered off to school in tee-shirts. The Met Office recorded 21C at Heathrow, only one degree less at Inverness, warned, gleefully, of sinister things to come. Nobody believed a word of it, except the children. Next day, every tabloid greeted the Ice Age. Drawing ice-crystals at the breakfast table, Alice predicted polar bears in London and white Arctic hares. Stella smiled. Thinking about Alice and Jane, she nearly always smiled. They were so happy, so completely delighted by life… And Tom. Tom was the source of all her happiness. Three of them, at home, waiting for her. No Zoe now, but she was happy too, enjoying university and all her new friends. The snarling teenage years were over, Zoe was her daughter again…