CHAPTER FOUR
MONDAY 16TH JANUARY 2017 – FERNLEY COTTAGE
It was a quarter past one in the afternoon when, after days of mild weather, a cell of bitter air released its wrath on Devon. The local news reported uprooted trees, power outages and traffic chaos as blizzards swept down from the moors. The view from Judith’s studio, moments earlier a patchwork of green and brown beneath a milky wintry sky, transformed as whorls of agitated snowflakes, ensconced in a thick haze of grey, shrunk the depth of field.
She switched off the radio and returned to the work on her easel, losing herself in a riverbank scene set against a backdrop of vast undulating plains beneath a blue vault of sky. The trees in the foreground were giving her trouble. They were nothing like the trees outside. Mottled trunk
