“Mummy, it’s all white.”

“Yes, darling, it’s all right.” I snuggled against the warm little body in front of me.

“No, white, Mummy.”

Whichever it was, it wasn’t the one I was holding. So it must be the other one. How’s that for logic? See, Tom Agnew, I am a scientist.

“It’s snowing, Mummy, everything is all white.” I opened an eye, I was holding the little one, so it had to be Trish who was making all the noise. My deductive skills were fine. “Mummy, can we go out and play in the snow?”

This woke up Mima, who joined in the cacophony. I tried burying my head under the pillows, but they tickled me. Then I needed a wee. While I was hiding in the loo, I wondered how I could be bullied by two children under five, but I was.

It was seven in the morning, here I was hiding in the loo with two squealing ticklers waiting for me. I surrendered and set a few ground rules. “You can play in the snow, when it’s stopped snowing, and after you have eaten a proper breakfast.”

They both grumbled, but agreed. As far as I knew we didn’t have a sledge, besides which they were too young to ride one. I did think about improvising with some heavy duty plastic bags, such as those used for animal feed or fertiliser. I might look later, for the moment we could build a snowman or throw a few snowballs.

Breakfast was very difficult, they were too excited to eat, but I made them sit there, it was still snowing anyway and I wanted it to stop first, otherwise they would get cold and wet before they’d had much fun.

I almost had a flashback to my father and me playing in snow when I was a kid. I was about Trish’s age, he wanted me to go on the sledge he’d made, and I was too frightened. I just wanted to build a snowman. My mother asked him to humour me, but he went in instead, and I had to build my own snowman, which was rather small, and my hands got so cold, when I went in, I cried with the pains in them. Daddy called me a ‘girl’, which hurt me deeply. I cried even more and he made me stay in my bedroom so he didn’t have to listen to the noise. Fancy me remembering that now?

By the time the snow had stopped around ten, we had several inches of it–so a snowman was quite possible. I told the girls we’d build a snow woman, which they thought was a good idea, or at least they giggled quite a lot.

I put the bread machine on, we’d have some soup when we came in. Sadly it would have to be tinned or packet stuff, as I wouldn’t have enough time to play and cook. Stella was staying in bed, muttering something about, ‘horrid white stuff,’ and ‘a headache.’

I sorted out some clothes for my two would-be snow builders. Neither had much in the way of old clothes, so they’d have to wear decent ones, I’d just have to wash and dry them afterwards. Mima had wellies, Trish didn’t, and so it went on. They both had gloves, scarves and hats. I wrapped their mittened hands in cling film to try and waterproof them. Then it was out into the snow.

Mima had only trotted about twenty feet when she slipped and sat down in the snow. She squealed with laughter, and I picked her up and brushed her down. Trish managed to stay upright until we got to the garden, where she walked across some decking and disappeared.

She yelled, and I told Mima to stay where she was as I rushed to help Trish. She was a little shocked and was crying. She’d stepped into a snow drift and had fallen right into it. She had snow down her neck and up under her coat and up the legs of her jeans. I pulled off her coat and shook it free of the snow and we managed to extract most of the rest with shaking. This made her laugh, and she finally got over her shock. Mima was laughing at our antics until a small avalanche dropped off the roof and landed alongside her, she jumped in fright and fell over–so she was crying. No wonder I didn’t like snow that much.

With some trepidation, I got them up the garden and into a field where we were able to roll a couple of large snowballs and stack them on top of each other. We used some stones for eyes and teeth, some twigs for arms and some straw I found in one of the sheds for hair. The girls laughed when I sculpted a bosom on our snow woman, and a narrowing at the waist.

I went back for the camera and had my two labourers pose with our creation. They were giggling still when we came back in at midday. I was quite surprised they’d lasted so long, their hands and feet were freezing. After I had them jumping up and down and clapping for a few minutes, I took them up into the bath.

As Trish’s secret was no longer secret, if you see what I mean, I dumped them both in the same bath, which I’d filled with bath foam. They played with a plastic duck for a few minutes after which I showered them off and dried them. We were just coming back down to have lunch when Stella decided to get up.

I did the soup, it was tinned, but not too bad, and the bread was still warm from the machine. Stella had lost her appetite so could only manage three slices of bread, which I managed to equal. The girls had one slice each.

They wanted to play again in the snow, and this time I took them for a walk to our nearest hill. We each carried our feed bag, and I explained that the object was to sit or lie on it while holding on to it, as you slid down the slope.

When we got to the hill, about half a mile’s walk, they were grumbling until they saw the other kids on sledges and other improvised items. We weren’t the only ones with bags. They watched the others, then I took Mima with me, and Trish sat on her own bag and off we went. We went about forty yards before we fell off, rolling in the snow. Mima giggled as I picked her up, she was calling for more. We watched as Trish came down about twenty yards then stopped. She wasn’t quite heavy enough.

We tried a three sitter on the bag, but it didn’t really work. We did about forty yards again and rolled off, which had the two girls laughing, but we weren’t going very fast. Some of the boys on sledges were simply flying along. I was a little concerned that they could hit one of the little ones and shouted at two boys in particular, to be careful of the little ones. They ignored me or shouted back something obscene, so I moved our two further over, to avoid them.

I slid in turns with my two, and as the run got compacted it got faster. I was pallying up with another woman who had a small child, a boy, so we watched each other’s kid as well as looking out for the older and bigger kids disturbing us.

I’d just walked back up to the top of our slide with Trish, and was about to take Mima, who waited patiently for her go, when we saw the two boys absolutely rocket down the slope. They must have been doing twenty or thirty miles an hour.

“They’re not going to stop,” I shouted as other revellers jumped out of the way of the sled. One of the boys threw himself off as it went up the bank and crashed into a tree. tThere was a splintering of wood and the boy who’d stayed on it lay still.

There was a shocked silence, “Watch my girls, will you?” I asked the woman, and scrambled down the slope towards the scene of the accident. The only other adult–a man–was also rushing as best he could towards the prostrated boy. We arrived together, huffing and puffing. The boy was bleeding from a head wound, but he was breathing.

The man wanted to roll him over, but I stopped him, cautioning a neck injury. The woman with my children was on her mobile calling for assistance. “Tell them he’s unconscious, he’s bleeding from a head wound but he is breathing,” I shouted to her. She relayed this to ambulance control, who would be in real difficulty to get a vehicle out to us.

The man pulled off his scarf and placed it under the boy’s head to keep the cold and snow off him, I stripped off my coat and laid it over him. We had to try and keep him warm.

“Let me know when you get cold, I’ll put mine on him,” said the man, which we did, ten minutes and we switched coats. I had a clean handkerchief, which we tried to use to staunch the bleeding but the snow was turning increasingly red. I did mould a snowball and hold it against his wound which did slow the bleeding to a trickle, but he’d obviously caught a vein or other vessel the way it was bleeding.

Half an hour later, the air was filled with the sound of a large engine and the air ambulance hove into view. They managed to land about two fields away, nothing else was flat enough and came running with a stretcher and equipment bags.

My girls were looking anxious, so as soon as the paramedics arrived, I dashed back to see to them. Of course I was spattered with blood, which I tried to wipe off with snow. Then I had to return to the accident, they needed another adult to help carry the stretcher because of the slipperiness and depth of the snow.

The paramedics took our names and suggested the police would want to talk with us as witnesses. By the time we’d got the boy loaded into the chopper, and his friend sorted out, he’d broken an arm, jumping off, we were all cold and wet.

We walked part of the way back with the woman and her son. Her name was Diane, and his was Ben. The girls had certainly got on well with him, although I was wary of Trish making many friends in case her secret was discovered, especially boy friends, who might get a bit boisterous. Ben seemed quite quiet as boys went, so maybe he would be okay. We swapped phone numbers just in case.

When we got home, Stella wanted to know why I looked like I’d been slaughtering things. “Mummy helped a naughty boy who crashed his sled,” said Trish loudly.

“Oh, ever the boy scout, eh Cathy?”

“Mummy’s not a boy spwout,” said Mima with indignation, and we all sniggered. Then it was clothes in the washing machine and up to the shower, to get us warm and clean.

I was putting the chicken in the oven when the door bell rang. “PC Bond, how nice to see you,” I said to the two coppers standing on the step. “Do come in.”

He looked very serious.

“Has something awful happened? Oh no, not Tom or Simon?”

“Lady Cameron, it’s okay, they’re fine as far as we know, it’s the kid you tried to help…”

“Oh no,” I gasped and my hands came up to my face.

“…he didn’t make it, so we’ll need a formal witness statement.”

“Oh no, he was breathing when he got to the chopper…” I said, feeling very saddened.

“They apparently rushed him into theatre, he had a clot on the brain and an internal bleed you wouldn’t have seen.”

“I told them to be careful, they were going so fast–too fast.” I wrung my hands, “Why do they always have to learn the hard way?”

“I don’t know.”

The two girls came rushing up to me when they saw me looking so sad. PC Bond, looked at me and heard them both calling me, Mummy.

“You’re collecting them, are you?”

“I’m fostering them.”

“Couldn’t come to a nicer place or foster-mum.”

I smiled back in acknowledgement of his compliment. I made some tea, and the girls showed PC Jones their toys. He kept them amused whilst I made a statement with PC Bond. Then they were back to their 4x4 and back to the station.

“Why were the police here?” asked Stella coming back downstairs.

“The accident we witnessed, he–um–didn’t make it.”

“Oh, bad luck. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. I have to be don’t I? Two little mouths to feed.”