Script quote along a thigh

The pass closed on Tuesday, so the road is gone and so, for now, is the last coach. We have eleven guests and a hearth that eats logs faster than Dad can split them. Mrs Hale insists the snow will stop by Friday. She said the same thing the winter you left, and you know how that went.

Yesterday a man came up the lane on foot, soaked to the knees, carrying a rucksack held shut with baler twine. He asked for a room and paid in coins so old the Queen's head was worn flat. I gave him number four, the one under the eaves, because it was the only one with a bolt on the inside. He didn't ask for it. He simply looked at the bolt and nodded, as if he'd been expecting it.

Last night, sorting the guest book by the fire, I found your name on a page from three winters back. Under it, in your loopy hand, you'd written a line you must have copied from somewhere: Not all those who wander are lost. Beneath it you'd drawn a little compass with the needle pointing at the word lost, which made me laugh until I had to put the book down.

I took the stranger's breakfast up this morning. His door was open and the room was empty, the bed made tight, the twine gone. On the windowsill he'd left a folded map of the high fells with one route traced in pencil, ending at our front door. Beside it, in careful capitals, he'd written: THANK YOU, ADA. He knew my name. I still don't know how.

Come home when the thaw comes, or don't, but write me. The pencil line is still on the sill if you want to see it.

Love, Ada