Skull ice cream cone with dripping melt

The inn at Cold Harbour has sixteen rooms and one working fridge, which is how I came to be the only person in the valley guarding a tub of Neapolitan like it was the Crown Jewels. The snow shut the lane on Tuesday. Mr Pell, who drives the ice cream van for every village up the dale, got as far as the bridge and gave up, so the wafers in the cellar are all that stand between us and a very long week.

Each evening I build soft-serve towers for the four guests stranded with us. The skull mould came out of the van's old tin box, a joke Pell's father bought in Scarborough in 1974 and never once used. I pressed it into a bowl of sugar, and the thing has been weeping down the sideboard ever since, sticky and bright however cold the room gets. Nobody has the heart to tell the Dutch couple it's melting.

Last night the lamps failed, so we sat round the stove passing a spoon. Mrs Ashdown, who has not smiled since Thursday, pulled a fishnet stocking out of her carpet bag, held it up to the firelight and laughed until she coughed. Then she produced a single red heeled shoe from under her coat and asked whether anyone had seen its partner. Nobody had. I'll tell you the rest when the road opens.

I keep starting my notebook entries with I'm so... and finishing them differently. Tomorrow I'll send Pell up to fetch the last of the wafers, whatever the drifts say. Love, Edie