‘Vingt minutes?’

He nodded, then put his finger to his lips. I smiled to show I understood. They were without permits, then.

‘Oui, oui. Je comprends. Secret, oui?’

He nodded again and we parted company. They continued up the path and I carried on down, feeling unaccountably rather cheered by the exchange. Before long, the slope levelled out and I found myself on a patch of flat ground that looked out over a valley to the mountains on the far side. The sky seemed brighter and there was no snow on the fields, just the faintest hint of frost on the furrowed earth. Then, beyond a row of bare trees, signs of life. A twist of smoke wreathing up into the air.

‘Thank God,’ I sighed again.

The village sat in a dip between the hills, surrounded on all sides by the mountains. Red-tiled roofs, grey stone chimneys and, in the centre, higher than all the other buildings, the spire of a church. I picked up the pace, keeping the steeple and bell as the fixed point in my sights. I was already imagining the comforting clatter spilling out from the cafés and bars, the rattling of crockery in the kitchens, the sound of human voices.

There was a bridge in the furthest corner of the meadow. I made for it and crossed quickly, surprised to see the stream was flowing. I would have thought the rills and brooks would be frozen from November to March at such altitudes. But the water was racing along, lapping against the bottom of the bridge and splashing up over the banks. I heard the thin tolling of the church bell, the mournful single note carried on the air.

One, two, three…

I was surprised that so little time had passed since I’d abandoned the car on the road. But I knew as well as the next man how our experiences mould themselves to fill the time allocated to them. It was easy to believe that shock and the foul weather had muddled my sense of time.

I listened until the bell died away, then stepped off the bridge and carried on across the meadow. Here, autumn appeared not to have entirely relinquished its hold on the land. Instead of the barren grey and white of the mountain passes, there were the reds and copper of fallen leaves. In the hedgerows I could see tiny splashes of colour, flowers of blue and pink and yellow, like confetti scattered in a churchyard after a wedding. I even picked out broom, and autumn poppies growing tall. Bright red, like splashes of blood against the white frosted tips of the green grass.

The meadow gave way to an earthen track, wide enough for a cart or a car to pass along. Its surface was slippery and once or twice I felt my boots all but slide from under me, though I stayed upright.

Finally, I came to a small wooden sign telling me I had arrived in Nulle. I hesitated, looking back over my shoulder at the soaring mountains with their cloak of trees, sheer against the winter sky. I was suddenly reluctant to leave them behind me. The thought of having to find lodgings, explain my predicament once more, the effort required to organise the rescue of my car, all of it seemed beyond me.

And there was something more. I have gone over this moment many times in the past five years and, still, I have no idea why instinctively I knew there was some kind of cloud, some sadness, hanging over the village. That something was not quite right, was misaligned, like a picture askew on a wall.

I shook my head. I was in no position to find fault. I was cold and tired. There would be time enough, once I found lodgings, to consider the events of the day. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets and walked into the village.

The storm had clearly passed over the valley, leaving it untouched, for there was no snow at all on the road or the roof tiles.

I walked slowly, trying to get the measure of the place. I passed a handful of low buildings which looked like stores or animal pens. Drips of water had frozen along the guttering in rows of icy daggers pointing sharply down at the hard ground below. Notwithstanding the fearsome cold, the village seemed oddly deserted. No boys with delivery carts selling milk and butter. No post office vans. In the houses, I saw an occasional shadow move in and out of the slivers of light that slipped out between partially open shutters, but no one out and about. Once I thought I heard footsteps behind me, but when I turned, the street was empty. Other sounds were rare – a dog barking and a strange, repetitive noise, like the rattling of wood against the cobbles – and vanished into the mist as quickly as they had come. After a while, I began to wonder if I had imagined them.

I walked further. Then my ears picked out what sounded like the bleating of sheep, though I knew that was unlikely in December. I’d been told of the twice-yearly fête de la transhumance, the festival in September to mark the departure of the men and flocks to winter pastures in Spain, then again in May, to celebrate their safe return. Throughout the upper river valleys of the Pyrenees, this was a fixture on the annual calendar, a time-honoured tradition of which they were proud. More than once I’d heard the Spanish slopes described as the ‘côté soleil ’ and the French side of the mountains as the ‘côté ombre’. Sunshine and shadows.

The houses grew more substantial and the condition of the road improved, though still I saw no one. On the end walls of the buildings were tattered advertising boards promoting soap or own-brand cigarettes or aperitifs, and ugly telephone wires stretched between the buildings. Everything in Nulle seemed drab and half-hearted. The colours on the posters were bleached and dull, the paper peeling at the corners. Rust flaked from the metal fixings on the wall that held the wires in place. But there was something about the stillness of the afternoon light, the ambience of being down-at-heel, that I liked, like a photograph of a once-fashionable destination that had now grown old and tired. I felt oddly at home in this forgotten village, with its air of having been left behind.

By now I had arrived at the heart of the village, the place de l’Église. I tipped my cap back on my head – the snow had seeped through to the headband and was making my forehead itch in any case – and took stock. In the centre of the square was a stone well, a pail dangling from a black wrought-iron rail that arched across it. From where I stood, I could see a bistro-café, a pharmacie and a tabac. All of them were shut. The awning above the café was shabby and hung loosely against the wall, as if even it had long since given up hope. The church filled one side of the square, flanked by a line of plane trees, their silver bark mottled like the skin on an old man’s hand. Even they seemed disconsolate, abandoned. The street lamps were already alight. I say lamps, but in fact they were old-fashioned flambeaux, real torches of fire and pitch burning in the open air. The darting flames cast criss-cross patterns down through the bare branches of the trees to the cobbled stones beneath.

My eye was drawn by a narrow building, larger than the rest, with a wooden sign hanging on the wall. A boarding house or hotel, perhaps? I walked quickly across the square towards it. Three wide stone steps led up to a low wooden door, beside which hung a brass bell. Its thick rope twisted in the currents of cold air, round and round. A hand-painted board above the door announced the name of the proprietors: M & MME GALY.

I hesitated, conscious of the fact that I looked pretty disreputable. The cut on my cheek was no longer bleeding, but I had specks of dried blood on my collar, my clothes were wet and I had no luggage to recommend me. I looked wretched. I straightened my scarf, pushed my stained handkerchief and gloves down into the pockets of my overcoat and adjusted my cap.