The Mist
The very first image of the novel is one that recurs throughout the story. It is a climatic reality of the setting: the setting that so disturbs Patricia. The mist becomes imagery as the reader can take it to symbolize the murky atmosphere of reality in a story that is full of lies, deceptions, and various configurations of the perception of truth: “She draws back the curtains to reveal the mist. It has filled the whole valley and invaded every cupboard of the house. Her bedroom overlooks a row of kennels, silvery grey and subsiding at odd angles under a great green wave of brambles. The bloodwoods, solemn as totems, are barely visible above the old dog-run. She doesn’t know what possessed them to plant those trees. To protect them from the wind, the sun, the view? It hardly matters now" (3).
Disinterment
There are images of physical disinterment—Rachel and the dog—that act as imagistic corollaries to the larger theme of disinterment of secrets, memories, and truths. Just as Patricia has Rachel dug up and taken away from the farm, Looksmart's arrival "digs up" the truth about Grace, Richard, the dog, and the unborn child.
The Open Plan
Similar to the aforementioned image, there is the concrete example of the farmhouse being turned into an open-plan space—a place of light, space, and views—that is contrasted with the images of the house as it is currently—dark, full of cobwebs, hemmed in by trees and mist. This is also reflective of what is happening more metaphorically: Patricia, Richard, and all of their secrets and traumas are leaving, and due to the reckoning that Patricia underwent, there is a sense that things will be truer, fairer, and more open now.
Patricia and Richard
Patricia and Richard are elderly characters, and Higginson describes them in ways that connote their physical and/or mental deterioration. Patricia is often depicted in a wheelchair, while Richard's movements and thoughts are in shambles. This suggests that they are relics of an older age, no longer veritable titans of the land due to their race and ancestry.
