When I rest my forehead on the tree’s rough bark, energy floods into me and it’s as comforting and familiar as resting in my dad’s arms. After only a minute, I am brimming with energy. Energy that will carry me home to Dad. I don’t let myself think of his face when I turn up without Mum.

Then I have a terrible, heart-stopping thought. What if I can’t get back? What if the same thing goes wrong for me as it did for Mum? What if I am stuck here, alone, knowing no-one except a street-kid busker?

From behind nearby bushes comes the sound of arguing. ‘But you know never to bring strangers back!’ a girl says. ‘I don’t care about your stupid card trick, Haz!’

Someone appears out of the darkness: a tall boy, maybe sixteen, with a thin face. He glares at me. ‘You need to leave right now.’ He’s holding a stick.

‘Okay, I’ll go.’ I back away. There are at least three of them. Haz, the girl and this boy.

‘Have you got any money?’ he demands.

I shake my head.

He roughly searches my jacket pockets, and flicks my feather talisman onto the snow. He finds the rolled up hundred-dollar note Dad gave me and shines a torch onto it. ‘Australian money?’ He glances over his shoulder towards the bushes.

‘Leave her alone, Asif,’ calls the girl.

He ignores her. ‘No bag?’ he asks as he pockets my money and leafs through Mum’s Welsh dictionary. ‘Are you Welsh?’

‘No and no,’ I say, and bend to pick up my bedraggled feather.

The girl’s voice comes from the bushes. ‘She’s young. Bring her into the warm.’

Thank you, I think. My whole body is shaking with cold and my feet are numb.

The boy glowers at me but leads me to a small portable building. Inside, blankets have been hung over the windows and the warm, fuggy room is dimly lit by a lamp on the floor and a glowing wall heater.

Haz kneels in front of a small camping stove, stirring something in a pot. On a big desk sits a couple of neatly folded blankets and a dozen tins of food. Fluoro vests and hard hats hang from hooks along one wall.

A teenage girl wearing a blanket like a cape says, ‘You mustn’t tell anyone we are here.’ As she steps towards me and into the light, I get a good look at her face.

‘Claudie!’ I exclaim, bursting with surprise and relief.

Claudie’s face drops. ‘Who are you?’

‘It’s me. Tulsi.’ I reach for her.

She steps back. ‘I don’t know any Tulsi.’

This is a different version of Claudie, I tell myself. It’s Claudie from this universe. But I want to cry. My heart actually hurts to see Claudie looking at me suspiciously.