I very slowly drag myself up so I am standing on my right foot, using an upended tree trunk for support. I run my hands across my torso and over my head and find everything more or less in its usual place, with the exception of some very sore points at the left side of my skull and jaw, and quite possibly a broken rib. I can’t help but cry out loud as my fingers travel across the bruised side of my face. My fingers are so stiff with cold, their tips are numbed beyond any real sensation. With the exception of the broken ankle, I don’t think I am dangerously injured, though the state of the left side of my face is worrying. An image of Leah that last day comes to mind – how I must resemble her now, eyes bruised shut, covered in bloody scratches, terror etched on my face.

I have no choice but to try to return to the cabin. Maybe I’ll be able to find some bandages and something to splint my left leg with, and tomorrow morning I might be able to drag myself back down to the car in the daylight. Or at least find my phone and call an ambulance. I’ll light a fire and eat whatever I can find in Leah’s cupboards, then I’ll sleep. Everything will be better tomorrow; I have to believe that.

I burst into tears again at the thought of my own bed at home, and how every night I fall asleep next to my husband, drawn close into his warm embrace. But not tonight. How could I have been so stupid to come to a remote cabin by myself? Telemark is a big county, with thousands of cabins scattered across remote and mountainous terrain. Nobody can find me here.

I try to hop up the slippery path in the direction I came, but I can’t place any weight at all on my left foot, and after less than a couple of meters, I fall back down. I scream with the pain; it is unlike anything I’ve felt in all my life. I make myself get halfway back up so I’m on my hands and knees and begin to drag myself up the path. My hands claw at the slushy snow and the sharp rocks underneath, tearing at my skin, and I also have a nosebleed, making droplets of blood drip onto the snow as I inch forward. The snowstorm has momentarily eased up and the dense clouds have parted to reveal patches of inky black sky. Pinprick stars twinkle merrily and it feels as though they are taunting me – a lone, broken woman crawling on her hands and knees across snow-covered rocks, up an inaccessible forest track to an isolated cabin.

I keep going. I have to, or I die.