I grab a flashlight from the emergency pack Eirik insists I keep in the glove compartment and fasten the strap of my handbag across my chest. I shine the flashlight into Leah’s car, but there’s nothing unusual there – just a pair of iPhone headphones and a chewing gum wrapper on the passenger seat. I take a couple of steps back and am about to start walking when I let my eyes rest on the tires of the car. I can’t help but release a shocked sound when I see that both tires on this side of the car are flat, clearly slashed. My pulse rising, I walk around the other side. These too, are flat.

I stare up the narrow, steep slope of the track. Again, I think about my sensation of danger as I left the apartment in Oslo. What am I going to find at the end of this track? I decide to leave the holdall in the car – I’m just going to do a quick sweep of the cabin. Hopefully Leah is there, safe and willing to have a real conversation about what’s going on. We can talk in the car on the way back, no reason to remain in a remote cabin. No wonder she hasn’t returned home if her car has been deliberately damaged and she has no phone reception. I get a sudden, terrifying picture in my head of Anton slashing her tires, angry with her for refusing to return to the city with him because she was still waiting for me. I have no intention of staying for longer than to convince Leah to come back to Oslo with me, but I simply have to get to the bottom of this. I glance at the crude map Leah drew for me, and walk for a good ten minutes, and my legs start to ache as the track’s incline gets ever steeper. The snow is still falling in tiny flakes from a dull white sky, and as I turn and look back down the way I came, I see much darker, lower clouds encroaching, closer now. They’re the kind that carry heavy, wet snowflakes capable of covering the landscape in a swift whiteout.