‘Adrenaline,’ he replied. ‘The body steps up in flight mode. It can adapt to almost anything. I used to get it, surfing heavy water. I’d feel physically sick when I looked back at some of the footage of the stuff I rode, but when I was out there, in the moment . . .’ He shrugged.

‘I would have just skied over the edge,’ she whispered, staring at it, the swirl of air where the mountain wasn’t.

He looked back at her. ‘. . . Yeah.’ He swallowed, looking away again. ‘Lucky for you I’m a Kiwi . . .’ And when she appeared not to understand, he added, ‘Rugby? I can tackle?’

‘Oh. Yes . . . I played netball at school. Not sure how much use that would have been if I’d been trying to save you.’

He gave a faintly bemused look. ‘. . . No.’ It was growing so dark, so quickly, the snow appeared to glow ultra-violet.

‘How did you even know I was down here?’ She stared at him.

‘I was talking with Tipper when he got the call from the US team coach. He told me, just a few moments before I saw you barrelling out past the pipe. I knew you’d . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Had a thing with him . . . so I realized you must have heard, to be skiing like that . . . Then I saw you miss the turn and go off-piste.’

‘But you could have been killed too,’ she said quietly.

He didn’t respond for a few beats. ‘Well, you dived into a fist fight to save me. I figured it was the least I could do.’

‘Fist fight? Right, yes. Completely comparable to skiing off a cliff.’

He shrugged. ‘. . . I don’t like being beholden.’

A small snort escaped her. ‘I didn’t have any sense that you felt you were.’

He looked at her but didn’t reply. His arms were clasped around his knees as he looked out over the drop. He had made her sit cross-legged, clutching the sapling – ‘in case there’s an avalanche’; no word of what he’d do in that eventuality.

They were stranded in a couloir that faced deeper into the mountains. Kaprun and Zell am See were at their backs, and in the absence of any light pollution whatsoever, the stars were beginning to wink at them, peeping out, one, two, three, four . . .

‘Jeez, it’s cold,’ she murmured, rubbing her gloved hands together. Snow had got inside her coat as she’d rolled down the slope; it had melted, leaving her skin chill and damp.

He looked across and saw how she was shivering. ‘Take my jacket,’ he said, beginning to unzip his coat.

‘No!’ She looked at him, horrified. ‘No.’

‘I’m fine. I don’t get cold.’

‘Everyone gets cold in minus twenty. Even polar bears get chilly in that.’

He gave a small grunt but zipped his jacket closed again. ‘You’re shivering.’