‘No,’ my father says. ‘Wolves aren’t dangerous.’ We start walking again and, after a while, my father says, ‘See the strands of fur on the tree, Sky? A grizzly used this as a scratching post last summer.’

‘They have really powerful claws, right?’ I ask.

‘Powerful but delicate. They can pick fragile berries from bushes; their paws are designed like scoops.’

Later, we see tracks in the snow: two large bean-shaped marks with two smaller ones. Adam takes out a book and shows me how to identify them.

‘A female caribou?’ I ask.

‘Right,’ he says.

I smile like a little girl making her father proud.

It’s not even 4pm, but it’s already dusk as we set up the tent. It’s big and sturdy; a little hole in the roof releases the smoke from a small stove hung inside. My father promises me it will burn all night and I’ll be so toasty I won’t even need my second fleece. Plan B, he says, there’s always the heater in the car. That reassures me.

I bring more wood from the boot of the car, and the sky’s black as we rekindle our fire into a roaring flame.

‘Do you know the most dangerous animal in the world?’ my father asks, cooking the dehydrated rice in a pot.

‘Crocodiles, red-bellied black snakes, lions …?’ I wrap a potato in aluminium foil and throw it into the embers.

‘A mother protecting her cub. Never get between them.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ I say, thinking of Mum and all she sacrificed to raise me alone. I wrap another potato, smashing the foil tightly, and throw it too hard into the fire. It misses the flames. What would he know about being a good parent, or even a parent at all? I kick the potato into the fire.

He never saw all the work my mum did to keep us going, her hardships, and how she fought for me even when she got sick. He never knew what an excellent mother and good woman she was. He never gave her a chance, gave us a chance to be a family. He left and now Mum’s dead and he’ll never know anything.

I stoke the embers with a stick as my anger turns to tears. I miss my mum a thousand times a day in a million different ways.

We sit quietly, my father oblivious to the change in my mood.

‘I was going to bring marshmallows but then I realised, damn, gelatine,’ he says, firelight playing on his face. ‘So I got bananas and dark chocolate instead.’

We cut a slice into the banana skin, fill it with cubes of chocolate, wrap each banana in silver foil and throw them into the fire. When they’re ready, the chocolate has melted into the fruit and we eat it with a spoon.