She shook her head. Tommy could be mean and nasty and was very good at belittling his wife, but surely he wouldn’t let the Ruby Spirit commence its return journey without her?

No, Anna would push on; she would continue tracking Paula. And when she returned to the ship – alone – she would go back to England. If by some slim chance the ship had sailed, she would make her own way back and look Tommy up when she got there.

She locked her phone and pushed it into her backpack to nestle alongside the stolen waxed jacket. The pink beret caught her eye and she pulled it out. She needed to begin discarding the items that could be used as evidence against her. And not all in the same place.

Pulling out Mark’s iPhone, she used it to dig a shallow hole and dropped the beret into it. She kicked snow over it until it had vanished.

When she was done, she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders and began to walk.

At first, Paula thought it was a mirage, a shimmering, glittering pool of ice. She scrubbed at her head, at the pain that jangled at her temples. The throbbing intensified when she breathed in, and she closed her eyes.

Mirages only happened in the desert, or in really hot places, didn’t they?

She opened her eyes. It was still there. And because she had no other options, she decided to walk towards it.

It was further away than she’d thought, and the condensation of her own breath and the snow that came in sideways obscured her vision. But it remained there, and didn’t falter, and finally she came to a stop.

So, not a mirage, but a real lake, as wide and long as any she had ever seen. The bank was crusted with snow studded with gravel and sand. Bending down, she took her glove off, shoved it in her pocket and scooped up a handful of water. It burned her palm, and in some far-off part of her mind, she wondered if this was one of the thermal lakes Tommy had mentioned. But no, as the water trickled out between her fingers, she realised that it only felt warm because her skin was so cold.

She scooped up another handful, and raised it to her mouth, wondering if it was safe to drink, swearing a little at this fact being just one more thing she didn’t know.

Tommy would have known.

She drank it anyway, then pulled out the almost-empty drinking bottle from her shoulder bag and filled it up. The world spun a little; she swayed, let the feeling take her and landed hard on her backside.