A half-hearted push in the snow with her hands behind her sent her staggering to her feet. Ahead, a solitary bird with a patch of red on its breast shrieked, shattering the silence, then took flight. Almost immediately the clouds opened up above her, and the sky shimmied, becoming lighter and darker all at once.

She held her breath, feeling the shift and the change, and kept her eyes focused on the sky. With a shudder it burst into life, and she released her breath in a long, drawn-out sigh.

A night-time rainbow. The Northern Lights. The reason for being here. Those magical elements that had so far eluded her. She drank them in, wondering what they meant.

A new beginning, perhaps. Or the end of something. Which made sense, because to have a new start, something had to come to an end.

The sound of footsteps had the same effect as shattering glass.

Reluctantly, she dropped her gaze from the sky and took a single step forward. The presence behind her mimicked her movement.

The rainbow flared, flickered and faded.

‘Hi,’ said a voice.

She ignored it at first. A part of her hoped it was a hallucination caused by dehydration and hypothermia. Her thoughts were very matter-of-fact, as though this was expected; what she deserved.

More footsteps now, crunching on gravel and snow.

Slowly, her body stiff now that she had stopped moving, she turned around.

Anna.

A flutter of fear, but so much less than she’d felt on the boat when she’d looked into her eyes. Just muscle memory, because the woman might have killed the man she was supposed to be looking after, but then again, perhaps it had been an accident.

Bruises on his face… airways blocked.

Paula nodded dully to herself. No accident.

‘I’m lost.’ Her voice had a strange echo. ‘Are you lost too?’

‘I’m not lost.’ Anna smiled and moved closer.

Paula tried to back away as Anna approached, but there was something that made her freeze. Suddenly she was back on the deck of the cruise ship and someone was coming at her, and she couldn’t move quickly enough, and that person was going to crash into her—

Instinctively she put her head down, flinching away from the oncoming figure.

But Anna moved on past and pointed out to the lake.

‘The harbour is just there, do you think the ice will hold us?’

Paula looked at her incredulously. ‘The harbour isn’t there,’ she said. ‘That’s a lake!’

‘No, beyond it, look,’ said Anna. ‘I should know, I just came from there.’

Paula moved a few steps to the side. The wind flung the snow at her, and it stung now as it bounced off her face. The snow on the ground was whipped up into a circle that rose and fell. She watched it, fascinated, before looking across at Anna.