The huge man was on his feet again. Behind him on the low table in front of the fire lay the crumpled piece of brown paper he’d been carrying when he’d first come storming in. He had smoothed it out. I wondered what it was. A letter perhaps? Some sort of contract? A set of instructions? Something, at least, that formed a connection of some sort between him and the woman?

He was standing now with his back to the fire. I could see his face. He had pushed his wild black hair back from his forehead and as we watched him through the open kitchen door, he rubbed his cheeks and forehead vigorously with his big hands, as if he were washing his face – the way people do when they are tired and want to revive themselves before beginning some new and necessary task. He let out a big sigh. Then he put on his coat, walked over to the door, and went back out into the snow.

It was falling more thickly now. The woman, in her shawl, had begun to resemble a big white stone. A black dog had come trotting out from the town and was sniffing around at the base of the sledge.

I opened the front door a crack behind the man. The wind had died away and when he spoke we heard him clearly.

‘You will freeze,’ he was saying to her in a flat toneless voice. ‘In the morning I will come and you will be nothing but a block of ice. A frozen statue.’

I could see now that she was very beautiful, but also that she was as angry as he was. Both of them had exactly the same expression – sullen, furious, unyielding. She hated him and he hated her back. You could feel it, plain as anything, the poison between them – a bitter, resentful mutual loathing that seemed ready at any moment to turn into something much, much nastier.

The Cossack took a step forward, the dry snow squeaked beneath his boot. ‘You should come in now,’ he said.

The woman raised her chin. ‘No.’

‘Then you will die.’