She knew now with absolute certainty that she had been buried upside down, and vertically. Her feet were nearest to the surface of the snow, not her head. This meant that by scratching on the snow she’d been digging down, deeper into the snow, not up and out. That was why the snow wasn’t flaking free. She’d been digging the wrong way.

She tried flexing her toe inside her boot. It moved a fraction, but the snow around her leg was too hard-packed to let her move her leg. She inched her ungloved hand to her neck and found she could reach her hand through the snow to her chest. By scratching she could push her hand to her hip, and the snow fell in clumps towards her face. Then her hand hit a solid object.

It was her ski pole.

The handle of the ski pole rested at hip height. She grabbed it and discovered it lay exactly in line with her thigh. At first it wouldn’t move but by making a gentle sawing motion she could release a trickle of snow above her.

Saw it. That’s right. Saw saw saw. Good girl. Saw your way out of this coffin.

Her arm cramped and her muscles spasmed, but she kept up the tiny incremental sawing motion. With mounting excitement she felt the pole jag on her ski boot. Almost hyperventilating again, she sawed the pole back and forth, and felt a tiny pop as the pole broke the surface of the snow. A pencil beam of brilliant sunlight penetrated her tomb as the pole acted like a conduit for electricity. Something indeterminate between a laugh and a cry bubbled from her lips. Her lungs sucked in the icy air and a sob erupted from her.

‘Jake! Anyone! Help!’

She continued to saw away with her pole, trying to widen the narrow shaft to suck in some air, some sunshine, some life. But the effort exhausted her. When she stopped sawing all she could hear was her own ventilating lungs, a scratchy, underwater sound. Now her arm was cramping badly. She tried to ease it, but the ski pole twisted and the plastic basket at the end of it only dragged snow down into the aperture she’d made, closing off the pencil beam of light all over again.