She hung immobile, trying to steady her breathing, but she felt the pocket of air warming and thinning all over again. She felt dizzy. She felt her breathing drop through the gears and then a terrible surrender passed over her as she felt her consciousness shutting down.

Dimly from somewhere she heard a faint sound, like that of fingers sifting flour in a bowl. It was far off. Then it became a scratching, nearer.

And then she heard him.

‘Zoe! I’m here! I’m here!’

‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God!’

‘I’m here. It’s all right.’

She couldn’t see him, but his voice was like light through a stained-glass window in a cathedral. She could feel him digging frantically around her boot. She could hear his panting and gasps of exertion

‘It’s no good, I’m going to have to get someone!’ she heard him shout.

‘No, Jake! Dig me out! Dig me out now! Don’t leave! Don’t!’

There was silence.

‘Okay. I’m digging you out.’

‘Work on one side.’

‘What?’

‘One side!’

‘I can’t hear you. I’m digging you out.’

It took Jake an hour to dig Zoe free of the snow. No one came by. First he dug her right leg free and then cleared a deep shaft down to her head, so that she was out of danger of suffocation even if she still couldn’t move. Then at last he freed her arm and she was able to help him.

He barely had the strength to hoist her out of the snow-hole when she was clear. But together they got her out.

On their knees, they hugged for a long time; almost hugging the life out of each other.

‘Look at your eyes!’ she said. ‘They’re completely bloodshot!’

‘The snow walloped me in the face.’ He looked up and down the slope. ‘When you want the piste to be teeming with people there’s not a bastard in sight. Do you want to wait here while I go get someone?’