‘I’ve come to rescue you!’ he bellowed, pulling his goggles down around his neck. ‘Just take it easy. It’s not far to the hotel.’

His accent indicated that he was local.

I couldn’t quite work out what one man was going to be able to do in this carriage full of wailing people. And yet it was as if his very presence had a calming effect on us all. Even the pink baby stopped crying. The boy who had been swearing non-stop since the crash yelled out one last salvo:

‘It’s about fucking time somebody turned up! Fucking hell!’

Then he shut up.

I might have fallen asleep. Perhaps I was in fact on the point of freezing to death. At any rate, the cold was no longer so troublesome. I’ve read about that sort of thing. Even if I can’t claim that I felt the pleasant drowsiness that is said to precede death from the cold, my teeth had at least stopped chattering. It was as if my body had decided on a change of strategy. It no longer wanted to fight and shake. Instead I could feel muscle after muscle giving in and relaxing. At least in that part of my body where I still have feeling.

I’m not sure if I fell asleep.

But something has disappeared from my memory. The rescuer must have helped quite a lot of people before I gave a sudden start.

‘What the hell…’

He was bending over me. His breath was burning against my cheek, and I think I smiled. Immediately after that he squatted down and examined my knees. Or rather my thigh, as I would soon learn.

‘Are you disabled? Are your legs crippled? From before, I mean?’

I didn’t have the strength to answer.

‘Johan,’ he shouted suddenly, without getting up. ‘Johan, over here!’

He was no longer alone, then. I could hear the sound of an engine through the storm, and the gusts of wind from outside carried with them the faint smell of exhaust fumes. The roaring noise came and went, grew louder and then faded away, and I came to the conclusion that there must be several snowmobiles at work. The man called Johan knelt down and scratched his beard when he saw what his friend was pointing at.