My breath hung frozen in the air as I walked out on the deck, treading carefully for fear of ice, and leant a moment on the frosty rail, my hands deep in my coat pockets in a vain attempt to ward off the cold. Had they told me our destination – had they even known it – I should have bought furs and thicker gloves in Oxford Street; instead, I was dressed for an English winter, and an English winter, moreover, which I had hardly expected to last beyond November – for then I should have been home, I thought, and able to get my own things back.

Instead, I was somewhere which, by the looks of it, would be hard for any man to survive without great difficulty, and extremes of weather have never been my forte. Stamping my feet for warmth, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to stop my teeth from chattering.

“You look cold,” Ari remarked, from behind me. I turned at once, a sarcastic response already rising to my lips – of course I was bloody cold! – but bit it back at the last moment. She had, it seemed, been avoiding me since the night she had come to my bedside – if, of course, that had really happened – and I didn’t much enjoy the idea of making it worse by slighting her again.