‘Come on, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Put it on.’ She looked at me with wide eyes, jerking her head round at a movement in a tree overhead. A bird, its silhouette just visible among the black branches. ‘We’re going to be OK,’ I said, but I sounded like I was trying to reassure myself more than her. In fact, she seemed to be recovering from the shock more quickly than me, as she cracked a weak joke: ‘When I said I wanted to go off the beaten track, I didn’t mean this far off it.’ Alina stood a few feet away, gazing along the tracks, seemingly in a trance. ‘Do you know where we are?’ I asked. She
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