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back into the BMW. Its tires skittered on the ice before he closed the door, and the car disappeared from her view.
    How long ago had that been? How long had she hidden in the dark there? The shivering had become uncontrollable, her limbs jerking and bucking. She knew she had to move or the cold would get her. She had seen it before, how the hypothermia took old Vasyl on the neighboring farm. With no money for fuel, he had burrowed into a pile of rags at the bottom of a wardrobe to die. Like an animal, Mama had said, digging its own grave.
    It was the arrival of another car saying Harbour Police on its flank that got her on her feet. Galya clung to the shadows as she fought to put one foot in front of the other, her arms and legs feeling like they belonged to a drunkard. The icy air robbed her of her balance as she tried to quicken her pace.
    A foolish part of her almost welcomed the growing numbness in her feet, blocking the stinging pain, but then she remembered how Papa had lost parts of his own to frostbite. She wiggled her naked toes to keep the blood flowing to them.
    Through the stacked sacks of concrete and lorry cabs, in the orange-lit distance, she saw the policeman kneel beside his fallen colleague. While his attention was on the stricken man, Galya emerged from the darkness to cut across the road and lose herself in the night.
    She had half run, half walked perhaps a quarter of a mile or more, keeping the rumble of the motorway on her right, water on her left, when she heard the sirens. That was when she had come upon the stretch of steel skeletons, a row of buildings under construction.
    Galya squeezed through a gap in the barrier that had been erected around the site. Four stories of girders rose up above her head. She kept to the edge of the site, her focus on the ground in case a hole might swallow her. For every step she took, she first explored the earth and stones with her toes. Her vision failed as she moved further into the site and away from the streetlights.
    An old church stood adjacent, on the other side of the plywood wall, its arched windows showing no light from within. Galya skirted its perimeter until she reached the far side of the building site and found a hinged door secured by a padlock and chain. She pushed against it, opening a gap of only a few inches, and crouched down. Her slender shoulder fit through the opening beneath the chain, but her head jammed tight in the gap. Coarse wood scratched her cheek. She put all her weight against the barrier, and splinters dug at her ear as she squeezed her head through. A thin cry escaped her as she lost skin and hair to the wooden edges before she finally forced her other shoulder through. She fell to the ground and snaked her torso and hips between the panels. But for the stinging frost, she might have rested there a moment.
    Instead, Galya fought her way upright. Her limbs were back under her control at last, the wild shivering spasms abated at least for now.
    A fence, perhaps ten feet tall, stood opposite, a car park and new-looking apartment blocks beyond it. Lights shone in a few of them. Could she ring their doorbells, ask for the use of a phone? Possibly. But how would they react to a strange foreign girl disturbing them in the early hours? A pay phone would be better.
    Day or night, he’d said.
    The kind man.
    Galya saw a car parked at the end of the street, its windows steamed up, its front wheels on the pavement, a streetlight shining down on it. Beyond that, an open gate.
    Move, Galya told herself. If she kept still, the cold would start to gnaw at her again. She made for the gate. Her soles stung with every step. God only knew what kind of state they were in. Worry about that later, she thought. Get shelter, get help.
    A bar stood at that end of the fenced-off street, the old building standing lonely and defiant against the new structures that sprouted up around it. A sign advertising Guinness hung over the door. No noise from within.
    As