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"Dunno."

"Well, will you try?" Striving to keep my voice under control and not bark at him. Because this was his fault. I'd no idea what he'd done, but he'd done something. Something stupid. Something that validated his nickname.

"All right. Here goes."

I heard him fumbling. Grunting with effort. Then there was a click, and a thump, and an "owww!"

"You okay?"

"Yeah," came the sore reply. "Just undid my belt, not yours."

Some kind of genius. "Have a go at mine, then."

More fumbling, another click, and I felt myself coming loose, legs sliding around and down, and suddenly the places where I was hurting all expanded at once, merging, joining forces so that my body became a single solid mass of pain.

"Gid? Gid?"

Abortion's voice came distantly to me, as though through fog, getting louder as the pain slowly lessened.

"Gid, you're injured."

"No kidding," I gasped. "What gave it away?"

"Uh, the way you were yelling?"

I had, admittedly, been screaming like a girl.

"I think I've got a couple of broken ribs," I said. "Maybe a broken ankle too. Done something to my shoulder. And I've banged and gashed my head - don't think it's any worse than a cut, don't think there's skull fracture, but even so, it throbs like a bitch." Quite an inventory. "Apart from that, just super-duper."

"Look, I'm going to get out of here. My side window's gone. There's snow filling the gap but it can't be too thick. I reckon I can dig through and crawl out. Then I'll phone for help."

"Good plan."

"Stay put."

"Not going anywhere."

It took him several minutes to claw a hole through the snow. As he burrowed his way out, a dim gleam of light crept in, revealing just how badly trashed the Astra was. My side had taken the worst of it. That was why I was all banged up and Abortion was unscathed, and why I had so little room to manoeuvre. The roof was dented down at an angle, to the extent that the passenger-side windows were crushed flat, almost nonexistent. The glove compartment door stuck out like a tongue from a shut mouth. The dashboard was cracked wide open, instruments popping out like eyeballs. The steering column was twisted almost to vertical, the airbag which had saved Abortion from serious harm dangling off it like a used condom.

I didn't think we'd be getting our insurance deposit back.

It was agony to laugh, so I stopped.

Abortion's ugly face appeared at the end of the snow tunnel.

"Can't pick up a signal," he said. "'No network coverage,' display says. Fucking Orange. Future's bright? Future's shite, more like. I'll head off and find help. There must be someone living nearby, and they'll have a landline."

"No," I said.

"No?"

"No, you can't leave me. In these temperatures, I won't last long. Pull me out and I'll come with you."

"Think you can walk?"

"No, but I'll have to. As long as I'm moving, I stand a chance. If I just lie here, by the time the emergency services reach me I'll be a freezer pop."

"Won't pulling you out be painful?"

"Almost certainly."

It wasn't painful.

It was ten times worse than the worst pain I'd ever known.

And I'd known pain.

At the end of it I was mewling like a distressed kitten. I felt like a human-shaped bag of toxic waste. I just wanted to curl up in the snow and die.

But of course, with my reputation for pigheadedness, that wasn't about to happen.

While sat up gathering my strength, getting ready to rise, I dug out my phone to see if I could obtain a signal even if Abortion couldn't. But my poor little Nokia wasn't going to be calling anyone ever again. It had snapped along the hinge, and the screen was split in two by a zigzagging fissure. Nothing more pathetic than a piece of dead technology. I sent the phone, both bits of it, cartwheeling off into the snow.

Abortion then helped me to my feet. Or rather, foot. My left ankle was like splintered celery. It could barely take any weight on it. If he supported me, though, I was able to limp along.

And we set off. We laboured