Cirrus@Austlit

'Nicole politely offered me a swig. Her friends were as handsome as I imagined.

'Afterwards, she quivered beside me outside until my bus arrived. Our breath danced in front of us in the dark, in the cold – just trying to keep up.

'‘You’ll be fine. We’re in Denmark!’ she laughed, waving goodbye as I staggered up the burnished stairs of the empty bus. No WiFi, no SIM card; just a fleeting woman in a pair of laced-up dress shoes, gazing out a window at not much at all. Female, tan, early twenties, slender-build. Travelling alone in a time zone eight hours behind her mother’s. Last seen in a vacant bus after midnight, somewhere just north of Copenhagen.' (Introduction)