“Em’s outside.” There was something wrong with Marcus’s face. He didn’t look right, or sound right for that matter. “Em’s out there.” He looked at each of us in appeal. “She’s out in the snow. I’m pretty certain—” and his face collapsed, collapsed unbearably. “I think Em’s dead.”

She was not, as Mortimer had been, in the rose garden. She was at the end of the drive, near but not quite at the road. Later the police would ask how many sets of footprints there had been in the snow. Were there two? Or three? Or more even? I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell them. My gaze was fixed on the dark heap in the snow up by the gate. At some point, I started running. I got there first, but the others were there soon after, all apart from Marcus and Peter. I don’t think Marcus ran at all. He was clutching Peter’s arm and coming up over the snow like an old man afraid of falling and breaking every bone he had.

Em was lying on her back. Her coat was open. She had on her nightie—a Patti Smith T-shirt I knew she wore in bed—and her jeans and boots. I took up her hand, but there was no life in it.

“That’s my coat,” I said. “Why’s she got my coat on?”

“I’m not a doctor,” Zack was saying. His voice had a rising intonation as though one of us was insisting he was. “I’m not a doctor but I think she’s dead.”

But how could she be dead?

I heard myself saying her name, over and over. I heard myself crying. Not normal crying, something much worse. It was like coming apart.

Priss had called an ambulance straightaway, but it took a long time to come. There had been an accident on the M4 out by Junction 16 and all across the region, people were slipping over on pavements and breaking arms, elbows, collarbones, losing control of their cars and ending up beached on roundabouts or in ditches. When it finally swung up the drive in the wake of a police car, it felt like an insult. They confirmed what we knew. No signs of life.

“Aren’t you going to do anything? Shock her or something? I mean it can’t hurt, can it? Do something! Do something!” Marcus’s face was liverish. He looked big and angry and I could see the police sizing him up. Peter moved to stand between him and the medics.

On TV, people would often seem dead for minutes—a week even, between episodes—only to revive at the last possible moment.