‘Sorry I had to strip you,’ Juliette said bashfully. ‘Hypothermia gets in through the clothes, I’m sure you know.’ She said it like I might not. (Which, if you’d seen the draft of this manuscript, you’d know I didn’t: my editor had crossed out my first go at this sentence and written ‘Hypo=cold, Hyper=hot’ in the margin, in that helpful yet smug voice editors are born with, wishing to both correct you and impart their correctness upon you at the same time.) Juliette continued. ‘I didn’t do much though. If you hadn’t tied the cord around your waist, I don’t know if Erin would have—’

‘Erin?’ Realisation flashed. The voice on the ice. That tug on the strap, just before I went under. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She saw you throw the rope out the door. Sofia said Crawford couldn’t hold her back.’ Katherine was speaking plainly, far too matter-of-fact for what was running through my head. ‘She saved your life.’

‘What did she do? Is she okay?’ I stood. Blood surged to my head and I wobbled. Four hands propped me up. Katherine tried to shove me back onto the bed, but I pushed past her to the door. ‘Where is she?’

‘She went out on the ice,’ Katherine said.

‘Erin!’ I opened the door, staggering into the corridor. ‘Erin!’

Then I crashed right into her.

‘Jesus, Ernie.’ Erin reeled backwards, regaining her grip on the tray she was holding, which bore a can of soft drink and two bowls of hot chips. Her forehead crinkled as she said, ‘You shouldn’t be up.’ She then looked over my shoulder and said, ‘He shouldn’t be up.’

I don’t remember if I lost my balance or I genuinely dove at her, as I’m not one to throw myself at people, but the next thing I remember is wrapping Erin up as tightly as my oxycodone-limp limbs would allow. Erin returned my warmth, and we stood for a second like we weren’t on the mountain at all. Like we’d never changed. Like she didn’t have a chapter of her own coming up.

‘Been a while since I’ve had an ice bath,’ I whispered in her ear. She gripped my shoulders tightly. Her laugh was hitching, a sob mixed into it, and then we were both shaking in each other’s arms. I felt wet tears on my neck.