‘This is all very useful, but it’s only reinforcing that you were the last one in the room with him awake,’ Erin whispered. Everyone heard it.

I turned back to the room. Oh. That was why I had their attention.

‘He was alive when I left him,’ I said. But, with everyone’s stern faces, I felt like I was addressing a jury. I knew I shouldn’t do it – if you watch any interrogation, only the guilty repeat themselves unbidden – but I couldn’t help myself. It came out as begging. ‘He was alive when I left him.’

None of us got on a bus. There was a tacit understanding in the room that whoever wanted to get down the mountain the fastest was probably the fleeing killer, so we all silently bluffed each other into staying. By this point, most of us thought the killer was probably one of us. Some of us, me and Sofia included, wanted to stay and find out who it was. The rest alternated between scared and defiant. Audrey wouldn’t leave without Michael’s body, which she couldn’t very well load into the belly of a coach. Katherine stayed because she was worried about Lucy. Andy stayed because Katherine stayed. Marcelo probably stayed because he’d finally been promised a room in the guesthouse. Crawford never said we could or couldn’t go, but knew he couldn’t leave us to our own devices or else he might have to explain a massacre when his superiors finally showed up. Juliette joked that she couldn’t leave us in case we burned the place down. We would anyway, but she didn’t know that at the time.

We stayed in the bar, and our grief, anger, blame and accusations slowly faded to trading memories quietly through thick throats. Andy mentioned to me Michael’s best man speech at my wedding. He’d thought it would be clever to mimic one of my books and had prepared the ten rules to the perfect best man’s speech, but then he piled on a bit too much liquid courage and forgot seven of them. It seemed a foolish thing to bring up in present company, but the awkwardness quickly faded into hiccupped, snotty laughter. I’m not glib enough to shrug off Michael’s actions as simple mistakes, but there was more to him than just the last three years.