Once we all realised we weren’t leaving, someone suggested we should get some sleep and there was an exhausted murmur of acceptance. Crawford locked the Drying Room, not wanting to move Michael’s body, and warned us all away from it. Juliette handed out new room keys for the now emptied guesthouse rooms. I declined, preferring my chalet. If someone wanted to murder me, at least I’d see them coming up the loft’s ladder. Besides, I needed to go back to my room anyway: I hadn’t checked the bag of money since that morning. I wanted to be close to it. Now that I’d learned Marcelo was unaware of the cash, I was grateful no one except Sofia and Erin knew about it, because it gave me motive. Coupled with the fact that I was the last person to talk to Michael, the group, who had mostly dismissed me with a wary suspicion, would have torn me apart if they’d known I had his quarter of a million dollars. Family money.

People trotted out, yawning. As Katherine passed me, I tapped her on the elbow, asking if I could have the bottle of painkillers for the night.

‘Sorry, Ern, they’re too strong. I’m hanging on to them.’ She gave me a slight grimace of an apology, and then folded a single pill into my oven mitt.

I’d thought it strange when she’d first given me the pills upstairs, but this protectiveness of them was doubly so. There was no doubt she suffered pain down her leg, which must be excruciating at times and would have traditionally been managed with some kind of medication. But she’d chosen natural therapies since the accident. In her words, ‘alternative medicine’. In doctor’s parlance, ‘hogwash’. But it didn’t matter to Katherine; she was reformed and sober and nothing would break that. Not a Panadol for a headache, not a glass of wine for a bad day at work. When she gave birth to Amy, she’d even declined any painkillers. She was on a wagon and she wasn’t getting off for anything.

As I got older, I’d begun to understand how important it was to her. She’d been drunk at the time of the accident that had crippled her leg, so she held anything that impaired her, even for her own good, in contempt. Her faculties were more important to her than her pain: she never wanted to lose her mind again. That was why I’d recommended Sofia ask her about AA if she needed it, because Katherine was staunch, immovable. She was – and I would never say this to her out loud – inspiring.