Gavin walked around to the rear of the beastly machine and pulled open the door. We clambered up a three-rung ladder while he made his way to the driver’s seat. It was barely a vehicle; instead of seats in the back it had long steel benches down either side. It was as cold as a fridge inside a freezer, the temperature wrapping me up in a rib-cracking squeeze. Everything smelled of fuel. The floor rumbled with the engine’s throaty growl as Gavin manoeuvred a gearstick the size of a tree branch.

We started at a slow crawl between the buildings, but then Gavin roared the throttle up the hill and started bouncing the three of us around. I held on to a steel bar above one of the windows and tried to peer out the frosted glass. Gavin was right – we would hit Lucy before we saw her. Given the giant tank wheels, I doubted we’d even feel it. The snow had dumped too heavily to leave tracks.

While we drove, I took Marcelo’s GPS from my pocket. It was solar powered, but still had some battery left, so it turned on easily in my hand. I searched the menu for recent trips. A rudimentary map loaded. Sky Lodge wasn’t even marked; it was just a small arrow icon in the middle of a blank area. I zoomed out until I could see the nearest road. The green line started near the Beer! sign that felt a thousand kilometres and years away, and then continued down towards Jindabyne, and then – I scratched my jaw in confusion – back up the hill on the other side of the valley. The trip was a perfect U-shape, estimated at fifty minutes one way. I knew from Juliette’s snow cam that he’d been gone six hours. Which begged the question: what had he been doing at SuperShred Resort for the other four?

‘This is pointless,’ Andy yelled after fifteen minutes. We were probably halfway up the slope. I could see a small halo of light, which I knew was the floodlight at the top of the chairlift, but nothing else. There weren’t even trees or rocks this far up. No one replied, so he tapped Juliette on the shoulder and repeated himself. ‘I said, “This is pointless.” The snow’s so heavy there’s no trace of her. She’d have to be mad to go out in this.’

‘We have to try,’ Juliette yelled back. It was like talking in the cargo hold of an airplane. ‘The chairlift looks closer from the bottom of the valley than it is, the mountain less steep too. Maybe when she couldn’t move her car, she thought she’d walk up there. She wouldn’t have known she was in trouble until she was halfway up.’

‘Or she’s gone to the road and is trying to hitch,’ I added.

‘Exactly.’