Erin, it turned out, had been inside the whole time, replacing the staff Juliette had sent home. She’d cooked us all lunch. I took a bowl of chicken and corn soup with desperate gratitude and sat down next to Sofia at an empty table. Someone had gone to find my mother, to convince her we were leaving. Before eating, I held my face over the soup, thawing myself in the steam until the tip of my nose singed.

‘There’s no ash,’ I said to Sofia after a few mouthfuls, shaking my head. ‘Not like the others.’

Sofia grimaced, understanding my question even though I hadn’t asked it. She explained simply: ‘She would’ve broken a lot of bones.’

Sofia looked out the restaurant doors into the foyer, and I saw her eyes trail up the staircase. I’d been wrong about Juliette’s dark suspicion in the rattling Oversnow. Andy had said, ‘In this weather . . . that would be suicide.’ The photo of Green Boots that Sofia had shown Lucy was a detailed depiction of what had happened to Michael, and Lucy had already been struggling with the knowledge that she had put him in a room he couldn’t get out of. Crucially, Lucy had stormed out of the bar before Audrey had interrogated Crawford on specifics. The last time anyone had seen Lucy, she was climbing the stairs, guilt-ridden. To the roof. Juliette had meant that we needed to catch her before she hurt herself in the storm. But Lucy hadn’t needed a storm. The guesthouse roof was high enough.

Sofia and I let the sad understanding settle over us: no one had told Lucy that Michael’s room wasn’t locked. That it wasn’t her fault.

The title of this book is true: everyone in my family has killed someone.

It’s just that not all of them killed other people.

CHAPTER 36

I assume my mother was quite the thorn in many a bulldozer’s side in the 1970s, if the gusto with which she chained herself to her bedpost was anything to go by. Marcelo had come into the restaurant, where we’d all spent the last hour piling our bags in the centre of the room (I had braved the storm once more, and folded the sports bag inside my wheelie case), and shaken his head. Katherine and I, volunteered by virtue of being the closest remaining relatives, had trudged up to the third floor to find Audrey propped up on pillows, one arm chained to the bedpost. I say chained: she’d flogged the gormless Crawford’s handcuffs from his hip. It looked a very comfortable protest.

It was an unspoken agreement that Katherine, being the less hated, would take the lead. She held out a hand. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Audrey. Where’s the key?’

My mother shrugged.

‘The guy with the snow-truck can take us now or not at all. You’re putting all of us in danger.’