‘You got a look at him,’ Lucy said, surprising me. She had seen my gaze settle on that specific patch of snow. I looked at her properly for the first time. She was wearing bright-pink lipstick and had kohl-lined eyes. I’m sure the look she was going for was sultry, but she was so pale from the cold that any splash of colour seemed to leap off her face and she looked like a cartoon character. She had on another pristine outfit – a yellow turtleneck that was very form-fitting for snow-gear. ‘When the cop asked you and Andy to carry the body. He kept us all too far back to see. But you got a look?’

I cleared my throat. ‘I guess. If it was Halloween, I was the donkey’s arse though.’

‘Huh?’

‘I took his feet.’

‘Well?’ she said expectantly. ‘Did he look like Michael?’

‘Oh, Lucy.’ I understood some of the desperation in her voice. She’d probably made the assumption over breakfast, otherwise our family would have had a much more sombre conversation, but still, no one had told her directly. ‘It wasn’t Michael.’

‘It looked nothing like him?’

‘I mean, it wasn’t him. And I’m probably the only one here that looks like him, and I think I’m still’—I patted myself down theatrically to assert I was still alive—‘yep, I’m still standing. Listen, Sofia’s just got us scared. Shall we find out what she’s on about?’ I held up my phone. Lucy had been the only other one at the breakfast table who hadn’t known what the Black Tongue was.

She shook her head. ‘I looked it up already. It’s a while ago, but it seems it was big news at the time, plenty of press, and so of course they had to come up with a catchy killer’s name. Someone murdered an elderly couple in Brisbane. And another woman in Sydney.’

I realised why I hadn’t heard about it. For the last couple of years I hadn’t been able to stomach the more gruesome news stories, since I became a part of one. ‘What are their names?’ I asked.

‘Ah.’ She scrolled her phone, skim-reading an article. ‘Alison Humphreys and . . . I dunno. Oh. Williams for the couple – Mark and Janine.’

‘Sofia said they suffocated? Like . . . torture?’

‘It’s a slow way to die. I’d probably just’—she made a little gun with her fingers and flicked it against the side of her head—‘rather than go through that. People are worried it’s a kind of serial killer. They’ve only done it twice. Well, I guess there was a couple, but does that count as one or two? Like, obviously it’s two victims, but in terms of making the killer a serial killer, what are the guidelines?’

‘It’s not my area of expertise.’

‘Don’t you write these things?’

‘I write about writing these things.’