Audrey was in the library flicking through a novel by Mary Westmacott but not exactly reading it, in a high-backed, studded red leather chair. It would have been the perfect chair to sit in for a denouement. Despite having Library written on the door, the room was a booklover’s nightmare: water-damaged, mouldy yellow paperbacks with brittle potato-chip-dry pages ringed the room, mounted on bookshelves crafted out of old-timey wooden skis and snowboards. The pamphlet-adorned stone fireplace in the corner held hungry crackling embers, the architect seemingly quite unaware of the combustibility of books. The fire kept the room too warm, but it smelled less damp than the rest of the hotel. There were no guns on the mantle, certainly none of Chekov’s: I would have been hard-pressed to murder someone with the taxidermy pigeon and framed war medal that were there instead.

On seeing me, my mother closed her book, stood and turned her back, pretending to be busy picking through the rest of the Ws on the snowboard-shelf.

‘Audrey,’ I said. ‘You can’t ignore me forever.’

She slid the book in – it was miscategorised, if you ask me, since Mary Westmacott is a pseudonym for Agatha Christie, but what’s in a name? – turned and frowned when she saw I was blocking the doorway.

‘Come to gloat?’ She folded her arms. ‘To tell me you were right about him?’

‘I wanted to see if you were feeling better, actually.’

It took her a second – either to process that I was reaching out, or to remember her alibi for cancelling dinner, I wasn’t sure – and then she snorted her derision.

‘I can look after myself.’ She was being evasive, betraying her likely frustration at being over-cared for, which she no doubt saw as a threat to her independence. I imagined Katherine had been needling her about her age and faculties recently, and I’d only added to it by checking on her. ‘If that’s all?’ She made to step around me.

‘Michael hurt somebody, Mum. I did what I thought was right.’ I deliberately said ‘I thought’ in the middle, even though I knew I was in the right. ‘I’m doing what I think is right now.’

‘You sound like your father.’ She shook her head. It was not a compliment.

I was curious; it was rare to hear her talk about Dad. ‘How?’

‘Robert could justify anything. The way every robbery was the big ticket, the last one. He talked himself into absolution, too.’

‘Absolution?’ My father had found no absolution; he’d died in a gunfight with two policemen, killing one of them. Unless she meant that he had talked himself into each crime he committed, believing it was for his family, a necessity, and that he was a good enough man to walk away from the next one. Just like Lucy’s cigarettes. ‘Dad was a bad person. You know that, right?’