Janice pretended to punch him, making Lily laugh at their happy horsing around, delighted to see her brother looking so much fitter. He’d definitely lost weight but the doctors had exhorted him to improve his eating habits and he’d clearly been exercising restraint when it came to Swiss cheese and chocolate.

With a grin over Lily’s shoulder, Tubb extended his hand. ‘Isaac. Very good of you to leap into the breach and save this expedition.’

‘Not kidding!’ agreed Max, seizing Isaac’s hand after Tubb and pumping it energetically. He pretended to wipe sweat from his brow. ‘You’ve saved my British bacon with Los the Boss by getting the Middletones out here.’ He gave Lily a hug. ‘We’re eating at Los’s house tonight, by the way. He and his lovely wife Tanja are putting on a buffet of traditional Swiss foods for us. Let’s go indoors for drinks and cake, then we can get everybody sorted out with their accommodation.’

‘Cake? Awesome!’ said Warwick and Alfie simultaneously, making everyone laugh.

Inside Max’s home, which was the first two floors plus the garden of what looked like a massive house but was actually a small set of apartments, they found Max’s sons, Dugal and Keir, five and three, almost bouncing from the walls in excitement at having so many people to chatter to and Max’s wife, Ona, looking incredibly pregnant, smiling from the sofa. They’d all been warned that she was on restricted physical activity owing to problems with her placenta.

‘Welcome, welcome!’ she cried in her soft Edinburgh accent. ‘Come away in. Dugal, Keir, let them get through the door.’

‘Can we have cake now?’ demanded Dugal, bouncing on his tiptoes and eyes and mouth wide with excitement.

‘Cake!’ shouted Keir.

The clamour in the room was amazing as everyone exchanged news at the tops of their voices or gazed out of the window at the sloping back garden filled with snow and small-boy-sized boot prints. The decor was contemporary, white and black but hung liberally with Christmas decorations of every colour and edged with children’s toys. Everyone had met through living in Middledip at one time or another, though Neil, Warwick, Eddie and Alfie didn’t know Tubb, Janice and family very well. Cake proved a perfect ice-breaker and soon they were chatting as if they’d been close friends for years.

When they’d filled their stomachs, the visitors piled back into the minibus and Isaac followed Max in his blue Audi across town to the Little Apartments, a modern building of studio apartments. The luggage belonging to Neil, Eddie, Alfie, Warwick, Carola, Emily and Charlotte was unloaded and then Lily, Isaac and Franciszka were left in sole possession of the minibus, gazing out at snow-covered chalets rising up the hillsides like rows of cuckoo clocks. Mountain peaks towered in the distance, turning to gold where sunbeams slanted through the clouds.