Clover shuffled forward in the lift queue, making way for the dozen ESS ski school mini tornadoes who had all passed her on the way down. She supposed falling didn’t hurt so much when the very top of you was only two feet off the ground.

She was carrying back a very late lunch for herself and Johnny. After the hostile run-in with Kit at the pipe, they’d spent most of the day covering the big air and slopestyle fields, trying to get interviews with anyone they could. She’d spoken to passing ski instructors, more chairlift operators, coaches and almost every pro rider they could find on the mountain. They all had an opinion, which invariably fell into one of three camps: Kit Foley’s a jerk/a victim/hot.

‘Is that a baguette in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?’ a voice asked as she finally got to the front of the queue.

She gave a shocked laugh.

‘Oh, it’s okay, she’s with me,’ the stranger said as the lift operator went to tell her to hold back – the pro riders were entitled to priority use. He came and stood beside her.

The chairlift scooped her legs from under her and she felt the familiar swing into the air as they were whisked off together, just the two of them on a six-seater.

‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ she asked with a bemused smile.

‘I’m hurt you don’t remember.’ He pushed up his visor.

‘Ah. I guess the accent alone should have told me,’ she said, looking back at Mikey Schultz.

‘Yes it should. I’m a rare breed round these parts.’ He grinned at her, cocky as hell. He knew he was a king on this terrain. Easy on the eye, too. ‘So, I’ve been watching you all day. You’ve been busy.’

‘Well, you know what they say – no rest for the wicked.’

‘You’re hotter than hell and wicked?’ He looked delighted.

She laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had flirted with her.

‘You realize I don’t actually know your name,’ he said. ‘Makes you hard to find. Although most people knew who I meant when I said Camera Lady.’

‘Catchy!’ she grinned. ‘. . . It’s Clover. Clover Phillips.’

‘Of course it is,’ he said, looking at her intently. ‘What else could you possibly be?’

Clover laughed, hoping she wasn’t blushing.

She felt the wind blow past them. She wanted to take her goggles off and feel the sun on her face but she didn’t want him to see the vestiges of her black eye. In some ways, it looked worse now than it had at the beginning, withering into a sallow peakiness that made her look ill.

A flashback of Kit’s bruised and cut face, his battered body, zipped through her mind again. She shuddered.