Clover looked back at him steadily. ‘Fine,’ she nodded. ‘We’ll give him a little time. No jumping. These feet will stay firmly on the ground.’

Chapter Seven

Clover swung her legs, marvelling at the drop beneath them and feeling a giddy sense of freedom. The grass was hidden beneath thick snowy blankets, but some of the trees still had their leaves and the sun felt warm on their faces. She had never skied in such balmy conditions before.

It felt like they had the mountain to themselves. There was hardly anyone on the ski lifts – the wide, cruising pistes not yet open – but the glacier glistened and shone ahead, and as they drew closer they could make out bodies as small as ants dotting the pristine landscape.

It had been Ari’s idea that they come up here, ‘as an icebreaker, no pun intended’. They had received a cautious welcome when they’d finally come back upstairs at the chalet, Beau greeting them with a casual ‘hey’ as though they’d popped out for milk; Kit had glanced up from the table with a black look but said nothing.

Ari’s hunch was that it was better to start off by doing, rather than talking; just let Kit get used to them being around him, so Johnny had left the cameras behind as a deliberate show of ‘no weapons’. Still, Clover could see he was instinctively scanning the landscape and making note of places that would work in cinematography terms.

It had been a ten-minute drive from Zell am See to the neighbouring town of Kaprun, and the base station lift for the Kitzsteinhorn glacier. Clover, Matty and Johnny had caught a cab behind Kit’s Range Rover. Now the three men were two chairs in front of them – with no one in between – their snowboards dangling from one foot each as they chatted easily. Or rather, Beau and Ari were chatting easily; Kit didn’t seem to be moving at all, his brother and best friend flanking him, handling him with kid gloves. ‘The star’, she supposed, getting the special treatment; his ego being constantly stroked. Their livelihoods and lifestyles depended, after all, on his performance and successes.

‘Smile.’

Clover looked up to find Matty angling her phone screen on them both, taking a selfie. Clover automatically stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth and scrunched her eyes shut. Within a minute, it was on Matty’s Insta grid and within two, it had thirty-nine likes. Matty had over sixty thousand followers; most people assumed she was a model.