Things had been tough recently. Liza would have been the first to admit that. But she wasn’t going to let her past self take the blame for her current self’s problems. “It was at the housewarming for that place that Rob, Tom, and Gabby had in their second year,” Liza said. “You were in the kitchen talking to some guy or some girl or something, and you were wearing—well, you were wearing the exact same thing you’re wearing now because you’ve had one casual outfit for your entire life—but I remember they said something and you laughed, but like, once, like, hah, and you looked so … so everything. And I remember saying to myself, ‘If I don’t talk to that girl by the end of the evening I’ll hate myself forever.’”

For a moment, Hanna was quiet. Then she said: “I didn’t speak to you at that party.”

“And I hated myself forever. Or for a couple of weeks, anyway. Then we actually met in the pub at that thing with Dill and Evan.” An inconvenient recollection wormed its way into Liza’s mind. “Then … okay then, I think I did fuck Caitlyn that weekend, but then there was Rita’s Christmas party and I was dressed as a slutty reindeer and you were—actually, you were still wearing the same thing you’re wearing now—and …”

“And you walked up to me and just stood there saying nothing.” Hanna was almost smiling now. Almost.

“And so you said, ‘That outfit is unnecessarily sexualised, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re the most beautiful woman I have seen in my life and I would very much like to kiss you.’” It felt at once so recent and so long ago that it almost hurt to talk about it. Because that was the woman Liza had fallen in love with, and somewhere deep down, it was still the woman Hanna was. It was just that after ten years she’d turned out to be a whole lot more complicated. “And then you did.”

Outside the snow was dancing a waltz with the wind.

“We should …”—Hanna bit her lip—”we should go to breakfast.”

Liza wanted to say that they shouldn’t. That they should stay and talk and that she’d forget about the murder and the woman in red and everything else if they could just get back to how things were, but that wasn’t a one-morning job. And if they stayed, probably reminiscence would turn into recrimination, which would turn into a straight-up yelling match.

So they went to breakfast. Which, like all of the other parts of the holiday that didn’t involve corpses, mysterious women in cupboards, or wondering where it all went wrong, was divine. Besides the usual range of cereals, full fried breakfast, and toast, there were also options like “whiskey-cured smoked salmon and scrambled eggs” and “poached peat-smoked haddock.”