He smiled. ‘I’m fine. Thank you, though.’

I walked to the lodge, kicking the snow from my boots. As I stepped in and went to close the door behind me, I paused. There were raised voices coming from the living room. I moved back slightly so I couldn’t be seen. Maybe I should have coughed to make my presence known. It would have been the polite thing to do but I’d spent so long working in that godforsaken hotel, pretending I wasn’t overhearing some of the most salacious of conversations as I served its guests, that I’d grown used to quietly observing, unnoticed.

‘This is what I told you,’ Dylan was saying, waving a letter about. ‘It would be found out eventually.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, striding back and forth. ‘Jesus. All for nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Mairi said, her voice hard. ‘We’ve had eleven years here. Eleven years!’

‘And we’ll have many, many more,’ Oscar said, plucking the letter from Dylan’s hand. ‘No more talk of this, you hear me? They’re all talk and no action.’

They all went quiet and turned to see me awkwardly smiling from the hallway. ‘Was just getting some coffee,’ I quickly said.

Heather let out a sob and shoved past me, running upstairs as her mother closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Dylan rubbed the back of his neck. He looked at his mother then at Cole, who’d come in to find out what the shouting was about. For a moment, I thought Dylan might run upstairs after his sister. But instead, he grabbed my hand.

‘I want to show you something,’ he said.

‘Dylan,’ Mairi said in a low warning voice.

Cole put his hand on his mother’s arm. ‘It’s fine. They’re just going to tend to the fire, right?’ he said to Dylan, giving him a look.

Dylan nodded without saying anything. We put our boots and coats back on, and Dylan led me outside, walking in silence towards the edge of the loch. I wanted to ask what the argument was all about, but what could I say? It had nothing to do with me. Dylan’s dark gaze penetrated mine and I felt like he wanted to tell me too. But he didn’t.

‘Look,’ he said instead when we got to the edge of the lake. He pointed towards the loch’s surface. Under the moonlight, at first all I could see was the shimmer of ice and the sparkle of the snow that was beginning to fall around us. But when I looked closer, I realised the ice wasn’t one blank sheet as it had been earlier. It was formed into hundreds of round discs, like frozen lily pads.