‘Don’t ask.’ Gen shakes her head. She should be even more hungover than me, but she somehow manages to look glowing and healthy, her skin bronzed after a week on the slopes where mine is scarlet and wind-chapped. She’s tied her hair back with a band, but spirals of red curls have already escaped and are framing her face. She’s wearing an assortment of hideously clashing Nineties-style apres-ski clothes she found in a charity shop, and somehow it looks amazing on her.

I peer inside the bag and hold my nose. ‘Ugh, honking ski socks.’

‘If they ask if you packed your bag yourself, just say yes,’ Gen says.

‘And take responsibility for those?’ I shove them in a corner of my case. ‘They could probably walk home to London by themselves. Actually, I’m going to keep them,’ I say, teasing Gen. ‘When you’re a famous actress, someone will pay a fortune for them.’

‘Someone would pay a fortune for them now. There’s a whole market for smelly socks on eBay,’ says Sophie, who doesn’t miss a trick when it comes to money stuff.

‘That’s disgusting.’ I wrinkle my nose at the thought.

Being Soph, and therefore revoltingly efficient, she’s already got her bag packed, and is sitting cross-legged on her bed, back against the wall, scrolling through her phone. ‘Oh my God, Jess, that photo of us you’ve posted on Instagram is terrible. It looks like one of my legs is about to snap off.’

‘It’s not that easy to do a selfie on a ski lift,’ I say, peering at her screen to remind myself. ‘I was convinced I was going to drop the phone into a ravine.’

‘Then you could have got Fabien to zoom down off piste and rescue it,’ says Gen, making a dreamy face as she mentions our gorgeous ski instructor. ‘He definitely had the hots for you, Jess.’

‘Shut up,’ I groan. She’s been going on about it all week, and I still haven’t admitted to them that I’ve been daydreaming – and, if I’m honest, night-dreaming – about Alex, and accidental meetings in the kitchen where I’m dressed in a pair of cute PJ bottoms and a little vest top, my hair knotted up in a messy bun, just reaching into the fridge to get myself a glass of orange juice when his hands are on either side of my waist and he spins me round and looks at me with those incredible eyes and says . . .

‘Jess?’ Gen nudges me. ‘You’ve been on another bloody planet all week. Come on, spill.’

I shake my head and zip up my suitcase. ‘Just thinking, that’s all.’

My phone bleeps and I look down at it. Both Gen and Sophie pick up their phones at the same time.

‘Delay in coach pick-up,’ we read in unison. ‘You will now be collected from your hotel reception approximately two hours later than the scheduled time.’

‘Oh God,’ Soph groans. ‘We could have gone skiing this morning after all.’