Prologue

Saturday 25 March 2017

Lucy pulled the bedcovers back up, smoothing out the wrinkles and re-plumping the pillows, the covered hot-water bottles already warming the sheets, the steam from the hot bath in the next room escaping round the door and misting the small mirror on the dressing table. The guests would be freezing when they got in.

Outside, the wind moaned again and the windows rattled in their frames. The storm was really gathering strength now, this afternoon’s break in the blizzards but a brief hiatus as the eye passed over them, and she could see the snowflakes dancing in feverish patterns, tangoing with the flurrying gusts like a shaken-up snow globe.

She crossed the room to draw the curtains, glancing for a moment at her own home across the courtyard. From this four-star perspective, she saw how shabby the little bungalow was becoming – even aside from the industrial bins parked along her wall, the white paint was slowly blackening from rain and snow melt and moss and damp; the kitchen window was cracked in the bottom corner (from a thrown shoe, if she remembered rightly); and the planters either side of the door were depressingly neglected, with just a few skeletal twigs poking through the snow all that remained of the hydrangeas she’d planted last summer. She turned away, vowing to set Tuck onto it as soon as the snow went. A lick of paint, a trip to the nursery and her modest little home would look very different. Feel very different.

In here though – in here, all was perfect, as it always should be in a hotel (wasn’t that the point of them, after all?) and with a final glance, she let herself back out into the hall. The door clicked shut behind her and she smiled at a Japanese couple coming out of their room further down the corridor. Room 28 – the electric towel rail was faulty in there.

‘Hey there, is everything OK for you? Do you need any fresh towels, more water . . . ?’ she asked as she passed, and they politely demurred, probably more on account of their limited English than anything else.

Crossing the carpet in brisk, silent steps, she used the service stairs, exiting into the kitchen where her mother was standing over a bubbling pan of soup, much to the surprise of the staff, who were only just arriving for their shift and couldn’t have looked more astonished to see her with her shirtsleeves rolled up if she’d been standing there in stockings and suspenders. Barbara glanced up as she came over – her cheeks were pink with harried fluster but her eyes were bright and of course, not a platinum-bobbed hair was out of place. It never was. Not in a storm. Not in a crisis.

‘All done?’ she asked.

‘Everything’s sorted,’ Lucy nodded.

‘Good.’ Barbara checked her watch, rubbing her hands together the way she always did when she was anxious. ‘Well, they should be here any minute now . . .’

Lucy’s phone rang and she glanced at the name on the screen. ‘Hi,’ she said, turning away and walking over to the back door, a smile already on her lips, suddenly blind to the bleakness of her tired bungalow as she gazed through the window, across the courtyard again.

‘Luce, it’s me!’ Tuck’s voice sounded distant. The line was breaking up and she could tell he was outside from the way that it sounded as though sheets were being shaken out beside him.

‘Where are you?’ she called, hoping he could hear her over the wind.

‘On my way back from Bill’s.’

Lucy bit her lip. Of course he was. Every day ended with a beer or four with the boys. She guessed it was four tonight given that he was walking home in these conditions, no doubt having been forced to leave the truck keys behind the bar. The staff knew him too well.

‘Listen,’ he shouted. ‘Have you spoken to Mitch or Meg?’ He sounded out of breath, as though he was running or at least walking very fast.

‘Not since this morning.’

Shit,’ he muttered.

‘Why?’

‘I can’t get Mitch on his cell and I don’t know where he is. I thought they were gonna come back down during the break in the weather this afternoon?’

‘Well, not that I’ve seen. They must still be up at the cabin.’ She frowned. ‘Why? What’s going on? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s a couple of hikers missing in Wilson’s Gully but Search and Rescue won’t go out – no visibility and the avalanche risk’s too high! Fucking pussies. Everyone’s freakin’ out. One’s a twelve-year-old boy, for Chrissakes. Twelve.

Lucy winced, knowing from his language it was definitely more than four beers. ‘But Tuck—’

‘Listen, I gotta go. I’ve gotta get hold of Mitch. He’s a mile from there.’

She hesitated. ‘You mean you want him to go after them? In this?’

‘That’s his call. But he’d want to know. I would.’

Lucy felt the pulse in her ear, her eyes on a racoon scratching around the recycling bin, seeing the way its fur was brushed to standing as another gust whipped the small courtyard and sent it scurrying for cover in the undergrowth again.

‘Luce? You hear me?’

‘Uh, yeah, yeah.’

‘I’ll be back in a bit, OK? But if they call in the meantime, you let him know I’m trying to get hold of him.’

‘Sh-sure.’

‘Bye, babe.’

‘Bye,’ she murmured, her voice a whisper, her heart pounding at double time, the phone like a burning coal in the palm of her hand.