Three meters have fallen in the last couple of weeks, and there’s more forecast. The snow is still falling-fat white flakes drifting lazily down to lie softly over the peaks and pistes and valleys of St Antoine. And it’s whispering a question that I’ve been asking myself since the plane lifted off the runway at Gatwick. I shut my eyes, blocking them all out, losing myself in the music.Īnd I am alone, with only one voice left in my head, and I can’t shut it out.

As the bus swings around the narrow curve, the ground falls away, and I have a momentary feeling that we’re going to fall-a lurch of vertigo that makes my stomach heave and my head spin. The driver changes gear we are approaching yet another hairpin bend.

The snow gets thicker as we gain height, no longer melting into rain when it hits the window but sticking, sliding along the glass, the windscreen wipers swooshing it aside into rivulets of slush that run horizontally across the passenger window. Snow is so white on the ground, but when it’s falling, it looks gray against the sky. Outside the window the sky is iron gray, and the snowflakes swirl hypnotically past. The irony of the statement makes me want to laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I let James Blunt drown them out, telling me I’m beautiful, over and over again. It helps to shut out the voices in my head, their voices, pulling me this way and that, pummeling me with their loyalties and their arguments to and fro. I ignore Topher’s hopeful looks and Eva, glancing over her shoulder at me.

I keep my earbuds shoved into my ears on the minibus from Geneva Airport. Listening to: James Blunt / You’re Beautiful

Ruth ware one by one