Lauren finds herself staring at Dana. Suddenly, as if she can feel Lauren’s eyes on her, Dana looks directly at her. The smile on her lovely face doesn’t falter as her gaze lingers on Lauren.

Dana reminds Lauren of someone, she can’t think who. Maybe she just reminds her of all those women who look out from movie screens and magazines, the ones who remind the rest of them of their own shortcomings. Lauren turns away first.

She catches Gwen and Riley watching Dana, too.

Friday, 6:45 PM

When James emerges from his kitchen and enters the lobby to check on the guests, he sees the cocktail hour is in full swing. The guests are chatting with each other, and everything seems quite convivial. They’ve been drinking for a while already, and there’s something about being snowed in that has a way of bringing people together.

His son glances up at him as he enters the lobby. Bradley is holding an uncorked bottle of champagne – Veuve Clicquot – loosely by the neck. He’s a rather striking young man, and now a lock of his hair is falling forward on his forehead, which lends him a certain rakish charm. He’s tall and lean and athletic, and looks perfectly at ease in his slim black trousers and crisp white shirt. He wears clothes well. And Bradley is so good with the guests. So confident and outgoing, like his mother had been. James is more at ease behind the scenes, in his kitchen wearing his apron, or looking over his accounts. Still, he has his concerns about Bradley. He worries about him stepping over the line. He’s still young and impulsive. He has to remember that he’s a server, not a guest. There are boundaries to be observed. Bradley hasn’t always been so good at observing boundaries.

All of the women are now drinking champagne out of old-fashioned coupe glasses. Occasionally a fussy guest will request a flute, but most enjoy the decadent, twenties feel of the coupes. James loves them, himself. They go so nicely with his hotel.

Bradley makes the introductions. Now James can put names to the faces.

‘We’ve switched to champagne,’ Lauren says, raising her glass.

‘Excellent choice,’ James agrees.

‘Since we’re snowed in here, we’ve decided we’re going to make the most of it,’ announces Dana, a strikingly pretty young woman with a large diamond engagement ring on her finger.

‘The ladies are celebrating,’ Henry says, standing in front of the fireplace and holding a drink aloft, ‘but the men are just drinking.’

‘Have we met everyone now, Bradley?’ Ian asks. ‘You don’t have any other guests staying tonight in the hotel?’

‘No, there’s one more,’ Bradley says. ‘A woman arrived this morning. I don’t think we’ll see much of her. She says she’s writing a book, and wants quiet.’

‘A book?’ Dana says. ‘What kind of a book?’

‘I have no idea. She didn’t say.’

‘What’s her name?’ asks Gwen.

‘Candice White,’ Bradley says. ‘Do you know it?’

Everyone in the room shakes their head.

‘Anyway, that’s it,’ Bradley says. ‘And no more coming, not in this weather.’

Chapter Five

CANDICE WHITE SITS at the antique writing desk in front of the window in her room and looks out at the wintry landscape, grateful that she arrived early, before the snow. She’s been able to put in a good day of work.

She’d driven up from New York City early in the morning, desperate to escape. She’s a bundle of resentment and raw nerves these days. It’s not that she has a family of her own that needs her – a rumpled husband and adoring small children with sticky hands. She revises – if she’d had children, they’d probably be teenagers by now, and perhaps not so adoring. She does this sometimes – imagines what her children would have been like, at different ages, in different circumstances, if she’d had them. If she’d been lucky in love. But no. She has not been lucky in love. Not for her the happy ending. Instead, as the only unmarried one of three daughters – and the only one who’s gay – she has been stuck with the lion’s share of caring for their widowed and declining mother, because her rather selfish sisters are too busy with their own demanding families, who adore them.

Candice feels that she has been doubly cheated. Denied the happiness that her sisters seem to take for granted, and saddled with the thankless, grinding, demoralizing duty of elder care. It’s not that she doesn’t love her mother. But it’s so … hard. And so sad – the dependency, the embarrassing bodily needs, the fact that her mother doesn’t even know who she is half the time. It completely saps her creativity and makes it hard to work. That’s why it’s so important that she take this time away to finish her book.

Her sisters only step up when she’s out of town on business, which has been infrequently of late. They have become complacent, depending on her all the time, visiting their mother less and less. Their own families are more important and Candice doesn’t have a family. Candice can do it. She finds herself mouthing the words, silently and sarcastically, automatically, with a sour expression on her face.

Well. If this book is as good as she thinks it’s going to be – as good as her agent says it is – then they will all have to adjust their thinking. The family dynamic will have to change. She drags her eyes from the swirling darkness outside the window back to the screen of her laptop.

She’s let herself get off track. She ought to write another page before she goes down to dinner. She checks her watch and realizes she’s missed cocktail hour. It’s a sad thing for a writer to miss cocktail hour. She looks again at the screen of the laptop in front of her, regrets that last paragraph. It will have to go. She blocks it out and hits delete.

Candice takes off her reading glasses and rubs her eyes. Maybe she needs a break. She will carry on after dinner. There will be wine with dinner.

She tells herself again that she had to get away from her mother to finish this manuscript – she’s trying not to feel guilty about it. She has to write the last ten thousand words, but she still has to eat.

Candice has a lot riding on this book. It’s the first thing of her own that she’s written in a long time. For almost two decades now she has eked out a living as an author of non-fiction, but more and more often lately she’s been ghostwriting other people’s books – everything from self-help to business books. Except most of these geniuses aren’t particularly successful, so she’s never thought their wisdom was worth the paper it was printed on. As long as they paid her, she didn’t care. When she started out it was a good living. She got to keep her own hours and she met some interesting people. She got to travel – paid – and when she was younger, this was a valuable perk. Now she would like to travel a lot less and get paid a lot more.

She’s hoping this book – her own book – is going to make her fortune.

Closing the laptop, Candice gets up, looks at herself critically in the full-length mirror, and decides she can’t really go down in yoga pants. She puts on a decent skirt and tights and throws a silk scarf around her neck. She brushes her hair into a new, tidy ponytail, applies fresh lipstick, and heads downstairs.

Friday, 7:00 PM