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Andy finally hones into view further down the slope as I slowly traverse my way down.
‘Where were you?’ I fume as I stop, deliberately spraying snow at the fucker. ‘I’ve lost the clients!’ A panicky feeling is rising inside me even though this is not my fault. It isn’t. The clients shouldn’t have lied to me. They shouldn’t have told me they were much better skiers than they actually are. What if I’d taken them down the kind of terrain they were actually asking for? What if we’d tried something steeper and more gnarly? Then where would we be?
‘I thought you had them,’ Andy says.
‘You should have been watching!’ I explode.
‘Bloody hell, calm down, Cameron! They’ll be fine. They must have gone ahead of us – you can’t see where anyone is when it’s like this.’
‘I would have seen them if they’d gone past me,’ I counter.
‘Yeah, right, whatever. Either way, standing here isn’t going to achieve anything. Best we can do is carry on down and see if we catch up with them. If we get down and we still haven’t seen then, then we’ll think about what to do next.’
Andy sets off down the slope without waiting for me to reply, almost instantly disappearing out of sight because the visibility is so bad. I race after, furiously. No one is beating me down the slope just to prove they’re the better skier! After a few seconds I whizz past the twat, down, down, down. I can barely see a thing but it doesn’t matter, I know this slope so well I could ski it with my eyes closed. Which I might as well be doing, given the conditions right now.
I’m so focused on beating Andy down that it’s only when I get to the bottom I remember the missing clients. Argh! Where are they?
I stare up at the slope, but there’s no one in sight. A few seconds later, Andy appears. ‘I thought we were meant to be looking for the clients? Why’d you race off like that?’
‘Seeing if I could catch them up if they were ahead,’ I lie. ‘Don’t want them deciding to fuck off home because we’ve left them standing in the cold too long.’ Where are they? ‘You didn’t see them?’ I ask Andy.
‘No.’ There’s a pause. ‘D’you think we should call someone? Let someone know they’ve gone AWOL?’
In spite of the freezing wind I feel a bead of sweat run down my back inside my jacket. ‘It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it? I bet they’re fine. Let’s head up on the lift and ski down again, properly slowly this time. We’ll probably pick them up second time around. You’ll give me a hand, won’t you?’ I ask, even though it almost kills me to say it.
Andy gives me a strange look. ‘Yeah. I will. It’s dangerous for them out there on their own in these conditions. Let’s get going.’
Back on the lift, it is even colder and windier than before. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck and dig my chin into the top of my jacket. I peer downwards through the blizzard in case the clients have somehow made it back on to the piste – it’s possible from the couloir, though only really if you know the way – but I can barely see a thing. Even the piste appears to be deserted – anyone sensible has already called it a day.
The lift shudders to a halt about halfway up, leaving us swinging as the wind continues to roar around us. We sit in silence, huddled into our jackets, faces down against the wind. After a few minutes which pass more like hours, there is a squeal and the lift starts moving again. Thank God. ‘Can’t wait to get off this mountain,’ Andy says. ‘It’s freezing. God knows why these poor saps come out in this weather.’
The chairlift stops again just as the lift station comes into sight. Someone has fallen over getting off and is for some reason taking forever to get themselves back upright, despite the lift guy hauling them up. There’s something purple in the snow by their feet – a hat or scarf. I watch as they bend to pick it up and drop their pole.
‘Hurry up!’ I mutter, through clenched teeth. My fingers hurt, they’re dug so far into my hands now. Andy looks at me sideways and says: ‘It’ll be OK. You need to calm down.’
‘I am calm!’ I snap, but I’m lying. I’m not. The lift finally starts moving again and we slide off onto the snow.
‘OK – I’ll take the left side, you take the right,’ I say. ‘We need to go down really slowly. Both of us,’ I emphasize. I feel like I’m going to be sick. The trail is narrow and what I want to say is, ‘We need to check over the edges too,’ but I can’t quite bring myself to. The weather is still closing in and it’s going to be impossible to see anything anyway. Andy nods solemnly. My unspoken words are hanging in the air.
I feel worse and worse as we ski down in near silence. I try to peer over the edges but it’s impossible. We call out periodically – ‘Hey! You there? You OK?’ but I can tell it’s pointless – I can’t even hear myself over the wind. We get to the bottom and look at each other.
I am so cold and stressed I can barely get my words out. ‘What do we do now?’
4
January 2020, La Madière, France
Ria
I didn’t want to come this week, for many reasons, but even so, it feels good to be in the mountains. The sun is out, the sky is blue and the air is clear. I went out this morning with every intention of playing the dutiful wife and skiing with Cass like Hugo wanted me to, but in the end I found that, after a few runs, I just couldn’t be bothered. Sorry, Hugo. Cass is young and boring and once I’ve asked about the baby which I’m not interested in and her former catering business (ditto) we don’t really have anything to say to each other.
I head back to the chalet hoping that no one will be there so I can spend some time in the hot tub on my own. But as soon as I open the door I can hear that someone else is here. Millie appears at the top of the stairs, straightens her logoed polo shirt and rearranges her face into its usual fixed smile.
‘Hello, Ria. I wasn’t expecting you back so early – I understood Simon had booked you an instructor for the whole day.’ Her forehead creases. ‘I hope everything’s OK?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine – just thought I’d spend some time in the hot tub.’ It comes out snappier than I’d intended, so I smile to try to soften it. Sometimes I forget how to play the part of the dutiful corporate wife. Or it’s not so much that I forget, it’s more that I simply don’t want to. ‘It’s a while since I’ve skied and my legs are already aching. Is it OK if I use the hot tub? I don’t want to get in your way.’
‘Yes of course!’ she gushes. ‘Whatever you like. I’ll go and take the cover off for you now if you want to go up and get changed? I’ve finished doing the rooms up here. Would you like me to bring you anything out there – a glass of bubbly maybe? Or some water?’
I shake my head. ‘No, that’s fine, thank you.’
Millie nods discreetly, comes down the stairs and goes out to the large terrace where I see steam rise from the hot tub as she pulls back the cover. After changing, I spend the afternoon alternating between the hot tub and the terrace, where Millie brings me a heated blanket for my lounger. I decide to take her up on her offer of a glass of champagne or two after all. It is blissful.
It’s amazing what a difference an afternoon all to myself makes to my mood – by the early evening I’m almost glad to be here. Almost. The fire is lit in the double-height living room, the stars are out, and the champagne is ice-cold. I guess things could be a lot worse.
‘Ria – may I introduce Matt please?’ Millie says as she offers me a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Matt is in the same polo shirt as Millie and very much in the same mould although older – immaculately groomed and with a fixed smile.
‘I’m the rep for Snow Snow within the resort,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘We have five chalets here, as you may know, twenty throughout the Alps, but we like to pride ourselves on individual service. Is the chalet to your liking?’
‘Yes – it’s lovely,’ I say. ‘It’s even better in the flesh than in the pictures.’ I feel myself redden. I’m not sure why.
‘We’re particularly proud of this one – our most luxurious, even if it is one of the smaller ones,’ Matt says. ‘So how was your day today – did you get out on the slopes?’
‘I did for a while – it was very nice. And I enjoyed the hot tub too.’
His eyes almost imperceptibly flick up and down my body and I wonder if he is imagining me naked. Hugo comes over and puts his arm around my shoulders, but I shrug him off, pretending I’m reaching for a canapé.
‘Matt, this is Hugo,’ I say, deliberately not introducing him as my husband. Hugo shakes Matt’s hand and then starts boring on about the runs he and Simon did today, the specifications of his skis, the importance of various bits of kit and loads of other stuff that Matt no doubt has no desire to hear about.
I tune out for a while and when I turn my attention back to the conversation a few seconds (or minutes? Who knows?) later, the conversation has turned to how long Matt has worked in the resort and his plans for the future.
Eventually we sit down to dinner. I make sure I sit next to Matt – not because I particularly fancy him, but at least flirting with him will provide me with a distraction.
Dinner is amazing, again, and the wine is fabulous. I drink more than I should. Hugo won’t like me getting drunk, especially in front of a potential investor like Simon, but, well, whatever. I feel like drinking tonight and so I will. Getting drunk is the only way I’m going to get through the week, plus it’ll give me a good excuse to stay in bed tomorrow morning and not go to my boring ski lesson with boring Cass and listen to her bore on about her boring baby. Hugo is being pathetically sycophantic, laughing at Simon’s crap jokes in between glaring angrily at me when he thinks no one is looking.
Millie reappears at the table and Hugo puts his hand over my wine glass. ‘I think you’ve had enough, don’t you, darling?’ he says with a fake smile. He almost never does stuff like that – dares to tell me what to do. He’s obviously desperate to impress Simon.
But as far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a drink if I want to. ‘No, I don’t think I have,’ I say, flicking his hand off my glass and turning towards Millie. ‘More of the delicious red, please – thank you.’
Millie hesitates and then pours me a small glass. I feel a twinge of pity for her – it’s not fair to involve her in my rage towards Hugo. I resolve to leave her a huge tip when we leave. ‘In fact,’ I state, slurring slightly and, I admit, deliberately, riled by Hugo’s attempt to make me feel guilty, ‘I think we should play a drinking game. Who’s up for it?’
‘Always up for a drinking game!’ Simon practically shouts. ‘Quite the filly you’ve got there, Hugo!’ he adds, raising his glass to him across the table. Hugo glances at me and I grin.
‘How about “I have never”?’ booms Simon.
‘Yes! I’ll start,’ I yelp. ‘I have never … had a threesome.’
Simon roars with laughter. Hugo looks at me in horror. Matt raises his glass and drinks, smirking.
‘Matt!’ Simon bellows. ‘You dirty dog. Now that’s a story I’d like to hear. OK, you go.’
Cass stands up abruptly. ‘Will you all excuse me?’ She pulls the sleeves of her somewhat frumpy cardigan down over her hands and casts a nervous glance towards her boorish husband. ‘I’m going to check on Inigo and then go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Without waiting for a response, she smiles tightly and leaves the table. Simon doesn’t even look at her. ‘Come on, come on …’ he prompts Matt.
Matt clears his throat. ‘I have never … been to Zimbabwe.’
‘Oh please!’ Simon shouts. ‘You don’t need to go all polite and poncey just because we’re clients. Although,’ he drains his glass, ‘I’ll drink to that obviously – and you too Hugo, you girl.’ Hugo obediently empties his glass and winces. He’s never been a big drinker. ‘Do another.’
Matt grins. ‘OK … I have never … had a same-sex sexual encounter.’
Hugo reddens and Simon looks expectant as I slowly drain my glass and slam it down.
Simon slaps his hand on the table. ‘Ha! Brilliant. That’s an image that … anyway, Ria – your go.’
‘I have never …’ the words ‘been in love’ force themselves into my mind but instead I say, ‘been arrested.’
Nobody drinks. I put my hand on the inside of Matt’s thigh. He doesn’t push it away.
A few rounds later, Hugo, who is quite clearly furious with me for not adequately playing the part of the corporate wife, says he’s going to bed and Millie also takes her leave. By now my hand has reached Matt’s crotch and I can feel he’s hard. I wish Simon would go to bed but he’s pouring himself another glass of wine and wants to move on to Fuzzy Duck.
Suddenly tiredness overwhelms me in the way it sometimes does when I’m too drunk. I retrieve my hand, stand up and say: ‘I can’t drink any more. I’m off to bed. Night all.’
Matt looks at me aghast – obviously thought his luck was in. Maybe it is. Maybe another night.
I stumble up the stairs into our room, expecting it to be in darkness, but Hugo is sitting up in bed, jaw clenched, pretending to read. He puts his book down and stares at me.
‘How dare you embarrass me like that,’ he hisses.
I wave my hand at him and lurch into the bathroom. ‘’S fine. Simon loved it. And you’re here to impress Simon, as am I, apparently. If anything, I’ve done you a favour.’ I lean in towards the mirror and beam at myself. ‘He thinks I’m great.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ Hugo says, prissily, now at the bathroom door in his Hugo Boss boxer shorts instead of the horrible old Y-fronts he used to wear. One of the many minor adjustments I’ve persuaded him into since we got married. ‘And the way you were flirting with Matt too – God! What did I do to deserve that?’
I look at him blearily. ‘Nothing, darling,’ I say, I can’t be bothered with being told off by Hugo. But I know the best way to end this, and as I’m so drunk the idea doesn’t seem too unbearable. I wobble over to him and put my hand down his boxers. He makes a pathetic attempt to pull away huffily, but I know he can never resist me. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long.
5
December 1998, La Madière, France
‘We’re going to have to phone it in,’ Andy says. ‘Make it official.’
I feel sick. ‘Don’t you think it’s too soon? Maybe they made their own way down and are chugging vin chaud in a bar as we speak?’ I suggest.
There’s a pause. ‘D’you think?’
Argh. ‘I don’t know!’ I shout. ‘Either way, we’re in serious trouble.’
I know we’re both thinking the same thing. If we call out search and rescue and it turns out the men are fine, we’ve still lost two clients in bad weather. Word gets round about that kind of thing very quickly and no one will ever book us again. And if the clients aren’t in the bar, if they’re really lost, then …
‘We can’t do nothing, Cameron!’ Andy snaps, clearly thinking the same as me and starting to panic too. ‘We need to think. Do something. What’s the best thing to do? How about we check if they’re back at their chalet?’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ I explode. I take a deep breath. Calm down. Calm down. ‘OK. Here’s the plan,’ I say. ‘You whizz back to the office and call the chalet. I’ll go back up and check the route again. You radio me as soon as you’ve called them, and I’ll radio you if I find them before you’re back. If we still haven’t found them, then we’re going to have to phone it in.’
Andy doesn’t say anything.
‘Agreed?’ I prompt. ‘It’ll take you max twenty minutes to get back. We don’t want to mess everything up for no reason when everything’s probably fine. Yeah?’
Andy nods. ‘Yeah. I’ll go down and we’ll speak in twenty. But everyone can hear us on the radio, so I’ll say “all good” if it’s OK or, um, I don’t know, “nothing here” if not. You do the same.’
I watch Andy disappear off down the slope and get back on the lift, bracing myself against the wind. The thought of ‘if not’ hangs ominously in the air.
6
January 2020, La Madière, France
Ria
There is a gentle knocking at the door and Millie comes in with our morning tea. I keep my eyes tightly shut. My head hurts and my mouth is dry. I don’t want to have to deal with Hugo’s disapproving looks and I don’t want to listen to a lecture about how I need to behave better if he wants to get Simon on board. I simply don’t care. I shouldn’t have come here. Maybe I shouldn’t have even married Hugo.
I hear the door close softly and Hugo prods me in the back. Thankfully this morning it is with his hand. ‘Ria? You awake?’
I mumble something incoherent which I hope makes me sound like I’m still asleep. Hugo sighs, gets out of bed and goes into the shower. I carry on pretending to sleep while he gets dressed and he doesn’t try to wake me. I guess he’s still annoyed about how I behaved last night. Once he’s left the room, I manage to fall back to sleep for real.
What feels like seconds later, Hugo slams open the door and says, far too loudly, ‘Ria! Wake up! Now!’
I open my eyes and look at him grumpily. ‘What? Why can’t you let me sleep? Do I have to go skiing each and every day with bloody Cass? I thought this was supposed to be a holiday, for me at least, not just some giant schmoozefest. Why can’t I stay in bed if I want to?’
‘God, Ria, it’s always about you, isn’t it?’ Hugo says, uncharacteristically snappy. ‘I don’t care if you’re too hungover to ski. Serves you right after your appalling display last night. Anyway, you need to get up. Cass has gone missing and we need to help look for her.’
I sit up and rub my eyes. ‘What? Why do we need to look for her? She’s a grown woman. She’s probably gone for a walk or something.’
Hugo sighs. ‘You may well be right, but Simon is beside himself. It seems she’s been suffering with postnatal depression and he’s worried she might hurt herself or something. He says she wouldn’t go out without the baby and without telling anyone.’
I sigh and sink back onto the pillows. ‘Yes she would – the baby’s always with the nanny. Cass barely seems to spend any time with it at all.’
Hugo strides over to the bed and hauls the covers back. I turn over on to my front, feeling strangely exposed. ‘It doesn’t matter what you or I think,’ he says in a low voice. ‘I’m sure she’s fine too. But I want us to look like we’re being helpful. Like we care – which I do, even if you don’t. So get yourself out of bed and get dressed, OK?’
Once I’ve had a quick shower, some paracetamol and two Berocca to try to wake myself up, I go downstairs to the living room.
Simon is sitting on the leather sofa, holding the baby and staring into space. Matt is on the phone speaking French and gesticulating, and Millie is standing anxiously and awkwardly by the sofa, patting Simon’s shoulder.
‘Simon?’ Hugo says. ‘What can we do to help? Should we go and walk around the resort? See if we can see her?’
I look out the window and see that it is snowing. Really quite hard. Please say no, I plead inwardly.
Simon ignores Hugo’s question, gets up from the sofa and distractedly hands Hugo the baby. Hugo makes a coochy-coo noise at Inigo and Inigo giggles. ‘Who’s a gorgeous boy?’ Hugo says in that stupid high-pitched voice everyone seems to use to talk to babies.
Simon gives Hugo a despairing look, runs his hand through his thinning hair and paces up and down by the enormous glass wall. Hugo turns his attention back to Simon, pulling a sympathetic face while gently rocking the baby.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Simon says, his voice strained and strangulated. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed up last night. I shouldn’t have got drunk. I should have been in bed with Cass, looking after my wife and my baby. It’s all my fault. She’s so vulnerable at the moment. I shouldn’t have brought her here. If anything’s happened to her …’
Millie pats his shoulder again.
‘I’m sure she’s fine, Simon,’ I say, in what I think is my best sympathetic voice. Hugo will be impressed. ‘She’s probably gone out to clear her head or something.’
Matt gets off the phone. ‘Well I’ve called the gendarmes and they say they’ll keep an eye out for her, but it’s too early to do anything yet as she’s an adult and she’s only been missing a maximum of a few hours. I’ve also called the tourist office and the mairie, but there’s not …’
‘The hospitals!’ Simon almost shouts, stopping his pacing. ‘Shouldn’t we call the hospitals?’
Matt and Millie exchange a look. Sarah, who has just come in with Inigo’s blanket, subtly rolls her eyes at me and I hold in a smirk. She reaches her arms out towards Hugo to take the baby and Hugo kisses Inigo’s head before he hands him over. Ugh.
‘Shall we wait a little and see if Cass turns up first?’ Matt says tentatively. ‘After all, we’ve no real evidence that anything is wrong yet.’
Simon slumps down onto the sofa and sinks his head back into his hands. ‘I’d like it if you would call the local hospitals, please,’ he says quietly, without looking up. ‘I would do it, but I don’t speak any French.’
‘Of course,’ Matt says, in a professional tone of voice, no doubt hiding his irritation. ‘I’ll do it now.’
‘I’ll go and have a walk around the resort,’ Hugo says. ‘She’s got to be somewhere.’ He looks at me meaningfully. I say nothing. But then I glance at Simon again and he seems so pitiful that I can’t help but say: ‘I’ll go too, soon as I’ve changed into something warmer.’
Hugo and I agree that we will cover the ground more quickly if we split up. The chalet is piste-side on the very edge of the village, so once we’ve walked down the tree-lined driveway to the main road at the top of the village, he sets off to the left while I say I will walk around to the right. If I was Cass, who has no doubt slipped out for some quiet time by herself, I’d be really annoyed to be found. So I put my head round the door in most of the cafés and shops I pass for the first hundred metres or so and then stop for a café au lait in one which has a particularly nice open fire.
About an hour later I wander back to the chalet. Nothing much seems to have changed except that Matt has gone and Simon has moved over to the huge glass wall where he is staring miserably out over the valley. Hugo isn’t there, and I wonder briefly if I should have stayed out longer pretending to look for Cass.
‘No news?’ I ask. Millie smiles sympathetically and shakes her head.
‘Not yet,’ she says.
‘I don’t understand where she could have gone,’ Simon says hoarsely, banging his fist against the glass. ‘If anything’s happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.’
7
December 1998, La Madière, France
I take the chairlift back up again. The wind is now blowing even harder and it is absolutely freezing. The lift keeps stopping, no doubt as the few fools who are still out braving this weather fall over as they fight to get off and stay upright at the top with the wind buffeting them. If the wind gets any stronger, they’ll probably have to close these upper lifts. Which means I might only have one more go at checking the run before … I must find them this time, I think. I must. It’s so hard to see in this weather. They’ve got to be there somewhere.