The train was mostly empty on the way up and travelled at high speed at a high incline, through a dark tunnel where Emme’s ear popped at the roar, until it came to a stop at another set of steep steps that each lined up with a door and gate to the train. Emme got out and felt miffed she had to clunk up all these stairs to get to the exit, heavy skis and poles over one shoulder.
It all felt like such an effort, until she walked out of the ski train exit and saw the captivating view. The white snow dazzled her eyes, but in front of her, the iconic Silberschnee glimmered in the sunshine, crisp and close and the focus for all the skiers whizzing past. A woman in a houndstooth check ski suit and silver helmet whizzed by at lightning speed, so close, she nearly took Emme out.
‘Out of the way!’ a child bellowed, coming from her left.
‘Fuck!’ Emme cursed, stepping back fast. She didn’t realise the ski train exited onto an actual ski run– whose idea was that? She looked around for Cedric, Harry and Bella as she clunked awkwardly on her boot heels to a terrace where people were sitting at wooden tables. Rows of skis were propped up on wooden racks to the side of it, while skiers ate late lunches of schnitzel and chips; hotdogs and onions; leek and potato soup.
Emme leaned over a terrace wall and asked a woman smoking a cigarette if this was the Zita Café.
‘Nein, this is Schneehütte,’ the woman replied.
An American woman overheard as she clicked her skis on and told Emme she had to take the ski lift to get to Zita.
‘Don’t get off at the first one, stay on to the top.’
‘Top?’
Shit.
Emme thought shewasat the top. It was already 3.15pm. Cedric and the kids would be waiting and she didn’t have his number. Surely he’d call her?
Emme had only ever been skiing once, with Tom in Colorado, and he’d had to haul her on and off the chairlift– but watching the lines of people postprandial and merry, lining up their skis and plonking their bottoms onpadded seats, she hoped muscle memory might kick in. All she had to do was put her skis on first, she realised, as everyone else had.
Emme thrust her poles into the snow and leaned on them while she repeatedly tried to get a boot to lock into a ski. After five attempts she almost cried.
‘Jesus!’ she called out, desperate at being late. An instructor with another group saw her struggling and cleared the snow that was obscuring her ski bindings with the end of his pole.
‘Now try…’ he said, holding out an arm for her to lean on. ‘Stamp down until you hear a click.’
It took three more attempts until the first boot locked into place. The other clicked in on the first attempt.
‘Thank you,’ she said, utterly grateful and terribly nervous. The instructor and his group were heading to the chairlift too, and he gave Emme a hand by holding out his pole for her to take. He dragged her and propelled her forward in front of his group.
‘Line up!’ he bossed, telling her to go and stand next to a couple and a child who had just moved forward and formed a line behind a blue stripe marked out in the snow. Rows of seats were coming around a carousel, and Emme tried to emulate the other passengers alongside her, watching their timing for when to sit.
She plonked down onto the seat which propelled the four of them off the ground and up into the air.
How does the kid do it?
How do Harry and Bella do it?
We could all fall off and plummet to our deaths!
Emme wanted to scream, this felt so unsafe. The child along the row could easily fall forward, and the gap betweenthe snowy mountain and the soaring seat was only getting wider.
‘The barrier!’ the man in the group called to her along the seats, part in panic, part in anger. Emme was unwittingly obstructing it, and the man wasn’t able to pull it down.
‘Oh, sorry!’ she said. Embarrassed and relieved. She moved, and the man brought a barrier down over their heads in front of them. Still, it didn’t feel very secure. The child could slip under it easily.
Emme tried to take in the stunning view. Pristine untouched snow underneath them. Slaloms to the left and right. She felt petrified.
At the first station the family alongside her lifted the barrier and glided off with a polite nod that Emme read to begood luckand she continued to soar. She placed the barrier down this time, pleased with herself that she knew how to, and looked at her watch. It was almost half past three. She really hoped Cedric hadn’t thought she’d messed up and gone down to the village to meet her. If she stayed on, would this chair take her down or did she have to ski it? She looked at the tiny figures below her, making tracks in the glimmering snow. The quiet of the journey, the gentle sound of skis cutting through snow, gave a strange and unsettling peace. Everyone looked like they knew what they were doing.
Fuck.
Emme looked at her watch again as she saw the summit ahead. She didn’t have time to not get this right. A sign on a grey steel column illustrated that now was the time to lift the safety barrier up again, and she pushed it back with such might it clattered up with a bang above her head that almost made her cower.
How did people get off this thing? She tried to remember how Tom showed her. Emme hadn’t had a chance to look at the people in front, at their technique. If she looked back to ask the ski instructor on the chair behind her, she’d miss her moment to get off. Was he even still there?
