‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Madeleine said, setting the book aside. When Rose paused before she nodded, Madeleine slid across and hugged her. ‘Tell me if you like?’
‘Not tonight. Do you mind if we just go to sleep?’
In answer, Madeleine reached for the light switch and plunged the room into darkness.
Chapter 16
3 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS
‘Would it be outrageously childish to say I want to build a snowman?’ Madeleine twisted under the covers until she could see Rose, pulling her duvet up until it wrapped everything up to her ears in the comfort of her own night-time warmth.
‘What, right now?’ Rose said, with a mouthful of foaming toothpaste. Checking her watch, she pulled the brush from her mouth, and disappeared momentarily to spit into the sink. ‘It’s seven in the morning, Maddy. Plus, it’s still dark.’
Madeleine huffed, extracting her arms from the warm folds of bedding and squashing the covers either side of her body. ‘Not right now. Obviously. I’ve got my lesson later, anyway. Need to conserve as much energy as possible for that.’ She stretched her legs, then decided that wasn’t such a good idea when her thighs executed the movement grudgingly and with the express desire to cause their owner the greatest of discomfort. She groaned. ‘Someone sneaked in during the night and took my legs. They’ve left me with a couple of iron bars instead. Iron bars wrapped in barbed wire.’ She retreated into a ball.
‘You should have got into the hot tub last night,’ Rose said. ‘I told you it would help.’
‘Well, the ideal opportunity didn’t exactly present itself, did it?’
‘No, I suppose not. See you in a minute,’ Rose said, closing the bathroom door.
Madeleine was aware she was keeping the conversation fluffy, doing her best to float along the surface of whatever Lysander had said to Rose the previous evening. Rose had been tight-lipped when she finally came to bed and Madeleine hadn’t pressed for details. Perhaps she was finally getting a handle on her nosey nature. Or perhaps it was more that she sensed that whatever their conversation had been about, it might take more than a five-minute pre-sleep chat to unpick. And that she needed to wait for Rose to initiate any discussion about it.
Right now, if she could wish for something for the day ahead, she decided it would be that nothing much happened. Nothing except for what she’d imagined was supposed to happen on a skiing holiday. Some skiing, if she must. Lots of admiring of wonderful views, preferably from one of the deckchairs she’d seen at the front of some of the mountain bars and restaurants, with a hot chocolate in one hand and a cinnamon swirl or similar in the other. The construction of a snow figure, complete with scarf and twigs of fir tree for arms.
What was the Chinese expression?May you live in interesting times– more of a curse, if you asked her. Living in uninteresting times had been challenging enough so far, she wasn’t sure she wanted to step out fully into the blinding sunshine of this week’s drama. Which was rather why she planned to make a snowman. There couldn’t be any drama involved in doing that, surely?
Forcing her legs to cooperate with the challenging activity of getting out of bed, she rifled through her suitcase until she found the spare scarf she’d brought for this precise reason. Knitted for her a million years ago by her gran, it was a hotchpotch of different coloured squares and different stitches held together by a series of contrasting woollen threads winding through the edges of each of the squares. Folksy was a kind description of its rough and ready qualities. Made under the influence of a gin, or two, knowing Granny Helen. But it had been made with love, and Madeleine had kept it in the same spirit.
She took it with her when they headed upstairs for breakfast. Was it only two days ago that Madeleine had revelled in the waft of cooking bacon which had filled the building? It seemed to be an everyday occurrence in this parallel universe. Maybe she’d slipped through a wormhole without noticing, like Commander Robson had done. Maybe she had discovered a whole new solar system, at the centre of which spun a sun made entirely of cooked bacon.
Shoving the scarf onto the edge of the table, she slid into her seat. It was strange how, even in a completely unfamiliar setting, she’d settled into taking the same chair at the table for every mealtime. Or perhaps it was more to do with the others already having occupied their favoured positions.
Tania looked at the scarf, bundled up at the far end of the table. ‘What’s that?’
‘I thought I might make a snowman later today, it’s an old scarf, for round its neck.’
Tania laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ve made a snowman in about fifteen years.’
Lysander sniffed. ‘No. And if I remember correctly, you trashed the last one I made here. Kicked its head off and stamped on it.’
It didn’t take Tania long to recall events, so Madeleine assumed it had been a memorable execution. ‘Oh, yes. I remember,’ Tania said, a smile creeping onto her face. ‘Well, you were being a total dick, as usual.’
‘Anyway—’ Madeleine eyed the plate of perfectly crisped pieces of bacon as Tom slid it onto the table ‘—I thought I might have a go this afternoon, always presuming I survive my lesson.’
‘Go for your life,’ Lysander said. ‘But make sure you don’t liken it to the Ice Queen here.’ He waved a hand at Tania. ‘She didn’t seem to appreciate my comparison.’
A knock at the lodge door had Lysander climbing to his feet, grabbing a piece of bacon as he stood. ‘Well, it’s been an absolute blast,’ he said, looking around the table. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic. But his gaze lingered on Tania, then Rose, his expression a fraction too serious. ‘I’m out of here.’ He reinstated the lazy half-smile Madeleine recognised as his trademark and bit the end from the bacon. Holding a hand up in farewell, he took the stairs two at a time, the blond tendrils of his hair bouncing as he disappeared.
Nobody said anything as doors banged and voices sounded, and an engine revved a little as Lysander’s transport turned in the driveway and headed away.
‘You OK?’ Tania said, her eyes on Rose.
Rose nodded. ‘You?’
Tania looked surprised by Rose’s query, as if there could be no question of her being anything other than OK. ‘Of course.’
Madeleine wasn’t overly convinced by either of them, especially when Rose visibly took a deep breath, then forked a couple of rashers onto her plate. Something had been out of kilter the whole time Lysander had been at Snow Pine Lodge, but Madeleine had no idea why. Or why Rose had chosen not to include her in the loop.
