It made her feel uncomfortable, worried her enough for a thought to pop into her brain. That perhaps the fine line between doing her best not to pry into Rose’s past and being taken for a total patsy might lie closer than she had thought.
Rose took a slice of what Tom had called ‘French toast’, but which Madeleine had always thought of as eggy bread, then cut it into neat squares. She’d noticed how precise Rose was with her food. It was the same in her wardrobe, all her clothes folded neatly, her washbag orderly, her bed made with fierce precision. Everything folded away, hidden from view. Madeleine felt her eyebrows edge closer together. She knew Rose valued her privacy. That was fine. She was a naturally discreet person. But there was a difference between discretion and keeping secrets.
The atmosphere settled heavy over the breakfast table, like a dark cloud over a picnic, so Madeleine decided to go for her default setting. Flippancy. ‘I suppose I could move back into the ground-floor bedroom again,’ she said.
Rose looked across, confused. ‘Really?’
‘Mmm. I mean, that way I’ll get to sleep in the same bed as the face of Ralph Lauren, won’t I?’ Madeleine waited to see Rose’s expression change. Perhaps she was being unnecessarily insensitive, but she wanted to shake Rose up. ‘I mean, clearly not at the same time as him, but I can just imagine people’s faces when I tell them. All the straight women will be beside themselves with jealousy.’
‘Not all of them,’ Clara said, missing the emphasis contained within Madeleine’s words. ‘No offence, Tania, but your airbrushed little brother isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.’
Madeleine didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, instead she held Rose’s eye with a fierceness she wanted Rose to feel.
A few hours later, Tania checked her watch and her mouth went dry. She should have met Gull fifteen minutes ago. They’d agreed to lunch at the pizzeria in the centre of Près du Ciel’s concrete heartlands. Not the most exciting place in the resort but chosen in case Gull’s knee injury proved to be worse than anticipated.
Currently, though, Tania was heading past the fun park. She pulled to a stop at the exit, to wait for Rose who was collecting Madeleine from her lesson. Clara slid to a stop beside her. They didn’t say anything, but the smile on Clara’s face was enough to let Tania know she’d made the right call. The thought that she had considered abandoning her friend in order to do something as inconsequential as to flirt with a stranger made her resolve even stronger.
The point of this week was to remind Clara that, even though she’d lost the two things most important in her life, she was still alive. She could still go forwards, she had to, and her friends were resolved to be with her every step of the way. Starting with sticking together to collect Madeleine from her lesson before having lunch as a group, as they’d arranged.
In comparison, meeting a man she barely knew to find out if she wanted to allow him to seduce her? She huffed a laugh. In her head it sounded even more pathetic than she’d thought it would. There was no doubt she liked Gull, he interested her. And the fact that she couldn’t work outwhyhe interested her made her even more curious.
Physically, he ticked boxes– he was big and solid and fit, fair enough. But in a line-up of the kind of men she usually went for, he wouldn’t even figure in terms of looks. And yet, she wanted to look at him. She wanted to challenge him and butt heads with him and– actually– she wanted to find out what it would be like to argue with him. Properly argue, not the verbal sparring they’d tinkered with so far. She wondered what it would be like to completely lose her temper with him, to scream and shout and watch what his face did. Find out how he reacted. So much of Tania’s life was spent buttoned up, making sure everything looked good. It had occurred to her that she wanted to know what it would be like to completely let loose, to express emotions at their most raw to someone like Gull and find out how they would react.
It was just a shame the timing was so wrong, because she needed to be present for Clara. As Rose and Madeleine came into view, she watched Clara giggle as Madeleine snow-ploughed and jinked and almost fell before she recovered her balance and slid to a stop in front of them. She watched the sense of achievement on Madeleine’s face, and the grin on Rose’s face as she watched Madeleine.
No, this was way more important. Her friends were more important than a random man. Her friends would be with her for the rest of her life, while a man? He would be a constant for a few days, months, years at best. And then he would be gone, in pursuit of someone younger, prettier, sexier.
It was a shame that she hadn’t got to know Gull better, the pit in her stomach told her that much. But in the big scheme of things, it didn’t really matter. How could it?
Chapter 17
‘Maddy, if you don’t get in the hot tub in the next five minutes,’ Rose said, slipping her dressing gown over her swimming costume, ‘then you are absolutely not allowed to complain about sore legs in the morning.’
Today had been Madeleine’s biggest tally of hours on the snow by a long way. Plus, she’d spent most of them upright. In Rose’s opinion she was doing exceptionally well, especially for a girl who said she could lay claim to being the least sporty individual ever, on a global platform.
Skiing took a lot longer than a few days for anyone to master.
Rose had started the sport shortly after becoming Tania’s best friend. Being invited to the Harrington ski lodge as an impressionable twelve-year-old had been a daunting experience. She’d learned fast. And not just how to ski. She’d experienced Tania’s family at close quarters. Tania’s ethereal stepmother seemed oblivious to her stepdaughter, and by extension, also to Rose. She focused and lavished her attention on Lysander and demanded the same from her husband.
Rose remembered how she and Tania spent a lot of time at the extremities of the woodland which surrounded the property, perching on the edge of the world and looking at the view, rather than inhabiting the same space as Tania’s stepfamily. Rose remembered how cold she had got, and how resolute Tania had been about staying outside for as long as possible. How Tania didn’t seem to register the temperature, instead revelling in the freedom and the starlight, chatting endlessly about her hopes and dreams for the future. Her desire to paint, maybe even exhibit. Rose also remembered the way Tania clammed up the moment Lysander came within earshot.
The trouble with Lysander and Tania was that nothing was ever completely clear-cut. As teenagers they’d fought like rabid dogs about almost everything. Lysander’s mother had done her best to catapult him ahead of Tania in everything they did. And yet, even though Rose remembered those family ski trips as emotionally taut, like a rubber band stretched so hard you didn’t dare let go, and even though situations were manufactured in order for Lysander to continually gain the upper hand, somehow he still craved his sister’s attention, her approval. Even though, when he got it, he treated it with disdain, treated her like a fool.
Once they were old enough, Tania started to visit Snow Pine Lodge with friends, rather than family. Rose was always invited, much to the delight of her father who seemed happy to live in the Harringtons’ glow, if only by proxy. And Clara had joined the mix when she and Tania met at art school. The post-Harrington-family trips, as Rose dubbed them, were accompanied by an infinitely more relaxed Tania who was driven overwhelmingly by her love of careering as quickly as possible down mountains, and less by her confusion on how to maintain a foothold on the slippery slopes of her family dynamics.
Across the room, Madeleine huffed, then extracted a navy-blue ruched costume from her suitcase. She eyed the costume, then pulled a face at Rose. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be out in a few minutes.’
‘You better had,’ Rose said, heading for the door.
Tania and Clara were already in the tub by the time she pulled open the balcony door and walked along the wrap-around porch onto the decking. The lodge was built into the ever-ascending hillside, with its ground level burrowed into the rock itself, windows only on the frontage of the building, alongside the front door.
The decking area stretched out from the second level of the building, surrounded by sloping ground behind and to one side, ensuring privacy, but maintaining an unparalleled view across the rooftops of Près du Ciel. The hot tub was positioned in order to maximise the privacy, and the view.
Well, Rose revised that slightly as she slid into the heat of the bubbling water. She could see most of the view, apart from the bit obscured by the snowman. She grinned as Tania handed her a glass.
‘Is Madeleine joining us?’ Tania asked.
Rose nodded. ‘Any minute now.’
