The unfolding knowledge that someone was cooking breakfast for you, and that bacon was involved, had to be one of life’s most glorious awakenings.
Not that getting out of bed had been easy. She’d woken up with a heaviness similar to a hangover, but she’d only had a couple of glasses of wine the previous evening. No, she didn’t have a hangover, instead the feeling was more one of exhaustion. The previous day had been a long one. Catching a lift with Rose to the airport had meant being ready to leave home before dawn; before the sun had even peeked out from beneath the comfort of its thirteen-tog duvet. But it wasn’t only that which had Madeleine exhausted, it was the role she was trying to play. Having to watch everything she said and everything she did in front of Rose’s friends.
She hadn’t appreciated how tiring subterfuge was, it was proving far harder to maintain than she had expected. So, she’d made the most of the last few moments in bed this morning, stretching, then starfishing under the covers, revelling in the amount of space. The bed in her room must be king-size. Maybe even super-king. Was that as big as beds went, or was there an even bigger version? Mega-king? Galactic overlord-size?
Either way, this made her standard double at home feel a bit underwhelming in comparison. And changing the duvet cover was challenge enough with the size of bed she already had. Now was not the moment to recall the time she ended up inside the duvet cover, when she mistimed things and tripped over the edge of the bed. The fact that there was no one in the room to witness her embarrassment didn’t diminish it a whole lot.
As Madeleine had crested the top of the stairs, and zeroed in on Rose who was already seated at the dining table, she realised she could smell freshly baked pastries, too. Rose had told her their stay would be fully catered, but Madeleine hadn’t been entirely sure what that meant in this setting. She’d been expecting a choice between cornflakes and muesli for breakfast, to be honest. Maybe a filled and ready to boil kettle for hot drinks. There was clearly a great deal more to fully catered than that. Her reservations about going on a skiing holiday hadn’t gone anywhere. After all, the closest she’d been to a pair of skis was watchingSki Sundayin her pyjamas with a hot chocolate in her hand. But she decided she’d worry about all of that after breakfast.
Chapter 3
‘She’s keen,’ Madeleine said, puffing under the unfamiliar weight of her skis an hour or so later, as she watched Tania heading out onto the dazzling white of the piste. Madeleine had to stop again to readjust the damned things, one seemed determined to slide out from the other at any opportunity. She decided that on a scale of one to impossible, skis had to come close to being one of the most awkward things on the face of the planet to carry. Perhaps only topped by something like an angry porpoise, or an armful of squabbling polecats. A sea of skiers flowed around her like a river around a rock.
If the rest of the people exiting the bubble station were a river, then Tania was riding the current, her lanky frame barely visible now, even though she was wearing an electric-blue ski jacket with a matching helmet.
‘Sorry I’m so slow.’ Madeleine hefted the skis up again and headed for the sunlight. She was already exhausted, and she hadn’t even reached the piste yet. Maybe this whole thing had been a terrible mistake.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m happy to show you the ropes,’ Rose said, waiting as Madeleine managed to get a ski-pole wedged between the metal grille flooring and the rubber matting and almost tripped over it. ‘Tania will want to see how many runs she can do before we meet up for lunch. The woman’s a demon skier.’
‘Perhaps you should just park me at the nearest restaurant and catch up with her,’ Madeleine said, as they made it out onto the slippery stuff. ‘Leave me, save yourself– that kind of thing?’
‘Not going to happen,’ Rose said. ‘I see your plan, my friend, and you don’t get achocolat chaudthat easily.’
‘Damn it.’ Grinning, Madeleine dropped her skis onto the snow, both landing upside down. ‘Typical,’ she said, puffing as she leaned over, trying to work out how to bend low enough to turn them right-side up while hampered by the unyielding ski boots the lower section of her legs were strait-jacketed into. The only saving grace was that Tania was already lost to her sight, having swished away moments after hitting the snow, so hadn’t witnessed her ineptitude.
‘You’ll get used to it all,’ Rose said, dropping her skis and slotting her feet into them. Madeleine wasn’t so sure about that. She suddenly wished she’d offered to stay behind, to wait for Clara to surface.
But Clara was noticeable, Madeleine thought, by her absence. Tania had checked on her before they left the lodge, but she hadn’t been mentioned since. Probably sleeping off the monster hangover she must be suffering. Rose had told her what Clara had been through, and it was impossible not to feel the weight of it, even for someone who had only just met the woman. Clara’s sadness was palpable, and Madeleine didn’t begrudge her a gentle start to the day. But she wondered for how long they should leave her alone. ‘Will Clara join us for lunch, too?’ Madeleine asked.
Rose sighed, pulling her goggles down to hide her eyes. ‘Maybe.’
Not a particularly forthcoming answer, but perhaps now wasn’t the best moment to press Rose any further. And glancing around at all the other skiers, slotting boots into skis and heading off with a nonchalance she felt sure she would never have the pleasure of experiencing, Madeleine figured she also had more immediate things to worry about. Like how to keep the ski she was attached to from sliding around while she balanced on it and tried to get the other boot to lock onto the other ski.
Eventually she had her feet in her skis, with both poles dug firmly into the snow to stop herself from slipping. Her upper arms already ached with the effort of staying motionless. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘God help me, but I think I’m ready.’
Thank goodness she’d brought her dark glasses with her. That was Clara’s overriding thought when she finally admitted to being fully awake. She slotted them over eyes that burned to the touch before dealing with the next immediacy. Water. She needed a lot of water.
With the tumbler someone had been thoughtful enough to leave beside her bed emptied and teetering on the edge of the bedside cabinet, Clara slumped back against the set of pillows and closed her eyes. Absolute dark was way better, even if the spinning sensation remained.
She shuffled herself around under the covers, without moving her head too quickly, and frowned. Why did her hand hurt?
Extracting an arm from the warmth of the bed, she unfurled her fingers to find a large Elastoplast stuck across her palm, the edges dog-eared and covered in cotton fluff from the sheets. Tentatively, she pushed the dark glasses onto the top of her head and made a closer examination, peeling back an edge until she saw the crusted slash of red and felt a sudden urge to retch. Slapping the plaster back into place, Clara repositioned the dark glasses and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing until the hot prickle threatening the back of her throat subsided.
What had she done last night? She realised she couldn’t remember anything much after the pizza and red wine in the restaurant. The rest of the evening was nothing more than grey fog. The fizzing of an untuned television screen before the satellite connection fired up. There was a rough memory of Tania coming into her room– maybe that had been the previous night … no, it must have been this morning– suggesting she take it easy for a few hours and aim to meet them for lunch.
The thought of food had the prickle returning to the back of her throat, accompanied by a sudden hot sweat which silently informed her just how forcibly her body would reject any attempts at eating.
This had to stop. She knew that much. Somehow, she had to find a way to make it stop.
For now, though, staying still was all she could master. Clara waited until the nausea had subsided. Waited until the throbbing in her head was nothing more than the heavy bass drumbeat she’d become used to. Waited until the excited chatter in the boot room had been replaced by the clumping of boots and the slamming of the front door, and she was certain they’d all left. She stayed put until she was sure the chef had finished cleaning down the kitchen and was also gone.
Convinced she was alone, she pulled on some clothes and headed upstairs. Raiding the cupboards until she located a first-aid kit, Clara held her breath as she peeled back the plaster on her palm and held her hand under a running tap. With her eyes closed, she rubbed tentatively, shifting the crusty dried blood from her skin. She’d never been good with the sight of blood.
She remembered the day Poppy sliced her arm open on one of the flints which made up the cottage’s garden wall. Clara had only turned her back for a moment, but a moment was all it took for Poppy to overbalance and topple against a razor-sharp knapped stone. She’d not long started walking, her balance still a little dubious. But the moment of suspension, between Poppy looking up at her with huge eyes and the realisation of what she’d done with its accompanying wail, was still crystal clear in Clara’s memory. As was the expression on Mike’s face when she video-called him for help. His insistence that she take Poppy to the Accident and Emergency department at their local hospital. His assurance that he would leave work immediately and meet them there. Her memory of later that evening, all three of them on the sofa; Poppy jiggling up and down to some kids’ programme’s theme tune with her bandaged arm held aloft, while Mike tightened his arm around Clara’s shoulder and told her she was amazing, and how lucky Poppy was to have such an awesome mummy. His lips close to her ear, his breath hot against her skin. The overwhelming feeling of reassurance and security, the three of them safe and together. The storm weathered and survived.
Clara removed her hand from the water, absently wrapping it in a tea towel. Heading across to the picture window, she pulled out her phone with her good hand. She shouldn’t listen to his final message again; she knew she shouldn’t. It didn’t help. Nothing helped.
Pressing the phone to her ear anyway, she closed her eyes on the mountain view as his words flooded her senses, all over again.
