‘It bloody is over there,’ Madeleine said, gesturing towards the wall of Perspex.
‘Well, yes, OK. It is over there. Which is why there are nets set a little way down, just in case,’ Gull replied.
Madeleine’s expression took on a triumphant edge as she turned to Rose. ‘See? Nets. Why would they need nets if it’s so perfectly safe? Explain that to me.’
Rose rolled her eyes. ‘That’s just to stop morons high on something who decide they can defy gravity. Or fly. It doesn’t apply to everyday people doing everyday things.’
Madeleine frowned. ‘I am yet to be convinced. I just want you to know that.’
Tania smiled. ‘Nothing wrong with a healthy sense of self-preservation,’ she said.
Gull slid an arm around her waist, resting a hand on the small of her back. It made her shiver. She took a sip of coffee to cover the involuntary movement.
‘I didn’t notice much of a sense of self-preservation in your skiing,’ he said to her.
‘I’m always in control,’ she said.
He slid a couple of fingers underneath the seam of the back of her jacket, tucking them inside the waistband of her ski trousers. Still layers away from her skin, but the effect was seismic. Turning until his lips brushed the air beside her ear, he said, ‘Not always, surely.’
Goosebumps shot their way up her spine as he reversed his fingers’ path until his touch was replaced by mountain air. She shifted, adjusting her jacket before she took another sip of coffee. Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that the conversation about self-preservation was continuing. That they were discussing the way this resort marked the skiing areas with poles, not only denoting the colour of the run– green, blue, red or black, as well as mogul runs and the fun parks– but the fact that the poles to the left of the run were also marked with yellow bands, in case conditions were so bad that it became impossible to see where the piste was.
Tania had skied in those kinds of conditions, not through choice, but usually when a chairlift or a bubble took her up into the cloud cover, into a whiteout. Negotiating those kinds of conditions felt like skiing five minutes after downing a bottle of whisky. It became impossible to tell ground from sky, up from down, instantly creating a feeling of nausea and disorientation. It wasn’t pleasant. If Madeleine ever needed to worry about falling off the edge of a mountain, those were the conditions in which it became a dangerous possibility.
Gull was telling them an anecdote about a similar experience with bad weather, but she didn’t want to join in the conversation. Instead, she wanted to steal a look at him. This was the closest she’d been to him since their kiss the previous evening. As he chatted, he ran a hand around the line of his jaw, into his wild, mahogany curls and back out again. An unconscious action, but one that had her desperate to follow the same path, not with her eyes, but with her own fingers. Or better still, her lips. She wanted to know how his skin tasted, whether it felt soft under her lips in its relatively freshly shaven state. How that would change as the day progressed, as the shadow began to form. Would it be rough to the touch by the afternoon, or would she have to wait until the dark hours of the night to feel it like that?
She swallowed, trying to distract herself with what she’d forgotten was an empty coffee cup. It clinked back into its saucer.
‘Can I get you another?’ Gull said.
‘No. Thank you.’ She frowned.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Do you mind my being here? I know we said we’d meet up later. Just tell me if I’m intruding on your plans.’
He couldn’t have been further from the mark if he’d tried. It was as if there was nowhere else he could possibly have been, or her for that matter.
‘Do you prefer Irish wolfhounds?’ she said. ‘Or Dalmatians?’
If he was confused by her sudden segue in the conversation’s direction, the confusion was only momentary; the frown dissipating before it had time to form properly, replaced instead by one of his lightning smiles, bright and sudden, and gone again just as quickly.
‘I like them both. I like pugs too, for the record,’ he said, twisting towards her. ‘Even if they are awkward little buggers.’
He traced a path down the side of her face with a fingertip, moving with infinite deliberateness until his fingers rested on her neck, his thumb caressing the skin below her chin with the tiniest of movements.
Clara cleared her throat. Tania was no longer on planet Earth, that much was obvious. Her attention had been on Gull, one way or another, since he’d appeared. And now he held her totally transfixed. But it wasn’t that which surprised Clara. If anything, it pleased her. It took a lot to get, and maintain, Tania’s attention.
What did surprise her, however, was that Tania was allowing him to touch her, in public. OK, so it wasn’t anything more than the gentlest of touches. It wasn’t an attention-grabbing PDA. It wasn’t as if they were unzipping one another’s clothing or kneading at each another like horny teenagers, all tongues and moaning. Somehow it was far more intimate than that. Or perhaps that was simply because she knew how out of character it was for her media-savvy friend to allow it.
Either way, she felt as if she were intruding just by looking at them.
She glanced across at Rose, deep in conversation about something with Madeleine, then fixed her line of sight out towards the Perspex screen and the drop away to infinity.
Her stomach lurched. Not because of the knowledge of the drop on the other side of the screen, she knew that was there. It was a known quantity, something to be admired from a safe distance. No, it wasn’t that that made her stomach lurch. It was the realisation that she was alone.
It was a weird thing to say that she had just realised she was alone. She’d been alone for four months. She’d been alone since a sense of crashing exhaustion had pushed her into demanding a day to herself. Banning her husband and baby girl from the house so she could have a few hours to herself. A few hours. That’s all she’d wanted. And Mike, being Mike, had complied without argument. He’d taken their baby girl and they’d gone to the shops to buy treats before they headed to the park. All so that she could have a lie-in, for fuck’s sake. She’d got her wish, and then some. She’d had more than a few hours to herself. Because they never came home. She’d been alone ever since.
