And, looking around the table today crystallised the feeling into an absolute. Even if it didn’t end up being Gull, Tania would find someone she would be unable to hold at arm’s length. It didn’t matter what she said, someone would break down her defences, sooner or later. And there was a closeness between Rose and Madeleine that Clara wasn’t sure she could interrupt. Wasn’t sure she wanted to.
It didn’t matter what they said about being there for her, they had their own lives to live. Lives they should feel free to get on with. Lives like the one she’d already had. And lost.
She’d had her time in the sun.
Clara watched a bird of prey making the most of the thermals created by the warm sunshine. Whether it was scanning the area for potential food sources, or simply enjoying a moment on the wing was impossible to tell. The feathers at the tips of its wings were stretched out, its tail jinking and tilting like the flaps on an aircraft the only sign of effort. Clara tilted back her head and closed her eyes, the morning sunlight bright against her eyelids. It wasn’t anyone else’s task to throw her ropes and pull her back up from the black hole she’d fallen into. That was for her to do. Somehow. If she wanted to.
Or she could just take a running leap as far out towards the bird of prey as she could and let gravity do the rest.
Chapter 26
In the end, only Gull and Tania skied down from the very top of the mountain. The other three took the bubble down to the mid-mountain station. Watching Tania and Gull at the restaurant, and then as they skied off together, had stirred up uncomfortable emotions for Rose. After what she’d said to Madeleine the previous evening, it didn’t seem fair to her that they were sneaking around, hiding their relationship.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Madeleine said, ‘is how I felt so unnerved by that Perspex screen and its view at the summit, and yet here we are, in a metal and– oh my God I’ve just realised, Perspex– bubble held hundreds of feet up in the air by nothing more than some strands of twisted wire. And in here, I feel fine. I don’t get it.’
Rose stared through the window, watching the brown sheets of sheer rock disappear beneath blankets of the purest white snow, the marginally less-sheer drops already criss-crossed by the scars of off-piste skiers’ tracks.
‘You’re just weird. Nobody ever tell you that?’ Rose cocked her head, then looked away.
‘Are you annoyed with me? I know you took me up there specially to see that view.’
Rose didn’t reply, just shuffled against the angled seating as she fought her feelings of frustration.
Clara leaned across. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to control our reactions to things, don’t you think? Especially when they aren’t what we were expecting them to be.’
‘Too right. My reaction up there was properly extreme,’ Madeleine said.
Rose stared resolutely through the scratched window as the snowy cliffs became populated by firs, sparsely at first and then with increasing density. Below their bubble she could see the rough stumps of trees unfortunate enough to have tried to grow in the path of the lift, the cleared area opening out as the mid-station came into view. Small groups of skiers twisted their way down through the tree-lined run, some stopping at the station to take a bubble back to the top, others continuing on their way, or heading for the café/restaurant situated beside the run.
Waiting outside the bubble mid-station were Tania and Gull. Rose spotted them without much trouble, Tania’s distinctive jacket and matching helmet made her easy to pick out, but she found herself frowning, her breath steaming up the window as she craned her head. Not only were they standing face to face, skis slotted between each other’s in an intimate jigsaw, but Gull had his arm locked around Tania’s waist. They couldn’t be closer together if they tried. Not actually kissing, she didn’t think, but deep in conversation. The kind of conversation nobody would even attempt to interrupt.
The twist in Rose’s gut wasn’t entirely unexpected, she felt it every time Tania found a new man. It was about time she got used to it. She drew back from the window, glancing instead at Madeleine. There was absolutely no reason on earth why Tania shouldn’t be stood with a man wrapped around her. And anyway, the issue wasn’t anything to do with Tania, or the person she was with. The issue was with herself. Rose knew that well enough, too.
Seeing Tania and Gull brought things even more sharply into focus. People skied past the pair, with no more than a casual glance in their direction. It was something you saw every day, a man and a woman together. They blended into the facade of the commonplace.
Rose had done her best to fit into that mould, had tried for years to walk in shoes that just didn’t fit. And now that she had finally found the place where she fitted best, she wondered if she was strong enough to stay there. It was one thing to tell Madeleine how right everything felt with her– and it did, in a way Rose hadn’t ever expected to feel. It was another to work out how to tell everybody else. Her parents, who were expecting a conventional marriage and grandchildren at some point in the not-too-distant future. Mr Helsom at the accountancy firm where she’d just been made junior partner, with his openly homophobic attitude. Rose just wasn’t sure she had the energy to fight the battles she’d been presented with. She hadn’t asked for any of them.
Running a hand across her forehead, she turned to find Madeleine staring at her.
‘You OK?’ Madeleine said.
‘Yeah. I’m just a bit tired.’ She wondered how long Madeleine had been looking at her.
‘Me too,’ Madeleine said, offering her a small smile.
The bubble swung as it entered the station, the metal stabiliser clanking against the guide rails as it steadied the movement, the swing subsiding as the bubbles in front and behind concertinaed together and the doors swung open.
Heading out towards the piste, Madeleine said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t fully appreciate the view.’
Rose shook her head. ‘Forget about it. I should have warned you.’
‘I want you to know something,’ Madeleine said, stopping just shy of the snow, where the overhang of the building and the rubber matting opened out. Clara carried on walking, heading for Tania, who now stood outside hip to hip with Gull, waiting for them.
Madeleine lodged her skis on the ground. ‘Putting my fear of precipice-like drops to one side,’ she said, her irrepressible smile reasserting itself, ‘I can safely say this is turning out to be the best week. Ever. So, thank you for wanting me to be here.’
‘Do you know the strange thing?’ Rose said, dropping the end of her skis onto the rubber matting.
‘My obsession with snowmen?’
