I turn the taps on in the enormous bath and tip the entire contents of one of the little green Hermès bottles in. Hermès – very nice. I strip off and throw my clothes on the floor. The mess will annoy Hugo, but I don’t care. I sink back into the bubbles, turn off the taps, and close my eyes. Only seven more days to go.
‘Ria?’ Hugo’s voice is sharp and too loud. I open my eyes. The water is lukewarm – I must have fallen asleep. ‘Have you seen my book?’ He gives me a look – I can’t quite work out if it’s reproachful or sympathetic. ‘You shouldn’t fall asleep in the bath. It’s dangerous.’
I haul myself up and Hugo hands me a robe, but not before his gaze flicks up and down my naked body. Ugh. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m exhausted though. It’s been a long day.’
He trails his fingers lightly down from my neck across my breasts and down to my waist. ‘Too tired to …’ he asks.
I kiss him chastely on the cheek and say: ‘Why don’t you have a quick shower and then we’ll see?’ knowing full well that I will pretend to be asleep by the time he gets into bed.
I keep my eyes closed and breathe slowly and evenly as I feel Hugo lie down beside me. He gently kisses the back of my shoulder and I think I hear him sigh as he rolls away and turns the light off.
It feels like the middle of the night when there is a knock on the door. ‘Morning! I have tea for you. Can I come in?’ Millie calls softly through the door. I press my face into the pillow, ignoring Hugo’s erection which is jabbing into my back.
‘Come in, we’re decent!’ Hugo mumbles, flicking the light on.
‘I’ll leave it here for you,’ Millie says as she puts the tray down on the desk, discreetly averting her eyes from the bed. ‘Breakfast will be ready for you at eight, but there’s no rush if you’d rather have a lie-in.’
I catch a whiff of Hugo’s morning breath as he stretches and yawns while the door clicks quietly shut behind Millie. ‘No chance of that,’ he says. ‘Not if Simon has anything to do with it. Come on,’ he throws back the covers exuberantly, ‘up you get!’
I sit up blearily. ‘Did Simon say something about a ski lesson? Do I honestly have to do that?’
‘It would help me massively if you did,’ Hugo shouts from the bathroom. ‘I’d like you to spend some time with Cass so you can find out what Simon’s plans are.’
‘Plans?’
He pushes the door open and pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth, rolling his eyes. ‘For the business! Is he planning to buy in? What might it take to impress him? What can I do to persuade him? That sort of thing.’ He wraps a big white towel around his waist and starts shaving. ‘It’s no big deal, is it? Cass has skied before, but she’s lost her confidence since the baby was born, according to Simon. It’s not like you’re only going to be on the nursery slopes or anything. Simon just thought she’d be happier with an instructor. I think it’s rather sweet. Thoughtful of him.’
I sigh and throw back the duvet. ‘Fine. But if it’s too boring, I’m going to make my excuses and leave.’
I pad into the shower and switch it on, enjoying the powerful torrent of slightly too hot water from the huge rainhead on my skin. Much as I’d prefer not to be here, I have to admit the luxurious surroundings are pretty fantastic.
Once Hugo has finished shaving, he drops his towel and takes it upon himself to join me in the shower. It is absolutely the last thing I can be bothered with right now, but I can’t think of an excuse to get him out.
3
December 1998, La Madière, France
Where are they? I go to call out to them but then remember I don’t know their names. Andy will probably know. ‘You all right there?’ I yell. Silence. The wind is picking up and the visibility is worse than ever. ‘Guys? You there?’
Andy finally hones into view further down the slope as I slowly traverse my way down.
‘Where were you?’ I fume as I stop, deliberately spraying snow at the fucker. ‘I’ve lost the clients!’ A panicky feeling is rising inside me even though this is not my fault. It isn’t. The clients shouldn’t have lied to me. They shouldn’t have told me they were much better skiers than they actually are. What if I’d taken them down the kind of terrain they were actually asking for? What if we’d tried something steeper and more gnarly? Then where would we be?
‘I thought you had them,’ Andy says.
‘You should have been watching!’ I explode.
‘Bloody hell, calm down, Cameron! They’ll be fine. They must have gone ahead of us – you can’t see where anyone is when it’s like this.’
‘I would have seen them if they’d gone past me,’ I counter.
‘Yeah, right, whatever. Either way, standing here isn’t going to achieve anything. Best we can do is carry on down and see if we catch up with them. If we get down and we still haven’t seen then, then we’ll think about what to do next.’
Andy sets off down the slope without waiting for me to reply, almost instantly disappearing out of sight because the visibility is so bad. I race after, furiously. No one is beating me down the slope just to prove they’re the better skier! After a few seconds I whizz past the twat, down, down, down. I can barely see a thing but it doesn’t matter, I know this slope so well I could ski it with my eyes closed. Which I might as well be doing, given the conditions right now.
I’m so focused on beating Andy down that it’s only when I get to the bottom I remember the missing clients. Argh! Where are they?
I stare up at the slope, but there’s no one in sight. A few seconds later, Andy appears. ‘I thought we were meant to be looking for the clients? Why’d you race off like that?’
‘Seeing if I could catch them up if they were ahead,’ I lie. ‘Don’t want them deciding to fuck off home because we’ve left them standing in the cold too long.’ Where are they? ‘You didn’t see them?’ I ask Andy.
‘No.’ There’s a pause. ‘D’you think we should call someone? Let someone know they’ve gone AWOL?’
In spite of the freezing wind I feel a bead of sweat run down my back inside my jacket. ‘It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it? I bet they’re fine. Let’s head up on the lift and ski down again, properly slowly this time. We’ll probably pick them up second time around. You’ll give me a hand, won’t you?’ I ask, even though it almost kills me to say it.
Andy gives me a strange look. ‘Yeah. I will. It’s dangerous for them out there on their own in these conditions. Let’s get going.’
Back on the lift, it is even colder and windier than before. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck and dig my chin into the top of my jacket. I peer downwards through the blizzard in case the clients have somehow made it back on to the piste – it’s possible from the couloir, though only really if you know the way – but I can barely see a thing. Even the piste appears to be deserted – anyone sensible has already called it a day.
The lift shudders to a halt about halfway up, leaving us swinging as the wind continues to roar around us. We sit in silence, huddled into our jackets, faces down against the wind. After a few minutes which pass more like hours, there is a squeal and the lift starts moving again. Thank God. ‘Can’t wait to get off this mountain,’ Andy says. ‘It’s freezing. God knows why these poor saps come out in this weather.’