‘God, Ria, it’s always about you, isn’t it?’ Hugo says, uncharacteristically snappy. ‘I don’t care if you’re too hungover to ski. Serves you right after your appalling display last night. Anyway, you need to get up. Cass has gone missing and we need to help look for her.’
I sit up and rub my eyes. ‘What? Why do we need to look for her? She’s a grown woman. She’s probably gone for a walk or something.’
Hugo sighs. ‘You may well be right, but Simon is beside himself. It seems she’s been suffering with postnatal depression and he’s worried she might hurt herself or something. He says she wouldn’t go out without the baby and without telling anyone.’
I sigh and sink back onto the pillows. ‘Yes she would – the baby’s always with the nanny. Cass barely seems to spend any time with it at all.’
Hugo strides over to the bed and hauls the covers back. I turn over on to my front, feeling strangely exposed. ‘It doesn’t matter what you or I think,’ he says in a low voice. ‘I’m sure she’s fine too. But I want us to look like we’re being helpful. Like we care – which I do, even if you don’t. So get yourself out of bed and get dressed, OK?’
Once I’ve had a quick shower, some paracetamol and two Berocca to try to wake myself up, I go downstairs to the living room.
Simon is sitting on the leather sofa, holding the baby and staring into space. Matt is on the phone speaking French and gesticulating, and Millie is standing anxiously and awkwardly by the sofa, patting Simon’s shoulder.
‘Simon?’ Hugo says. ‘What can we do to help? Should we go and walk around the resort? See if we can see her?’
I look out the window and see that it is snowing. Really quite hard. Please say no, I plead inwardly.
Simon ignores Hugo’s question, gets up from the sofa and distractedly hands Hugo the baby. Hugo makes a coochy-coo noise at Inigo and Inigo giggles. ‘Who’s a gorgeous boy?’ Hugo says in that stupid high-pitched voice everyone seems to use to talk to babies.
Simon gives Hugo a despairing look, runs his hand through his thinning hair and paces up and down by the enormous glass wall. Hugo turns his attention back to Simon, pulling a sympathetic face while gently rocking the baby.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Simon says, his voice strained and strangulated. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed up last night. I shouldn’t have got drunk. I should have been in bed with Cass, looking after my wife and my baby. It’s all my fault. She’s so vulnerable at the moment. I shouldn’t have brought her here. If anything’s happened to her …’
Millie pats his shoulder again.
‘I’m sure she’s fine, Simon,’ I say, in what I think is my best sympathetic voice. Hugo will be impressed. ‘She’s probably gone out to clear her head or something.’
Matt gets off the phone. ‘Well I’ve called the gendarmes and they say they’ll keep an eye out for her, but it’s too early to do anything yet as she’s an adult and she’s only been missing a maximum of a few hours. I’ve also called the tourist office and the mairie, but there’s not …’
‘The hospitals!’ Simon almost shouts, stopping his pacing. ‘Shouldn’t we call the hospitals?’
Matt and Millie exchange a look. Sarah, who has just come in with Inigo’s blanket, subtly rolls her eyes at me and I hold in a smirk. She reaches her arms out towards Hugo to take the baby and Hugo kisses Inigo’s head before he hands him over. Ugh.
‘Shall we wait a little and see if Cass turns up first?’ Matt says tentatively. ‘After all, we’ve no real evidence that anything is wrong yet.’
Simon slumps down onto the sofa and sinks his head back into his hands. ‘I’d like it if you would call the local hospitals, please,’ he says quietly, without looking up. ‘I would do it, but I don’t speak any French.’
‘Of course,’ Matt says, in a professional tone of voice, no doubt hiding his irritation. ‘I’ll do it now.’
‘I’ll go and have a walk around the resort,’ Hugo says. ‘She’s got to be somewhere.’ He looks at me meaningfully. I say nothing. But then I glance at Simon again and he seems so pitiful that I can’t help but say: ‘I’ll go too, soon as I’ve changed into something warmer.’
Hugo and I agree that we will cover the ground more quickly if we split up. The chalet is piste-side on the very edge of the village, so once we’ve walked down the tree-lined driveway to the main road at the top of the village, he sets off to the left while I say I will walk around to the right. If I was Cass, who has no doubt slipped out for some quiet time by herself, I’d be really annoyed to be found. So I put my head round the door in most of the cafés and shops I pass for the first hundred metres or so and then stop for a café au lait in one which has a particularly nice open fire.
About an hour later I wander back to the chalet. Nothing much seems to have changed except that Matt has gone and Simon has moved over to the huge glass wall where he is staring miserably out over the valley. Hugo isn’t there, and I wonder briefly if I should have stayed out longer pretending to look for Cass.
‘No news?’ I ask. Millie smiles sympathetically and shakes her head.
‘Not yet,’ she says.
‘I don’t understand where she could have gone,’ Simon says hoarsely, banging his fist against the glass. ‘If anything’s happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.’
7
December 1998, La Madière, France
I take the chairlift back up again. The wind is now blowing even harder and it is absolutely freezing. The lift keeps stopping, no doubt as the few fools who are still out braving this weather fall over as they fight to get off and stay upright at the top with the wind buffeting them. If the wind gets any stronger, they’ll probably have to close these upper lifts. Which means I might only have one more go at checking the run before … I must find them this time, I think. I must. It’s so hard to see in this weather. They’ve got to be there somewhere.
As the lift gets to the top, my radio crackles. My hands are so frozen that I struggle to pull my gloves off and unzip my breast pocket. Is it Andy? ‘Hello?’ I shout. The lift station looms into view through the mist and I wrestle against the wind to force the safety bar up. ‘Hello?’ I shout again into the radio as the wind catches the bar and throws it back down, bumping my arm and jolting the radio from my frozen fingers.
‘Fuck!’ I shout as I watch the radio fall, quickly enveloped by the mist. I throw the bar up and slide off the lift onto the snow.
Now what? Were they back at the chalet or not? Was that even Andy on the radio? I’ll have one more check of the slope and then I’ll have to head back to the office, check in with Andy and see if they’ve been found.
I ski as slowly as I ever have, traversing wide, unable to see beyond about a metre in front of me, calling all the time. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ It’s deserted. Anyone with any sense has gone back to their cosy chalets and apartments by now.
I get to the bottom; there’s no sign. Feeling like I might be sick, I head back to the office.