by Minna Howard
Eloise was hit with a sick despair. She felt a sense of loyalty to Jacaranda, for Desmond’s sake with his precious memories of Maddy and, of course, for Lawrence and Theo.
Saskia saw her face and said firmly, ‘We can’t let that happen, but Aurelia, apparently, does have access to money, perhaps she’s made a huge profit, I don’t know, and Jacaranda urgently needs to update its plumbing and all. But you have the advantage of being there, in the chalet… with Lawrence,’ Saskia emphasized his name as if Eloise was slow off the mark.
‘Oh Saskia, don’t be silly. Our relationship is nothing like that at all, and even if it was I can’t help out with money, I hardly have any myself after the divorce and buying the new house, and don’t forget I’m going home very soon.’
‘Well then, let’s hope these clients at Jacaranda now are so impressed they tell the agency to send Lawrence all their richest clients,’ Saskia said. ‘It seems as if a lot hangs on whether they enjoy their time there. If they don’t he may have no choice but to turn to Aurelia to save Jacaranda.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Eloise said with a sickening heart, even though she knew that it was true.
Sixteen
There were two days until Christmas and at last they woke to blue skies and golden sunshine. To Eloise’s relief, as she and Vera were fed up with some of the guests – namely Debra, Ken and Travis – lurking about seemingly glued to one electronic device or another, as if they were oxygen masks, everyone except Debra wanted to ski. Lawrence organized a couple of ski guides to accompany them, though Gaby, who’d skied a lot as a child before her father’s death, announced that she and Jerry had made plans to ski with Theo.
Theo had taken them out a couple of times already and Eloise guessed that Gaby wanted to get away from the group, and Theo was only too willing to take them and be out on the mountains himself. She wished she could go too, but she supposed she’d have to stay here and produce lunch for Debra. But to her surprise and delight, Debra said she’d join Ken and Travis for lunch on the mountains, and as Lawrence was tied up, Eloise was detailed to take her to find them there and then she was free to ski herself.
Lawrence hurried impatiently into the kitchen while pulling on his coat. ‘Are you up to date with your cooking?’
‘Just about,’ she said cheerfully, hoping to tease him out of his mood. Theo was collecting the turkey and the ingredients for the stuffing from the butcher later. The puddings were done and she’d had another go at making mince pies, leaving the pastry lids off and covering the tops instead with slivers of almonds and they looked and, she thought, tasted delicious.
‘It’s got to be more than “just about”,’ he snapped wearily, making her feel guilty that she wasn’t the top chef his father had persuaded him she was.
‘I’m sorry Desmond exaggerated my skills,’ she said. ‘I am doing my best, but I’m aware that my best is not good enough for these sorts of people. Have they complained much?’
He regarded her in surprise. ‘No one’s complained to me, have they to you?’
‘Well, no, but I just thought they’d expect… top restaurant food, all tarted up.’
His face relaxed, his mouth quivered with the sliver of a smile. ‘I think they would if this was one of those luxury chalets, instead of just plain old Jacaranda…’
‘Jacaranda is far more than that,’ she retorted. ‘Those places have no atmosphere and are completely false, like a film set, not the real thing at all. I couldn’t bear it if this chalet became like that.’ The words ‘if Aurelia got hold of it’ hung in the air between them, though she’d stopped herself saying them in time.
His expression tightened again, his mouth now set in a grim line, ‘Things have changed since we were children, Eloise. People expect far more today, and if I want to keep Jacaranda and maintain it properly, we need to attract people at the top of the market, there’s a lot of competition now.’
‘I know that, but what about ordinary families, people with children.’
‘It doesn’t really work. We need to make a certain profit each year for Jacaranda to survive and that means setting the right price for each stay, which is usually out of the question for most families, especially when you need a car to get to the ski stations and the village. As you know, there’s quite a walk to the bus stop and we charge extra if we taxi them about. Then there’s parking fees, and all that costs more money which many families can’t afford.’ He turned back towards the door, ‘We’ve got to offer more to get the right people.’
‘Like zillionaires who seduce your chefs,’ she joked, hoping to lighten his mood.
‘Well no.’ He studied her a moment, and she was about to say he needn’t worry, she had no intention of going off with any of this lot, even if they managed to glance up long enough from their laptops to notice her, when Vera came into the kitchen and they could hear the bustle of the others searching for coats and boots in the hallway and Ken calling him.
Lawrence sighed and marched out of the kitchen, as if he were on dangerous manoeuvres, ready to drive the skiers down. The outside door was left open as the party tramped in and out getting their belongings together. The blue minibus started up, its wheels crunching over the icy snow as Lawrence turned it round to go down the road, and the front door of the chalet closed at last, cutting the creep of the icy cold air coming down the passage, and they were gone, leaving only Debra behind.
Almost at once she came into the kitchen, walking in as if she owned it. ‘I’m to meet the skiers for lunch at 1.30,’ she announced, ‘and you are taking me there, Eloise, are you not?’
‘Yes,’ Eloise said, ‘we’ll leave about 12.15, if that’s suits you. Do you have a pass for the ski lift?’
‘No,’ Debra said, ‘and I’d like to do some shopping first, so perhaps we’ll leave earlier?’ She smiled, though her eyes were hard, wary, as if she wouldn’t stand for a different plan to the one she’d made for herself.
Eloise nodded, suppressing an oath. That meant she’d probably have to curtail her skiing this afternoon to finish off the dinner, a task she hoped she could finish this morning, but like Theo and Lawrence, she must accept that the clients’ wishes came first.
Half an hour later they were in the jeep. The minute she was settled in her seat, Debra said, ‘How extraordinary that you know Gaby. Have you known her long?’
‘Yes, I suppose I have. Her family used to live in the same street as us and she was friends with my children.’
‘Was? So she’s no longer their friend?’ Debra turned to Eloise, as if she were interrogating her.
‘No, but only because her family moved away when her father died.’ Eloise slowed down as the road felt quite icy, being sheltered by the trees, and the sun hadn’t had enough time to soften it.
‘I’m sure she’s very nice,’ Debra said in a voice that implied that she wasn’t, ‘but she’s not the sort of girl I expect my nephew to marry.’
Eloise bit back her opinion that she didn’t think Debra’s nephew was the sort of man Gaby should spend her life with. He reminded her of a lovesick dog following her round, which would surely drive her mad in time, if it hadn’t already. If he weren’t bankrolling her studies, she probably wouldn’t have looked at him twice.
‘Jerry’s easily led,’ Debra went on. ‘When his mother, my sister, died, he came into a lot of money, not that he hasn’t also worked hard for it, he’s always worked since he left school,’ she added quickly as if Eloise would despise someone who had inherited money. ‘So he’s easy prey for fortune-hunters.’
‘And you think Gaby is one?’ Eloise felt awkward, as Gaby had confessed to her that she was using Jerry’s money to get her through uni. Studying law, she’d probably end up with a good job and a good salary and wouldn’t need his money after that.
‘Yes I do,’ Debra said firmly. ‘I’ve told Jerry in no uncertain terms that she’s not for him, but he’s besotted with her, fool that he is, and he won’t hear a word against her. I didn’t want
her to join our party for Christmas, but he insisted, paid for her ticket, so there was nothing I could do to stop it.’
Eloise was torn. She liked Gaby and knew she was only trying to get a better life, earn her own way in the end, but she was using Jerry to get there, and though people used each other in all sorts of ways, Eloise did feel it was wrong, and would be furious with Lizzie or indeed Kit, if they did the same. Yet she knew Gaby’s family had suffered financially since Garth had died and had been left in serious debt. Perhaps seeing her mother struggle to get by had fuelled Gaby’s determination not to get caught in that trap herself. Without Jerry’s help she might not have been able to go to university at all. Debra probably didn’t know what it was like to worry where the next tenner was coming from and to be ground down by unending debt and anxiety about how to pay it back.
As if she could read her mind, Debra said, ‘You probably think I married a rich man and go about spending his money, but you’re wrong. I’m the one with the money. My sister and I went into property, built up a good business, and then we sold it. I married Ken for love, he was in the letting business himself, bought flats in what were then unfashionable parts of London, did them up and sold them on for a good profit. I now have various Internet businesses, as do Jerry and Radley.’
‘And Travis and Pippa?’ Eloise asked, rather admiring Debra now for not being a kept woman.
‘Travis works with Ken, his right-hand man, and Pippa,’ Debra paused, sighed, ‘Pippa is really a passenger, riding on the backs of the rest of us.’
‘I see.’ Eloise felt rather sorry for Pippa for not having the drive of her mother-in-law. They reached the square and she parked the car and asked Debra which shops she wanted to go to.
‘I’d like a warmer ski jacket,’ Debra said. ‘It’s much colder than I thought and it will be worse up the mountain.’
She was wearing a well-cut wool jacket in dark green that looked warm enough. But it was what Debra wanted and Eloise was here to help her, though she wished she knew which shops to take her to. She’d only been shown the food ones and hardly knew where well-dressed women like Debra went to buy their clothes around here.
‘Hello… it’s Eloise, isn’t it?’ A man came up and greeted her; it was Quinn, Saskia’s lover.
‘Oh Quinn, how nice to see you. This is Debra Collins who is staying in Jacaranda. Quinn Pearson,’ Eloise introduced them.
‘Not the Quinn Pearson, the restaurant writer,’ Debra exclaimed, her face glowing more than Eloise had ever seen it.
Quinn, no doubt used to such adulation, smiled, ‘The very one, my dear lady. Now, are you here for Christmas, enjoying the skiing?’
‘I don’t ski, I never got round to it, though I love the mountains,’ Debra said in a sort of cooing voice. ‘But the rest of my party are up there and Eloise is taking me to join them for lunch. Are you going up today?’ She twinkled at him; quite surprising Eloise who hadn’t imagined this powerful lady with her millions would be impressed with a mere cookery writer.
‘No, I’m lunching elsewhere, Chez Dany, walking up there with some friends.’ He smiled, turned to Eloise. ‘Saskia is thrilled you are here, someone her own age,’ he chuckled, ‘though she’s very good with an old man like me.’
And you are very good to her, Eloise thought, before bidding Quinn farewell and getting back to the business of shopping.
There were quite a few clothes shops around and to Eloise’s relief Debra found a jacket that pleased her in the second shop they went to. It was mouth-wateringly expensive, in a soft blue with a blonde fur collar and a matching hat. Clothed in those and a new pair of gloves, Eloise took Debra up in the gondola to the mid stop on the mountain where she was to meet the others for lunch.
With the exception of Theo, Jerry and Gaby, the others had just arrived and Eloise left Debra with them, joining the queue to take a gondola further up to the top of the mountain.
It was quite crowded, people jostling to get in, and she just managed to squeeze in the lift in front of her before it turned away and the door snapped shut. It set off, swinging a moment before climbing with a sudden surge high above the mountains.
‘Eloise?’ She heard her name; his voice hesitant as if he could not believe that she was there. ‘Eloise, whatever are you doing out here?’
Seventeen
Eloise glanced up, her hand tightening on her skis, her stomach riddled with knots. She’d convinced herself that Harvey had left the resort, gone back home for Christmas.
There was hardly any place to move in the gondola with people and skis stacked close together, she was pinned against one of the side windows. A couple beside her were holding on to each other, the woman, her head snug in a cream wool beanie, craned forward every so often to nibble her companion’s neck, or he leant to kiss her. Between them and their two bobbing heads, she saw Harvey staring at her, his expression a mixture of dismay and disbelief.
He was shocked to see her. At least she had glimpsed him in the village so knew he was here, though suddenly seeing him like this was most unsettling.
His face was lightly tanned, though quite pouchy around his eyes, and there were deep lines round his mouth. The glowing skin of the young couple beside her cruelly showed how much older he had become since she had last seen him in the divorce court. He was wearing the red and blue stripy hat Lizzie had given him the last time they’d been skiing – the family all together. She didn’t want him here, want the memories of those family skiing holidays to swamp her, when the children were small and Jacaranda was cosy and familiar and Harvey loved her – or anyway she thought he did.
‘You must be staying with your godfather,’ he said, his voice loud above the chatter around them. He seemed pleased that he had found a reason for her being here, dodging his face between the kissing couple. ‘Are you here for Christmas?’
She nodded, tried surreptitiously to see who he was with, but it was difficult in the scrum to see who was with whom. She felt slightly panicky now as if she were imprisoned with him in this small and crowded place, without escape. What if she’d been standing next to him, pushed against him by the other skiers, feeling the shape of him, the familiar scent of his skin?
The couple between them snuggled closer, they were very young and obviously madly in love. It took her back to her and Harvey in their early days when they couldn’t stop touching each other, reaching out as if to confirm the other was there. Then, as their life together went on and the children were born, he had become more and more restless until he had eventually drifted away.
She gazed out at the mountains and the hard light, with the brilliant blue sky and the white, white snow. In the spring, marmots came out of their burrows on these slopes and she remembered watching for them from the gondola, hoping to see one, though she never had. They wouldn’t be there yet; they’d be snug beneath the ground in hibernation. She tried to think of them instead of Harvey, standing large as life, just a few steps away from her.
She wriggled round so her back was to him while she struggled to calm herself. If only she could escape. She didn’t want to talk to him, see who he was with. He was quiet now, no doubt wishing he’d tried to avoid her.
They arrived; the gondola shuddering into the dock, the door sliding open, and everyone clattered out. Eloise followed them and, to her distress, Harvey was waiting for her by the stairs to go down to the snow.
‘I’m so surprised to see you here,’ he said, slightly awkward now, the way he was if he’d been up to no good with some other woman and he knew she suspected him.
They were stuck in the crowd of skiers all trying to get down the narrow stairs to the snow. ‘Me too. How long are you here? Where are you staying?’ She needed to know so she could lie low, keep out of his way. Her heart was beating fast, she wanted to get away from him, to cut away the memories of the good times that pained her so. She would not go out again until he had left.
‘Down by the old church, in a chalet with friends,’ he said.
> She waited for him to tell her their names, wondered if they were friends they had shared when married, or people she had never known and he had kept from her, or new friends that now she would never get to know. Or did he mean he was in a chalet with a lover, the woman in pink? He did not venture any information, and she was not going to question him.
‘So how long are you here?’ he asked, his voice neutral, no doubt checking on her too, wanting to keep out of her way.
‘I’m here as a cook at Jacaranda.’ She moved away from him in the melee of people towards the stairs, longing to be skiing, escaping from him, dashing down the slope, though he could easily catch her up, but surely he would let her go, be relieved that she had gone.
‘Cook?’ he frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The chalet’s let out now for rich clients, their cook – or rather chef – ran off with a millionaire, so Desmond suggested I come out and cook for Christmas.’
‘But that’s… quite a job.’ He looked incredulous, his mouth twitching with a smile.
‘It is and I’ve got it,’ she said firmly. Once she would have told him how precarious the job was, how she worried that Lawrence might think her not up to scratch and about Aurelia lurking in the wings willing her to fail, but now she said nothing, not wanting to add to her insecurity.
She moved as quickly as she could towards the stairs, frantic to get away from him, but she couldn’t pass the other people, their heavy boots clanging on the metal steps as they went on down carrying their skis. Harvey was swept up by other skiers impatient to be down the stairs and back on the slopes and he was right behind her and for a moment they were trapped on the narrow stairs. He asked about Jacaranda, saying if he’d known they let it out he’d have told his friends, tried to rent it instead of the cramped place they were in now. She stayed silent; praying he and these friends wouldn’t come up and visit.
