by Isla Gordon
Alice breathed. ‘Intense. In a different way to yours, of course. I’ve been drawing again. Have you ever heard of expressive writing therapy?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, anyway, I’ve been sketching out my thoughts and memories from the past few months, a bit like I used to do for work, hopefully will do again one day, but super-forcing the spotlight on myself. How is that dog still having a wee?’
Marco laughed. ‘So how do you feel after having done it?’
‘I feel like somebody’s gone into my head and given it a good sweep up. They’ve left the pile of rubbish in there, but it’s cleaner and more ordered. You must think I’m such a headcase.’
‘I don’t at all,’ he replied. ‘Can I see them?’
‘No. At the moment they’re just for me. I hope you understand. I might show them or use them someday, but right now they’re a bit . . . ’
‘Personal?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘So you’d better get going,’ she said, now that Bear had finally finished. ‘Feel free to come over later if you want to talk, have some wine and fall asleep on the sofa.’
‘I will definitely do that.’ Marco leant over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘What are you going to do today?’
She rolled her neck and breathed in the fresh air. ‘I think I might go snowshoeing. And then tomorrow I’m going to take you to lunch before my friends arrive.’
He laughed, delighted. ‘Okay then. Have a great day, both of you.’
‘And you.’
Alice went back inside still floating on a sleepy cloud. Maybe she’d take a cup of tea back to bed first.
Alice had been sitting in the snow for five minutes trying to get some bastard snowshoes on her feet. She was at the start of the Chänelegg Trail, a 3.6-kilometre round trip that was supposed to be one of the things to do in the region, and frankly, she was embarrassed not to have done it yet. But not as embarrassed as she was to still be here, freezing her butt cheeks off, knackered without even having gone anywhere.
‘Oh for . . . ’ Alice mumbled, and pulled her ski gloves off her hands using her teeth, using the smallness of her bare fingers to wipe the snow away from the bindings of the tennis racquet-like platforms she was supposed to wear. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ she remarked to Bear, who was lounging on his back, legs apart, like a holidaymaker under a scorchio sun. ‘Why are there so many straps?’
Eventually everything seemed to be in place. Her gloves were back on, although it would be a while before her fingers thawed, and she hauled herself to standing.
The trail began near her chalet, where the village ended and the slope lifted upwards into the woods. On this bright, late Sunday morning, though the sky was clear blue and the sun high in the sky, she seemed to be the only one partaking in this activity.
It was awkward to start with, the back of the snowshoes clacking together and the path narrow, causing her to keep stepping on her own feet.
‘Hey look, Bear,’ she said, bringing her knees up high to step straight down into the thick snow. ‘I look like you when we first arrived in Switzerland, remember?’
Before long, the chalets of Mürren were behind them, and they faced Alpine forests. Bear was in heaven, off the lead, running and pronking and rolling in the snow, messing it all up and gobbling great mouthfuls in lieu of having a drink. He stuck close to Alice, her furry friend, the two of them enjoying each other’s company.
It was a steep ascent through the thick trees, the sun silking between the branches and causing the colour of the snow to vary from indigo to bright white depending on where the sunlight and the shadows hit it. Alice tried Bear’s trick of eating snow to hydrate herself, but the powder was so fine it just disintegrated to barely a drop when it hit the warmth of her mouth.
‘This is very hard work,’ she said aloud to Bear, her brow sweating and her thighs and calves already beginning to ache. She jammed her poles in and out of the snow before her, trying to keep a little of the weight off her bad leg, and that helped a bit.
All of a sudden the treeline ended and the two of them stepped out at the bottom of a plain of thick, untouched snow and a clear sky.
Alice inhaled, stopping to take in her surroundings and catch her breath. ‘It’s just beautiful,’ she said. ‘We could take on the world from up here, couldn’t we, Bear?’
He stopped and leaned against her legs, catching his own breath.
She wanted to point this out to her friends. She was looking forward to showing them this place that was healing her. She took another deep breath, smiled into the sun and, energised, continued up the last bit of slope to the top of the hill, creating a cavernous trail upwards.
‘I think,’ she panted to Bear, each creaking, crunching step a labour of love, ‘we’re going to be okay. I really do. We have more good days than bad days now, huh? Oh my gosh!’
The view at the top was breathtaking – a winter vista of the Bernese Alps stretched proudly in panorama, the north faces reaching into the sky in splendour. Blue and white, and forest green, and Alice drank it in.
She was about to whoop at the top of her voice before she remembered about avalanches, so instead she crouched down and snuggled into Bear, her big bear who kept getting taller and broader, who was wet from the snow but still lovely and warm.
The breeze on her face, the colours, the cold on her nose, the sun on the snow, the absolute quiet except for the panting of her favourite best friend in the world. Alice cleared her thoughts, let her guard down and enjoyed every second of this moment.
Chapter 42
Alice had gone alone to meet her friends at the train station the following evening, leaving Bear flopping about in the chalet. She didn’t know how her mind and body would react when she saw them, but with every passing minute she waited, the more excited she got. All of a sudden it was as if her heart had suddenly realised it was missing them – not as much as it was missing Jill, but enough to notice the gap of where they should be. And now she waiting, on tiptoes to glimpse them as soon as the train rolled in.
They stepped off the train and she ran to them, and all those things she thought would be painful about seeing them – the similarities, the memories, the mirror images they were of Jill, and each other, in so many ways – were not painful at all. They were perfect.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, holding onto Bahira.
‘I’ve missed you. We all have,’ Bahira said and pulled back. ‘Hi Alice, there you are, we’ve missed you.’
‘You came,’ Alice said to Theresa, who was decked out like a snow bunny with pigtails and bobble hat and rosy cheeks.
‘Of course we did. Like it or not.’ She grinned.
‘Thank you,’ Alice said, moving to Kemi.
‘Anytime.’
‘Come on then, before you all freeze.’ Alice took a couple of their bags and walked them up the slope while they oohed and ahhed at the chocolate-box chalets and the deep, soft snow.
‘This is the prettiest place I’ve ever been to in my whole entire life.’ Theresa was chattering on. ‘Ooh, the Eiger Guesthouse looks cosy, can we go in there at some point? I want fondue!’
‘I can make you a fondue if you like!’ Alice said.
‘So you’ve moved on from junk food?’ teased Kemi, gently.
‘I have. My friend Marco’s mum taught me.’
The three women laughed and Kemi said, ‘Whoa, she mentions his name three minutes in – it must be love!’
‘What?’ said Alice, laughing.
Bahira linked her arm. ‘Your mum told us about Marco.’
‘Did you kiss him yet?’ Theresa asked. ‘Because we said we’d report back to your mum.’
‘Since when have you three been besties with my mum?’
‘Like we said,’ said Bahira. ‘We missed you.’
Theresa prodded Alice’s arm. ‘So did you?’
‘Well, it was New Year.’
Theresa shrieked
in excitement.
Alice laughed again. ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘This is us coming up, and he lives just there.’
‘We’ll meet him, though, right?’
‘I don’t think I could stop you if I wanted to.’
Alice let them into Vanessa’s home, and they filled it up with their presence immediately, gushing over the furnishings, falling over themselves to pet Bear who was in heaven under their gazes as they exclaimed how huge he’d got, their chatter and laughter tinkling through any emptiness.
Maybe she’d been wrong pushing them away. Looking at them now she wondered why she’d convinced herself she’d lost everything when she’d lost Jill. But it was what she’d needed to do at the time. She’d had a tough year, as Lola had pointed out, and she wasn’t about to beat herself up for the way she’d coped. She was doing okay.
‘Is there anything you guys would like to do for the rest of the evening?’ Alice asked, moving to put the kettle on.
‘Nothing,’ said Bahira, ‘But watch the sun go down over this beautiful view and catch up with each other.’
‘Agreed,’ said Theresa, ‘But also fondue.’
‘God, this feels like a million miles away from home,’ Bahira commented, lying on the sofa facing the huge window, her tea mug on her lap. ‘I can see why you like it.’
‘I love it,’ Alice answered honestly.
‘Have you been doing any drawing?’ Bahira asked.
‘I didn’t for a long time, but then I started selling a few pieces in a local café, and I’ve been making lots of Bear cartoons of him growing up in Switzerland, and then . . . ’
The others looked over when she stopped.
‘I actually just this last week basically spewed out all my thoughts and feelings onto the pages of my sketch pads, and it was quite therapeutic.’
Kemi sat up with interest. ‘Really? Drawing helps?’
Alice shrugged. ‘It helped me. They say writing in journals and things can help with trauma but I isn’t good wiv them wordz. So for me it helped to say it out loud but on the page.’
‘That’s really interesting.’ Kemi nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking I need an outlet of some kind that isn’t the gym. I’ve been going at it a bit hard.’
‘Because of what happened?’ Alice asked with surprise.
‘Yep. I’ve been spending a couple of hours there per day, as if I could, I don’t know . . . Being strong and fit feels overwhelmingly important right now.’
‘I was drinking too much,’ Theresa confessed. ‘I stopped on the day you left for Switzerland – you inspired me to try and make a change.’
How blind Alice had been, not seeing that her friends were struggling too. ‘I should have called you.’
‘We were all in our own heads a bit at the time,’ said Bahira. She shot a bit of a look at Kemi and Theresa.
‘What?’ asked Alice, afraid of what they were thinking.
Theresa sat up a little straighter. ‘I wish we could have got through this all together, but—’
‘Theresa . . . ’ Bahira interrupted.
‘Tell me,’ said Alice. ‘Let’s just be open.’
So Theresa continued. ‘It felt like you didn’t think we were grieving as much as you. Like you didn’t think we understood.’
Alice looked at all of their faces. They clearly agreed. ‘I think I knew you were grieving, but everything, everything I had was focused on Jill. On every detail in life she’d miss out on. On everything she was and would never be again. I simply didn’t have anything left to share. Especially once Bear started nudging his way into it.’ She paused, collecting up the other thing she wanted to say out loud. ‘But I also thought, how could you not be angry at me? I took her from you . . . ’
‘When did we ever make you feel like that?’ cried Kemi.
‘You didn’t, but I was . . . under.’
Kemi shook her head. ‘Well, please don’t think that kind of thing ever again. When it happened I felt so lucky that we didn’t lose both of you, but then for a while it felt like we had anyway, and we didn’t know how to save you because you kept pushing us away.’
‘But we’re here now,’ said Bahira, practical as ever. ‘Because we don’t care if you try and push us away. We’ll keep pushing back. For you, and for us, and for Jill.’
It was really time human beings stopped giving their insecurities so much credit, Alice thought. When will we realise they’re all in our head?
Kemi broke through Alice’s thoughts. ‘Here’s what I think we should do this evening, if you agree, Alice. I say we put on our pyjamas, open all the chocolate in the house and Alice gives us a drawing lesson so we can all let out our feelings. And we can ugly cry, and ugly laugh, and we can talk about how great a person Jill was but also how bloody annoying she always was with being late to everything.’
Alice laughed at that truth. ‘I don’t know how good a teacher I’ll be, but you had me at pyjamas.’
‘It doesn’t matter what our artwork looks like, it matters that we’re having a go together,’ Kemi finished. ‘What do you think?’
Bear could not have been happier with this arrangement. Within minutes the four women were buckling down for the evening, fresh cups of tea, masses of snacks, PJs on, blankets aplenty, and a big pile of pens, pencils and sketch pads scattered around. And in the centre of everyone’s universe, like the glue that held the group together, was the stretched out and sleeping puppy that once belonged to Jill.
Chapter 43
The morning after, Alice took Bear downstairs early, trying to be super quiet and not wake the others. Kemi and Theresa had slept in Vanessa’s room (with her permission of course), and Bahira in with Alice.
She saddled Bear up to take him for a morning walk. ‘You’re eight months old tomorrow, Bear,’ she whispered. ‘Can you believe it? You must weigh a good forty kilos now, I reckon. You’ve grown into such a huge, handsome boy, and I’m so proud of you.’
Stepping out into the new day, Alice made next door her first stop.
‘Good morning, did I wake you?’ she said to a sleepy Marco.
He stood in loose burgundy checked pyjama bottoms, his chest bare and toned, his hair crumpled and his face stubbly. He rubbed his eye with one arm and with the other reached out and scooped her in through the door. ‘That’s okay, let’s go back to bed, come on.’
She laughed at Bear’s reaction, who jumped up, his paws flailing against Marco. What’s this? Physical contact? Involve me!
‘This puppy is nearly as tall as me now,’ said Marco.
‘Sorry to have got you up.’ Alice eyeballed Marco’s chest. ‘Not that sorry. What time are you working today?’
‘Not until lunchtime. How are your friends?’
‘Really good. You want to come over and see for yourself? Come and have brunch with us this morning.’
‘Brunch, huh?’ He yawned again. ‘That sounds great; can I bring anything?’
‘Bring the others, unless you want to be cross-examined.’ She headed back for the door after a quick kiss. ‘See you in a while.’
Brunch was a hit, with the neighbours bringing not only themselves, but juice, bratwurst, eggs and pancakes to add to their already full table of grilled tomatoes, toast, cereals and coffee.
The group intertwined easily, and Alice stepped back at one point, not because she felt overwhelmed, but because she couldn’t believe her luck. Bear walked over to her because she was still his favourite person there, and he sat next to her as if he too was surveying the group.
‘She does not! Ali, you snowboard now?’ Theresa called, after talking with Lola.
‘She really does, and she’s good at it.’
Alice laughed. ‘You sound shocked.’
‘Not shocked,’ Theresa corrected. ‘Impressed. I want to go out on the slopes.’
‘I can teach you,’ Lola said.
‘She’s a very good teacher,’ said Alice, wandering back over to the table and munching on a leftover half of pancake.
/>
Kemi piped up. ‘I want to learn too, but we leave tomorrow.’
‘Oh no, I’m all booked today. I could call in a favour at the ski school and see if any of my colleagues could take you?’
‘Actually, I had a thought about this afternoon,’ Alice piped up. ‘Does anyone want to go sledding?’
Alice hadn’t been on a sled since she was a little girl, when she and Jill and Jill’s toddler brother had been taken by their mums to a nearby stretch of hill in the Surrey countryside after an unusually large winter snowfall. She remembered laughing with Jill all day, going up and down, up and down the hill until Jill had been sick and Alice had fallen off enough times that her mother thought it would be wise to stop.
Theresa had never been on a sled, had never before been on a winter holiday, but was decked out like a pro snow bunny today, snapping selfies in the sun in her pristine matching ski wear, her sled propped up beside her.
Bahira had taken her family on a ski trip a couple of years back and they’d all tried it then (‘I remember thinking I didn’t have the patience for it on the flat bits,’ she commented). And Kemi knew she’d slid down a hill on something that might have been a dustbin lid one drunken evening at university, but couldn’t recall if it happened on winter snow or summer mud.
‘Are you ready?’ Alice asked the three of them. They stood at the bottom of the funicular railway, each clutching a traditional, metre-long wooden sled, ready to head up to the top of the Allmendhubel slope where the bob run began.
‘Hell, yes,’ answered Theresa, putting her phone away.
They climbed on board the train and oohed and ahhed their way up the mountain, Alice feeling pride for the place she currently called home.
‘Can I stay here with you for the next few months?’ asked Bahira. ‘My family will be fine at home. I want to eat every bit of cheese in all those pretty restaurants I can see below us.’
‘Yes of course, stay as long as you want,’ Alice said, and although she knew Bahira was joking, she actually meant it. Fancy that.
At the top, they followed the skiers and snowboarders out onto the mountain and Kemi and Theresa’s jaws fell into the snow and rolled away.
