Christmas in the Snow

by Karen Swan

  Behind them, the helicopter rose into the sky again, the drone of its blades like a jungle drumbeat. The snow was in the sun up here, and the glare coming off it was blinding even with a high-light ski mask on. Zhou and Massi’s tracks snaked in front of her – like a bread trail showing her where to go – but still Sam didn’t overtake. She began to slow, easing into wider, more languid turns, almost forcing him into passing her, but he remained resolutely behind.

  Dammit! She wanted to stop and look around. The curiosity was killing her. Somewhere in this expanse – beneath the glacier, wedged in a crevasse – was the hut that had hidden Valentina all these years. She glanced around, trying to see anything that might indicate a hut – a sign, itinerary poles highlighting a path – but the snow lay thick and smooth, unbroken across the landscape for miles in every direction. Rocks were deeply buried, the trees sagging from the weight on their branches, and there was no evidence of human presence here apart from their own.

  She went slower still.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted, from behind her.

  She waved with her pole, indicating for him to overtake, but to her frustration, he slowed up, matching her tracks like a ski-school kid to their instructor.

  ‘Just go ahead. I’ll catch you up!’ she shouted, sweeping in ever wider, slower arcs.

  ‘Are you nuts? The others are long gone!’ he shouted back.

  ‘So then catch them!’ she shouted again, easing into a lazy turn, her eyes on the distant shadows.

  He dropped down onto the fall line, picking up speed quickly, and she thought he was going to do as she’d asked. Instead, he overtook her as she made a right turn, coming to an abrupt stop in her path.

  ‘You idiot!’ she shrieked, almost skiing straight into him. She braked hard and he caught her hand to steady her. ‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded crossly, jamming her poles in the snow.

  ‘We can’t split up here. There are no patrols. The snow hasn’t been bashed.’ He shrugged. ‘And the others are too far ahead now. We’re going to have to stick together.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she muttered angrily, looking away. Was it too much to ask for a little solitude on a mountain? She scanned the landscape again – anything? Connor had said he’d seen the hut’s roof from a walking path, but there was nothing to suggest they were near one here. They were too far from the crease of the valley; that was the problem. The helicopter had dropped them on the beautiful smooth face instead, and if she was going to have any hope of finding the crevasse, she would have to traverse the slope, away from the others.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ She couldn’t see his eyes behind his mask – just like he couldn’t see hers – but she knew he didn’t buy her denial. ‘You seriously want me to believe you’re not trying to scope out that mountain hut where your grandmother was found?’ he asked.

  Her lips parted with surprise. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she muttered.

  ‘No? So it’s just coincidence that you’re skiing horizontally in the very valley she was found?’

  Allegra glowered at him. What exactly had Isobel told him? ‘What bloody business is it of yours?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he shrugged. ‘But if you’d at least have the courtesy to tell me, I could try to help.’

  ‘You?’ she scoffed. ‘Help? Don’t make me laugh.’

  Her phone rang and she reached for it quickly, hoping it wasn’t Barry.

  It wasn’t, but her eyes widened at the name on the caller ID. Side-slipping down the slope a little way, pointedly making a show of wanting privacy, she pressed ‘connect’.

  ‘Bob,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Thanks so much for your messages. I really appreciate your support. It’s been a rough few days, but I was going to call y—’ She straightened up. ‘Oh!’ She frowned. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, he’s right here.’ She held out the phone towards Sam, still fifty metres uphill. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Me?’ Sam looked surprised as he pulled off a glove, sliding down to her and taking the phone with a quizzical expression. ‘Kemp.’

  He continued watching her as Bob talked, but she pulled her poles out of the ground and looped the straps round her wrists again, making a few swoops down the hill to give him the privacy she’d pointedly taken for herself, although the breeze carried his voice down to her.

  ‘OK . . . And what did you find? . . . Right, well, I appreciate you checking that for me . . . Yes, if you could. I’ll be back the day after next.’

  He skied down to her and handed back the phone. ‘Thanks. Apparently my phone’s out of juice. He didn’t know how else to contact me.’

  She wanted to know why Bob was contacting him at all, but she already knew the answer: survival. Now that she had gone, he had to pin his flag to someone else’s pole. ‘And how did he know I was with you?’ she asked instead.

  Sam had the grace to look awkward, but at least it told her one thing: he must have told Pierre she was a guest of the Yongs after all. She was there and, he therefore had to assume, still in the running.

  Yet no call.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said before he could answer. ‘Let’s just go.’

  She felt angry with herself for being so upset at the thought of Bob working with Sam now. She remembered how unimpressed Bob had been as Sam had come in and tried to usurp her in front of her own team, calling him a ‘dick-swinging tosser’. That had been less than two weeks ago, and now, how all their worlds – and loyalties – had changed.

  ‘Allegra—’

  But she skied off quickly, carving the snow in neat, short S-bends, her body articulating in strong movements as the rhythm became established. Sam stayed behind her – deliberately so, it appeared – but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get to the bottom as fast as she could, away from him, back to the others.

  She didn’t see the edge that her right ski caught. All she saw was Zermatt advance towards her like the moon to the rocket man, as she was thrown through the air and, a millisecond later, unceremoniously dumped face first in the powder.

  ‘Allegra! Jesus, are you OK?’ Sam asked, stopping and crouching down beside her with a concerned expression.

  She lay still, checking she was alive, could move, mortified. She was aware she was spreadeagled on her tummy, and as she lifted her head, she spat out a mouthful of snow. Her ski mask had been pushed clean off her face so that it hung only by the strap on the loop at the back of her helmet, and her right ski had come off. ‘I’m fine,’ she said with a half-frozen tongue so that her words sounded distorted.

  Sam didn’t move. ‘You’re sure? That was a hell of a wipeout. Just take a moment.’

  ‘I’m completely fine,’ she said, spitting out some more snow. Just how much of the white stuff had she swallowed? She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but the snow was so soft her hands just pushed through it and she face-planted again – and again, and again.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she cried, somehow managing to roll onto her back instead, but with her one attached ski becoming wedged vertically in the snow. ‘Urgh!’ She couldn’t release the bindings from the angle it was stuck at, but nor would she let Sam help, and for several minutes she tried to get herself up, insisting she could do it alone, even though it was exhausting trying to stand up again on powder – skis were essential to spread the weight and surface area of the skier, and her hands and feet just kept poling through the snow like probes.

  Sam watched on, his hands resting on his poles, watching her spluttering efforts. She thought she saw him smiling a few times, but he was poker-faced every time she looked straight at him. She deplored the entire situation. She couldn’t be further from the boardroom, with one leg wedged upright and the rest of her flailing on her back like an overturned beetle.

  ‘Right, enough,’ Sam said finally as she collapsed back in the snow with an exasperated cry. He pushed himself backwards to draw level with her foot. ‘I’m
going to turn your ski out.’

  ‘Fine,’ she panted, too tired to protest now, feeling him tugging her ski upwards, trying to loosen the snow around it. It released quite suddenly, and she felt him carefully angle the ski so that it didn’t wrench any ligaments, digging its outside edge into the slope.

  ‘Now, hold on to this,’ he said, offering her his pole and pulling her up into a sitting position.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said reluctantly, looking downhill again and dusting the snow off her shoulders and back. Some of it had gone down her neck and she pulled her jumper away from her skin to give it an escape route.

  ‘OK, now let’s get your ski back on,’ Sam said, casting around for it. ‘Where did it go?’

  ‘Funnily enough, I didn’t think to look when I was flying through the air,’ she muttered, pulling clumps of the snow from the ends of her hair. ‘You saw it happen, not me.’

  Sam sidestepped up the slope a little, but the snow was so deep and soft he just kept sinking up to his knees, and there was no question of him taking off his skis to look – then he’d be in the same position as her. He shaded his eyes with his hand as he searched for the errant ski. ‘I can’t see it.’

  ‘You must be able to – I didn’t travel that far, surely?’ she said over her shoulder.

  Sam tried sidestepping further up, his eyes focused on the sudden stop of her ski tracks and then fanning out from that point. ‘No, really – I can’t see it. It’s not up here.’

  ‘But it has to be,’ she said, twisting as much as she could in her position. ‘I mean, where could it have gone?’

  Sam looked downhill again. ‘Well, if it landed flat . . .’ His eyes met hers.

  Allegra looked at him in horror before erupting with laughter. Her ski had skied itself down? ‘No way!’ she cried. ‘There is no way that could have happened!’

  He shrugged. ‘But it’s not up here.’

  She stopped laughing. They were still at the top of the mountain. They’d barely begun the run. She couldn’t be without a ski, all the way at the top!

  ‘I’d better ring the others and let them know we’re OK,’ Sam said, skiing back down to her. ‘Give me your phone again.’

  ‘Oh, this is just bloody brilliant,’ Allegra muttered, handing it up to him with a mutinous look. It wasn’t quite so funny now. This was going to be humiliating in front of Zhou and Massi. Her first run with them and she’d lost a ski! And after Isobel’s disaster last night . . .

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ she heard Sam say a moment later. ‘No, I know – mine’s out of juice . . . Yes, it’s fine, but Allegra’s lost her ski . . . No, we’re still looking for it . . . Just go on and we’ll meet you down there . . . But keep your phone on you . . . I’m not sure you’ll be able to. Look up . . . Exactly, yeah . . . It’s fine. We’ll deal with it . . . OK. Bye.’ He handed the phone back to her and shrugged off his backpack. ‘Right, well, it looks like there’s only one thing for it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll have to try to change the bindings on my skis and get you down on those.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘I’ll ski on one – it’s fine,’ he said, rummaging in the backpack.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I am perfectly capable of skiing down on one myself.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that,’ he said calmly, and sounding – to her ears – like a patient father to a tantrumming toddler. ‘But it’s a damned long way from here. Even just a hundred metres is going to make your leg burn, and we’ve got, well . . .’ He stopped, but she didn’t need him to say it out loud. They’d both done the Infinity race. They both knew top to bottom was a 2,200-metre drop. This mountain wasn’t as high, but it wouldn’t be far out from that, and the snow here was unbashed and heavier on the legs.

  ‘Just help me up,’ she said, reaching her arms. She didn’t do the damsel-in-distress gig.

  Sam picked up the backpack by a strap and skied an arc down to her, stopping just beside her again. ‘Allegra, let me do this.’

  ‘No. Your boots are much bigger than mine, and with the weight discrepancy between us . . . even if you’ve got the right tools, there’s no way you can sort the skis up here. It’s impossible to test the bindings on this surface – it’s too soft. I’ll be fine. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just keep switching legs.’

  He shook his head, the expression on his face showing her he clearly disagreed, but he hooked out his arm, each of them grabbing the other by the elbow, and pulled her up to standing. It was more difficult to balance on one leg than she’d anticipated – her ski boots were heavy and it was hard to keep the ski-less leg lifted.

  She swallowed, looking down at the miles of virgin powder stretched out below them. ‘Right, you go first. I’ll follow after,’ Sam said, watching her closely.

  She nodded, pulling her ski mask back on properly and getting her poles sorted. She was an excellent skier, but she’d never done this before. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths.

  She set off cautiously, keeping her speed down with long sweeping traverses. Short turns would be faster, but they created more thigh burn and she couldn’t carve in this snow. This would just have to be slow and pretty.

  ‘You OK?’ Sam called out after a while, and she held one pole up in acknowledgement, not stopping. But he had been right: a hundred metres suddenly felt a really long way, and even with her triathlon-level fitness, the lactic acid began to build up quickly in her quads as she couldn’t ease out of the knee bend and release the muscle.

  ‘I’m going to have to swap,’ she panted after six, seven minutes, looking back up the slope and seeing how depressingly little progress they’d made. ‘My thigh feels like it’s on fire.’

  It was easier said than done. For all the same reasons as before, it was difficult swapping skis in the unpisted, deep, soft snow and Sam had to lower her to a seated position, changing the ski for her himself, before pulling her up again.

  She tried not to complain about it, but after she’d skied on each leg a few hundred metres several times, they began to burn out, her muscles exhausted and beginning to cramp, and it was harder to stay optimistic.

  ‘Oh shit!’ she cried, flopping sideways into the snow as her left leg gave out. ‘We’re not even a quarter of the way down and I can’t . . . I just can’t . . .’

  Her head hung forward as she limply tried massaging the muscle. It wasn’t even like she had any emergency energy on her – Isobel had eaten the last of her toffees yesterday. Sam was looking worried, his brows furrowed.

  ‘Look, you go down on your own,’ she said, watching him watching her. ‘If you get me another set of skis, then you can heli back up and ski over to me. I won’t go anywhere, promise,’ she shrugged, joking weakly.

  ‘Can’t do that. The weather’s closing in again. Look over there.’ He pointed to Sunnegga, the mountain opposite, where she and Isobel had skied on the first day. It was snowing again over there, the sky a murky grey, and the light was already flattening out over here. She realized all shadows had gone on this side of the valley now and it wouldn’t be long before the sky began to thicken with flakes. ‘By the time I get down there and sort out some skis, they might not let the heli take off again.’

  ‘But you don’t understand. I really can’t ski any more,’ she said. ‘My legs are shaking. I’m not even sure I could stand right now. Really, I’m not just being feeble.’

  He made a sound as though the thought amused him. ‘I doubt you’ve ever been feeble in your life,’ he said, looking down at her with an expression that she couldn’t read behind his mask. ‘Well, there’s only one thing I can think to do.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You need to stand up.’

  ‘Urgh, no,’ she protested, shaking her head.

  ‘Yes. Stand.’ He held out his pole, pulling her to standing again. He pushed himself backwards so that he slid back on the skis, moving his legs into a wide stance. ‘Now stand there,’ he
said, pointing to the space where he had been standing.

  ‘What, here?’ she said uncertainly, side-slipping to where he’d indicated, her left leg bent like a flamingo’s as she tried to balance with her poles.

  ‘Right,’ he said, poling forwards again so that he came to stand behind her, his skis outside hers, his voice in her ear. ‘Now we’re going to ski down together.’

  ‘Oh no, we’re not,’ she argued, realizing his plan to bring her down the mountain like a ski-school instructor returning to the resort with a toddler between his legs.

  ‘And didn’t I just know you’d argue,’ he muttered. ‘Look, just let me lead. I’ll steer, but you must lean when I lean. If I do the turns, you should just be able to glide and not burn the muscle out.’ He paused, his voice by her ear. ‘OK?’

  ‘It won’t work.’ Panic scalloped her words like a pretty lace.

  ‘Yes, it will. If you behave and do as I say. OK?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘OK?’ he repeated.

  ‘OK.’

  He went to move, then stopped again. ‘You have to trust me, Allegra. This won’t work if you try to lead. If you try to turn, you’ll cross my skis and we’ll both go flying. Got it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was small. Of all the bad ideas, this had to be the worst ever. How could he expect her to trust him, of all people? She’d prefer to be left alone on the mountain. She could dig a snow hole if she had to . . .

  ‘And give me your poles. You can’t use those. You’ll trip me up.’

  ‘Well, where am I going to put my hands?’ she asked, wobbling on her one leg.