Chapter 54
The steel construction that is Fj?llg?rdsexpressen might be the most welcome sight Olivia has ever seen.
When the opening of the ravine finally appears and lets her out, through the narrowest of passageways, she almost collapses with relief.
She did it, despite the fact that her knee is throbbing and aching and she has lost one of her poles.
Somehow she managed to scramble up out of the snow drift and battle through the last few hundred yards.
A small sense of triumph lifts her heart, even though she is so cold that she can’t feel her fingertips. Her toes are like lumps of ice, and the snow has found its way everywhere inside her clothes.
But she made it through the ravine through sheer determination.
The boys can go to hell.
She peers toward the lift, where the waiting area is almost empty. There are no lines at this time of day, all the skiers have gone home.
Have they left without her?
She sets off in the darkness, and eventually she spots William’s dark jacket inside the barriers.
Amir is next to him. “At last,” he says. He looks completely exhausted. Olivia can’t see Pontus—at least she isn’t last.
Which also feels good.
“Where did you get to?” William asks.
He doesn’t notice that she has lost a pole. Olivia doesn’t have the strength to explain. She simply mumbles that she fell and it took a while to catch them up.
After a few minutes they see a weary figure laboriously making its way through the gloom.
“Get a move on, Pontus!” William shouts. “We have to go before they shut down the lift for the day; otherwise we’ll have to walk home.”
He turns and skis the last few yards to the embarkation point where the chairlifts slow down.
Olivia follows in his tracks; the lift operator is standing there shivering.
Olivia settles into her seat and rests her shoulder against the armrest. She is trembling with weariness.
When the lift rises above the Susab?cken stream, she closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to see it.
Would William and Amir have come looking for her if she hadn’t made it out of the ravine under her own steam?
She will never know.
And she isn’t sure she wants to.