Chapter Thirty-Three
The walk through the station and down the tunnel to the ski train was peppered with the clunk of heavy plastic boots as people made their way off the mountain.
At the barriers at the end of the tunnel Emme swiped her ski pass and boarded the train that was already waiting.
Emme couldn’t face walking a step more than she needed to, she already felt a blister coming on from the heavy ski boots.
In her cargos and coat – she was no better dressed for skiing than she had been for the spa that morning – she lamented her crap gear as she saw chic European women in sleek fur-lined one-pieces and mirrored ski goggles walking past her through the tunnel.
She really would be better prepared next time.
Perhaps Cat might know of a second-hand forum for workers to buy and sell clothes.
There must be loads of it going around, and she didn’t really want to spend all her salary on skiwear she was only going to use for a few months.
The train was mostly empty on the way up and travelled at high speed at a high incline, through a dark tunnel where Emme’s ear popped at the roar, until it came to a stop at another set of steep steps that each lined up with a door and gate to the train.
Emme got out and felt miffed she had to clunk up all these stairs to get to the exit, heavy skis and poles over one shoulder.
It all felt like such an effort, until she walked out of the ski train exit and saw the captivating view.
The white snow dazzled her eyes, but in front of her, the iconic Silberschnee glimmered in the sunshine, crisp and close and the focus for all the skiers whizzing past. A woman in a houndstooth check ski suit and silver helmet whizzed by at lightning speed, so close, she nearly took Emme out.
‘Out of the way!’ a child bellowed, coming from her left.
‘Fuck!’ Emme cursed, stepping back fast. She didn’t realise the ski train exited onto an actual ski run – whose idea was that?
She looked around for Cedric, Harry and Bella as she clunked awkwardly on her boot heels to a terrace where people were sitting at wooden tables.
Rows of skis were propped up on wooden racks to the side of it, while skiers ate late lunches of schnitzel and chips; hotdogs and onions; leek and potato soup.
Emme leaned over a terrace wall and asked a woman smoking a cigarette if this was the Zita Café.
‘Nein, this is Schneehütte,’ the woman replied.
An American woman overheard as she clicked her skis on and told Emme she had to take the ski lift to get to Zita.
‘Don’t get off at the first one, stay on to the top.’
‘Top?’
Shit.
Emme thought she was at the top. It was already 3.15pm. Cedric and the kids would be waiting and she didn’t have his number. Surely he’d call her?
Emme had only ever been skiing once, with Tom in Colorado, and he’d had to haul her on and off the chairlift – but watching the lines of people postprandial and merry, lining up their skis and plonking their bottoms on padded seats, she hoped muscle memory might kick in.
All she had to do was put her skis on first, she realised, as everyone else had.
Emme thrust her poles into the snow and leaned on them while she repeatedly tried to get a boot to lock into a ski. After five attempts she almost cried.
‘Jesus!’ she called out, desperate at being late. An instructor with another group saw her struggling and cleared the snow that was obscuring her ski bindings with the end of his pole.
‘Now try …’ he said, holding out an arm for her to lean on. ‘Stamp down until you hear a click.’
It took three more attempts until the first boot locked into place. The other clicked in on the first attempt.
‘Thank you,’ she said, utterly grateful and terribly nervous. The instructor and his group were heading to the chairlift too, and he gave Emme a hand by holding out his pole for her to take. He dragged her and propelled her forward in front of his group.
‘Line up!’ he bossed, telling her to go and stand next to a couple and a child who had just moved forward and formed a line behind a blue stripe marked out in the snow.
Rows of seats were coming around a carousel, and Emme tried to emulate the other passengers alongside her, watching their timing for when to sit.
She plonked down onto the seat which propelled the four of them off the ground and up into the air.
How does the kid do it?
How do Harry and Bella do it?
We could all fall off and plummet to our deaths!
Emme wanted to scream, this felt so unsafe. The child along the row could easily fall forward, and the gap between the snowy mountain and the soaring seat was only getting wider.
‘The barrier!’ the man in the group called to her along the seats, part in panic, part in anger. Emme was unwittingly obstructing it, and the man wasn’t able to pull it down.
‘Oh, sorry!’ she said. Embarrassed and relieved. She moved, and the man brought a barrier down over their heads in front of them. Still, it didn’t feel very secure. The child could slip under it easily.
Emme tried to take in the stunning view. Pristine untouched snow underneath them. Slaloms to the left and right. She felt petrified.
At the first station the family alongside her lifted the barrier and glided off with a polite nod that Emme read to be good luck and she continued to soar.
She placed the barrier down this time, pleased with herself that she knew how to, and looked at her watch.
It was almost half past three. She really hoped Cedric hadn’t thought she’d messed up and gone down to the village to meet her.
If she stayed on, would this chair take her down or did she have to ski it?
She looked at the tiny figures below her, making tracks in the glimmering snow.
The quiet of the journey, the gentle sound of skis cutting through snow, gave a strange and unsettling peace.
Everyone looked like they knew what they were doing.
Fuck.
Emme looked at her watch again as she saw the summit ahead.
She didn’t have time to not get this right.
A sign on a grey steel column illustrated that now was the time to lift the safety barrier up again, and she pushed it back with such might it clattered up with a bang above her head that almost made her cower.
How did people get off this thing? She tried to remember how Tom showed her. Emme hadn’t had a chance to look at the people in front, at their technique. If she looked back to ask the ski instructor on the chair behind her, she’d miss her moment to get off. Was he even still there?
She put her skis out in front of her, legs stiff, throat tight, and stood, but her legs were shaking, and one tip crossed over the other as she tried to get off.
I’m not ready!
Emme was pushed off, and with each inch she moved, the tips of her skis seemed to get more entangled, as if a magnetic force was driving them together.
‘I can’t!’ she bellowed into the howling breeze. A man smoking a cigarette waited for her to fall in a heap. She was conscious of the next chair swinging round, and how she needed to get out of the way fast.
‘Miss!’ the instructor who had helped her at the café shouted as she lay supine, as if she didn’t know they were about to land on top of her.
‘Move!’ yelled a woman in his group.
The man operating the chairlift extended a ski pole for Emme to grab onto and practically dragged her out of the way just in time for the instructor and his charges to glide off, one of them tutting as they went.
‘All OK?’ the chairlift operator asked, his accent sounding Italian.
‘No,’ Emme said, letting him pull her up to her feet. She had no clue how her skis had stayed on.
‘I hate this,’ she muttered, to herself more than anything. She brushed the snow off her jacket, which really wasn’t warm or waterproof enough for this high altitude. ‘But thank you.’
‘Prego,’ he said, as he took another drag of the cigarette that seemed to balance on his full lips.
‘Zita Café?’ Emme asked, in a strange accent that sounded slightly Italian yet slightly German. The man pointed his ski pole to a building concealed by his hut. It was a small café with chairs on a sun deck and a Swiss flag billowing in the breeze.
Then she saw Cedric and the kids, larking around on their skis outside the café.
Thank god.
Cedric was throwing mini snowballs for them to hit with their poles like baseball bats.
He seemed much warmer, much more fun with just the kids, which was a relief to Emme.
She stopped and smiled, they looked happy.
Maybe he was just better with kids than adults, and that’s why Lexy liked him.
Still, she was over twenty minutes late, so she used her poles to get across the flat and slushy end-of-day snow to retrieve them.
‘Emme!’ they said in unison, buoyed by a fun first ski session.
Emme smiled and waved.
‘Hey!’ she said, turning to Cedric, who seemed less flaky than he had earlier. ‘I’m so sorry I’m –’
Cedric stood taller and prouder. Perhaps all instructors thrived on the mountain. He removed his goggles and put them on his helmet, and Emme realised his ski suit was different – now black instead of blue – as she felt the blow to her stomach.
‘Oh. It’s you.’
Her face dropped. Her heart raced.
‘What are you doing here? Where’s Cedric?’
It was Tristan Du Kok standing in front of her, his dazzling smile lit even brighter by the reflection of the snow.
His nose was tanned with a subtle smattering of dark-brown freckles from the sunshine.
She looked at the children with concern.
‘You were meant to be here at three fifteen,’ Tristan replied.
‘Cedric was sick!’ chimed the children.
‘I saw sweetcorn in it and everything!’ gloated Harry.
Bella scowled at her brother.
Emme was completely flustered, even looking at Tristan Du Kok stirred a passion and a rage in her. She tried to measure her face.
‘Why didn’t he call me?’