Chapter 12
SATURDAY MORNING
She’d drafted her report. There was nothing else for it but closure.
She’d held off, wanting to trust in Hamish’s conviction that it was the bar takings that could save the place, and maybe they could, if the Ptarmigan was all that had to be taken into account, but there was a dry slope that any year now would need its surface replaced, and a smaller kiddies’ slope that, the books showed, kept busy enough throughout the summer months with tubing birthday parties on Saturdays and in the school holidays, but at this time of year and without any snow, the mountain was underutilised.
The building itself was getting old and in need of renovation too.
Excepting Hamish’s flat which was warm and well maintained, the public areas had grown shabby and tired.
She hadn’t seen a single customer visit the slushy and snacks concession.
The rain beat down on the skylight above her little white bed as she reread her report. From the chatter down below in the repair shop, it sounded like they were building up for what Roz had called ‘repair Saturday’. It was getting hard to concentrate.
She was rubbing her eyes when a phone notification sounded. Her father. She’d been expecting him to reach out again. He was probably growing frustrated with her making him wait for an update.
Got anything to show me yet? Send a copy of your draft over to me before submitting anything to the Regional Authority. I’ll look it over first. Whenever you’re ready to leave, Empressa will arrange your flights, just tell her where you want to go.
Something queasy shifted within her. She did not relish imploding a man’s comfortable life quite so readily as her father.
Maxim’s message made her focus all the more closely on the final section of her report where she’d made recommendations for a package of support for Hamish.
She’d asked if there was any way for him to rent the Ptarmigan from the Regional Authority while the rest of the complex was repurposed?
Or if they really were going to go ahead with the bulldoze-and-build option, at least he could be given preferential business rates on other vacant properties nearby where he might replicate his successful nightclub model.
Although, when she really thought about it, the slope views and après-ski atmosphere were what loaned the Ptarmigan experience its unique selling point.
Still, she knew she ought to try, for Hamish’s sake, even though her brief definitely hadn’t asked for her opinions on what to do with laid-off workers, the casualties of their cost saving.
She closed the report and cast aside her laptop. She wanted to do the same with her phone, but her dad’s words had sounded like a klaxon to her nervous system. ‘Empressa will arrange your flights, just tell her where you want to go.’
There was no telling whether her dad would offer her more work.
He’d have to evaluate her report first, she supposed.
Then she might choose to fly to him in Aspen.
There was no way of knowing her future until she sent the damn thing, but something was stopping her.
She chose to tell herself it was distractedness from all the noise down on the repair shop floor.
She hadn’t the least inclination to go out today, not in this downpour, and not when she was warm in her lounge pants and sweatshirt. And not when she didn’t have anywhere to go where she’d be welcome. She supposed no one got into this side of consultancy to be popular.
‘Florrie?’ the voice came from the foot of the ladder. ‘Florrie, are you at home? Yoo hoo! Come and say hello to the gang!’
That had to be Roz, and since there was no escaping, she climbed down to greet her, not expecting to find herself transported to a highland version of Santa’s North Pole workshop.
Along the two parallel rows of workbenches that ran the length of the big shed was formed an assembly line where variously repairers sanded, washed, dried, and painted the Christmas light sculptures. Roz introduced Florrie to everyone as they made their way together between the benches.
‘This is Cary Anderson, our carpenter and cabinet maker.’
A dapper man in vintage tweeds lifted his hat in greeting. A woman in a safety mask beside him said a muffled hello. They were sanding patches of flaky paint from singing angel figures.
‘That’s Doctor Alice next to Cary,’ Roz said as they walked on, adding in a stage whisper. ‘They’re one of our biggest successes.’
Florrie wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, and thought it best not to ask.
‘You already know McIntyre.’ Roz’s husband had his overall’s sleeves rolled up, and what looked like two pairs of spectacles worn one on top of the other, and a Santa hat on his head, the white fuzzy pom-pom bouncing off his jaw as he worked his screwdriver, fixing oversized light bulbs to heavy black cabling.
There was a sheen of sweat across his face that said the task was heavier and more unwieldy than it might at first appear.
‘Settled in OK?’ he enquired, and Florrie had no reservations in telling him she’d been very comfortable up in the mezzanine.
‘And Rhona says she met you the other morning?’ Roz went on, just as Rhona hurried up to them with a tray loaded with mugs.
‘Hot chocolate for the workers?’ Rhona said, gesturing for them to take one. They definitely looked good with their whipped cream topping, flaked chocolate sprinkles and dusting of cinnamon. A candy cane popped jauntily from the white swirl.
Florrie took one, saying, ‘I’m not actually working today, but thank you very much. Oh, and thank you for my meal the other night. Did you call it… stovies?’
‘Shh!’ Rhona’s eyes darted around, for who, Florrie had no idea. ‘You’re welcome,’ she whispered.
Roz lifted a mug too and seemed to throw Rhona a conspiratorial look before the woman shuffled away to deliver up the rest of the drinks.
Roz whipped Florrie along on her tour of repair experts. ‘Sachin’s our triage desk manager, and today he’s also on scrubbing duty.’
‘I ken my place,’ the man said with a laugh as he lifted a snowman free from a big bath of soap suds. ‘Nice to meet you, Florrie. I hear you’ve been helping young Hamish over at the ski centre.’
It was a statement rather than a question and Florrie had no idea how to reply.
Helping him? Did the locals think she’d come to save the place?
They were going to be so disappointed when they knew the truth.
She’d be long gone by then, but that thought brought her no consolation.
‘Nice to meet you too,’ she replied, not quite able to meet his eyes.
They passed the café tables where a fire crackled in the stove, towards a spot where a dust sheet was spread on the floor.
Someone had been airbrushing with spray guns still dripping white and red paint from their nozzles.
‘Has Murray wandered off again?’ Roz asked the shed, only to receive a chorus of tuts and shrugs and a ‘Typical!’ from a young woman at the next bench with the sign ‘tech repair station’ on the front.
‘That’s Ally, my daughter,’ Roz said. The woman, a pretty redhead who looked about Florrie’s own age, smiled. ‘They’re not involving you, are they? Take my advice and run while you can.’ It was probably meant to be a wry joke but she felt its serious edge too.
‘Involving me?’ Florrie questioned.
A flourish of dismissive laughter came from Roz, who took Florrie by the shoulders and guided her away. ‘Ally likes a wee joke. Ally, why don’t you go find where your brother’s hiding.’
Ally sighed and left the shed while Roz steered Florrie onwards towards an owlish woman with wild grey hair and thick lenses.
‘And that’s Dr Bonnet, our horologist expert,’ Roz said loudly, but not loud enough to attract the attention of the woman guiding a thin brush across freshly painted figures, adding curlicue moustaches to white Santa beards, coal lump eyes and buttons to the snowmen, and closed-eye lines with fetching spiked lashes for the angels.
‘It’s all in the detail for Dr B,’ Roz said, before showing Florrie an area that was, Florrie had observed, usually cluttered with sewing machinery under a purple velvet banner that read ‘make do and mend’.
Now on the big sewing table stood a conga line of Santas in various stages of tartan kiltedness.
‘This is my spot for today. I’m on kilt-painting duty.
Not as easy as you’d think.’ Roz set her hot chocolate down next to a paint palette before guiding Florrie to the spot nearest the door with the children’s toys and books.
Rhona was there, dropped onto a bean bag chair and working her way through a cluster of figures with a round sponge in her hand.
Rhona was dabbing pink-cheek blushes onto every figure as it reached the end of the assembly line, not discriminating between snowmen, angels and Santas, who all got a rosy glow.
‘Rhona’s on finishing touches, as well as topping up the hot chocolates,’ said Roz, before carrying away two of the finished, drying figures and placing them by Sachin’s triage desk.
Rhona spun a kilted Father Christmas to face Florrie, making him bow in greeting. ‘Good, eh?’
He really was good, and nothing like the blanched shapes she’d grown so used to squeezing past on her way to and from the bathroom. Now they were brought back to life, little personalities, colourful and charming.
‘He looks as good as new,’ Florrie told her. ‘It’s the pink cheeks that really makes them.’
Rhona seemed happy with this and was about to go back about her work when Roz returned.
‘Ahem,’ Roz cleared her throat. ‘Rhona?’
‘Oh! Right!’ Rhona seemed to remember something. Something Roz had perhaps primed her to say?
‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ Roz said, satisfied, squeezing Florrie’s shoulders in a way that reminded her of her own mum, before going back to her workbench.
‘I, eh, could do with a wee hand,’ Rhona said, more than a little unnaturally.