Chapter 14 #3
She shouldn’t be held responsible for his feelings.
He’d meant it when he told her she was only the messenger as far as he was concerned.
A very beautiful, deeply conflicted messenger.
He could see it all in her eyes, no matter how much she tried to hide it.
It hurt her deeply to do this. As though she wasn’t cut out for this job at all.
That, he could not figure out. Hadn’t she done this before?
Or was there something special about how she felt about this job, or how she felt about him, maybe?
He packed away that futile line of thought. It could only lead to more disappointment, not something he had capacity for.
He checked her boots were safely binded to her skis, and she returned the favour, before they positioned themselves at the apex of the slope.
‘Oh wow!’ Florrie pulled up her mask to see better. Hamish tried to picture how the view, so familiar to him, must appear to her eyes.
All the town lay spread out beneath them, the high street stretching far to their right.
Clusters of stone houses, some imposing and turreted, others small and squat like cottages, all old and grey-roofed with smoking chimneys and Christmas lights blinking into life at their windows as the last of the day’s light leaked out of the sky to be replaced with inky winter darkness.
Council vans with red flashing lights on their roofs were dotted at intervals along the main road from the turning for the ski centre all the way to the centre of town where the buildings crowded in and obscured their view of the men in cherry pickers and up ladders fixing the last of the Christmas lights to the lampposts.
‘Those are the Christmas figures I’ve been living with!’ she said, in a bright burst of recognition. ‘Aww, I’ll miss those silly little guys.’
This warmed him more than it probably should. It made him daring. ‘It’s a shame you won’t be here for the big switch-on. Biggest night of the year round here, after Beltane. You’ll be missing out.’
This must have been too much, because she brought her mask down over her eyes again. ‘Shall we ski?’ she said.
‘Stick to the middle,’ he told her. ‘The surface is less worn there.’
Still she didn’t push off. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, doing this? Wouldn’t you rather do it alone?’ she checked.
He swallowed down the sadness within him. ‘Nope. Let’s just enjoy the sunset and give her the last run she deserves.’
This seemed to focus Florrie, and he watched her fall in.
He followed, keeping a safe distance. That familiar sound of his skis in friction against the slope surface brought a bittersweet solace.
It was intensely cold in the very last rays of midwinter sun now peeping through a narrow band between the rooftops and the thick cloud cover, yet the easy glide downhill felt so like home to him, comforting him like the presence of an old friend.
The slope was solid and unyielding in comparison to the cushioned depth of Glenfoss this morning, and he was strongly aware of that solidity feeding back into his ankles and knees now.
Florrie was making a series of wide wedge turns, taking herself in zigzags over the whole surface of the run, even though he’d told her to stick to the centre. It meant she wanted to feel every inch of the slope, a mark of respect. That warmed him too.
With his skis chattering over the rough surface, he controlled his speed so he could watch her now, the woman who’d only a couple of hours ago flown through the Devil’s Basin like an Olympian and here she was regressing to beginner’s techniques on a learners’ slope, to bring him comfort, because he’d asked her to.
She was getting close to the run out, so he stuck in his poles and raced to catch up, suddenly feeling like he was done with saying goodbye to his old life.
What he really wanted to do was offer her a drink in his bar.
Maybe she’d stay a while and watch for the northern lights with him.
He’d make her his white wine and gruyere fondue, and pull out all the stops, show her true Cairn Dhu hospitality.
He wanted to show her his real self, and not because he wanted to win over the auditor in her.
His heart expanded at the sight of Florrie’s hair coming loose from its plait and flowing out from under her helmet, like white silk catching the breeze.
He chased her down just as the very last of the daylight faded in a blink and the slope’s garish floodlight clicked on automatically. What happened next would haunt Hamish’s dreams for years to come.
Florrie seemed to strike an obstacle and, almost at the same moment, her sharp scream echoed off the mountains.
She was in the air for less than a second, before hitting the hard, unforgiving Dendix, horribly splayed, one ski left behind along with a glove and pole, the other ski dragging her leg in a ghastly way that sent a visceral shock through Hamish’s system.
He caught up to her, prone on her side, twisted at the waist, frighteningly still.
‘Florrie!’ he heard himself yell. ‘Florrie, are you OK?’