‘We can’t take Romy anywhere,’ she says beneath her breath. ‘For all your father’s gusto, we just can’t. Not in that state. He came downstairs just before I found you, and apparently she’s only quiet because…’
She closes her eyes. A puff of air hitches and pops in her throat. Kira’s stomach dips with unease.
‘Because’—Anna lowers her chin to continue—‘when he carried her into the bedroom, she threw herself about. She knocked her head on the bed frame, and although it didn’t knock her out, she’s stunned.’
Kira winces. Her unease dips lower, deep toward her spine.
‘Oh, love, I know.’ Swallowing, Anna squeezes Kira’s arm. ‘It’s horrible; absolutely horrible. All of it.’ Motioning for them to head back to the restaurant, she tugs the bathroom door shut. ‘I’ve called an ambulance, but how it’ll get up here I don’t know. Just look.’ She gestures out of the window. Fogged, heavy snow covers the train line, the station hut a white, hulking boulder. There’s no sign of the road. ‘It’s meant to lift in an hour or two, but I…’—she halts in the middle of the floor—‘…I can’t believe…’
A sob cuts her throat. She brings her hands to her face, and halfway up the stairs, Mathew swivels. His laughter lines tighten. ‘Annie.’ Hurrying back down, he wraps an arm around her and leads her to the sofa. ‘Annie, Annie, hey.’
It’s a trap in Kira’s chest, snapping shut on her breath. This is serious. She knew that already, but her parents’ distress makes it real. Heart-sinkingly, chillingly real.
The glare of the snow is too light, too white. Migraine-bright on the edges of her vision, the gloomy hotel lamps make it worse. Tugging her cardigan over her fingers, Kira makes her measured way toward the bar. She needs to sit. The calm she’d almost mastered has dissipated, blown away with her mother’s. Gripping her sleeves, she slides onto a stool. The second wall TV is blaring. Resting her chin on her arms and her arms on the wood, she stares listlessly up at it. English football and a screaming commentator. Sobbing parents and the howling wind. Her eyes sink shut.
A glass thuds down by her ear. Startled, she sits up.
‘It’ll take off the edge,’ Hazal says. Having soundlessly appeared behind the bar, she leans on the wood and nods at the liquid. ‘Trust me.’
Kira considers. Pungent and clear, her stomach blanches at the thought.
Not for long. Lifting the drink before she can think, she tips half down her throat.
Kira’s face twists into magical shapes. Even Hazal has to laugh. She coughs once, screws up her eyes, and coughs again. A strange fizzing shoots through her nose. Her forehead and eyeballs are tingling, fiery. The liquid burns its way to her stomach, and she squirms. ‘I…thank you?’ She swallows again, shuddering. And she thought vodka was strong. ‘What is that?’
Hazal tops up the glass with a humble pride. ‘Herb brandy.’ She pours another for herself. ‘It works. Trust me. Some for all of you, I think?’ She peers around Kira to call to her parents. ‘If your daughter’s reaction does not put you off.’
Her reaction doesn’t matter a jot. Mathew accepts at once. ‘Please.’ Hollow-eyed, Anna nods. ‘For both of us. And before I go back to Romy, I wanted to ask you something.’ Taking Anna’s hand, he heaves them up from the sofa. ‘If that’s all right.’
Pouring two more perfect glasses, the hotel owner shrugs. ‘Go on.’ She eyes him dubiously. He leans his elbows on the bar. Again, Kira cringes. His feigned ease is painful. ‘Ask what you wish.’
Hooking a finger around his glass, Mathew clears his throat. His reticence is possibly more painful still. ‘Is there any way…’ He rubs his three-day shadow. ‘Um. That…uh…’ He clears his throat again. Kira squeezes her eyes shut. Please, Dad. Get it over with. ‘That we could stay here a bit longer?’
The discordant clink of metal from the kitchen. The ticking of asynchronous clocks. Kira drags her eyes open. If this was a western, there’d be tumbleweed.
‘I know it’s a lot to ask.’ Mathew speeds up. Hazal’s eyes taper to cat-like slits. ‘And you have every right to throw us out. It’s just that Romy has to go to the hospital, and we need—’
‘How long?’ Hazal lifts her brandy, knocks it back, and pours two shots of a vibrant green. ‘For me’—she drains half of the first—‘and you.’ She sets the second down before Kira. Sticky, spicy liquid sloshes over the rim. ‘How long?’
Mathew tries to defer to Anna, but sipping her drink, she’s half the world away. ‘Indefinitely?’
Hazal calcifies. Kira hones in on her green oddity: this is going to go terribly.
‘Within reason, of course.’ Mathew rushes damage control. ‘But we have no idea how long we’ll need, or when we’ll find another flight—’
‘Not Romy.’
Shot with a pang, Kira looks up. Is that better or worse than terrible?
‘I like you.’ Hazal’s olive cheeks are taut. ‘I do. But I can’t have her here. You understand?’ She looks from Anna to Mathew, Mathew to Anna. ‘She stay in hospital, and you stay here. I have no trouble with the rest of you. And she, she need to recover.’ She angles her glass in Kira’s direction. ‘I mind her not at all. She can make friends with my daughter; Talie needs it. But when Romy leave hospital, you all leave.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Today was horror film. Bad for guests, bad for business, bad for me.’
Running his tongue over his lip, Mathew nods. ‘All right.’ Resigned, he nods again. ‘After what we’ve put you through, that’s fair. Anna?’ He glances at her. Sinking in her glass, she shrugs. ‘Okay.’ He knocks back the rest of his brandy. ‘Okay. Hazal, I’m so, so—ah.’
Tyres screech outside. Mathew swivels. ‘Perfect.’
Slapping down his glass, he heads for the door. Anna is halfway to following, tying back her tear-stained hair, when Kira suddenly remembers.
‘Mum.’ She hops from her stool. Her mother turns. ‘Romy said something to me. Before she passed out, when we were bringing her here. Me and Callum.’ She bites her cheek. That rasp of a voice, that single word. ‘It was—weird.’
Tightening her ponytail, Anna brushes it back. ‘What did she say?’
Shh. It’s Romy, smiling as she lies upstairs, smiling unconscious on the couch. The words are prescient whispers in her mind. Start listening.
Kira shakes it off. Whatever Romy is right now, she isn’t telepathic. ‘It was a name, I think,’ she says, as two paramedics clatter into the restaurant with a stretcher and a generous helping of snow. Anna looks over her shoulder. ‘Anneliese.’
Her mother’s shoulders tense. Mathew is leading the men upstairs, his French broken but enough. ‘Mum?’ Kira prompts. Anna looks back. ‘Did you hear me?’
A pause. With a sigh, Anna wilts. ‘Sorry.’ She rubs her forehead. The ceiling creaks, and she glances up. ‘What did you say? What did Romy say?’
Shh. Romy’s voice in her mind, motionless as the men tramp into their room. Smiling, serene. You really should have known better.
Kira blinks in a butterfly flutter. Either the alcohol is kicking in, or the morning has made her need a three-year sleep. Probably both. ‘Never mind.’ Sliding back onto the stool, she rests her head on her hand. Her mother is raring to tend to Romy, and suddenly, she’s lost the energy to keep her. ‘It can wait.’ Nodding to the staircase, she tries for a smile. ‘Go. Make sure Romy’s okay.’
Anna hesitates. ‘Stay here.’ Wrapping Kira up in a rush of a hug, she murmurs into her hair. ‘We don’t want Romy to…to fly at you when she wakes up. We don’t know why it happened before, so we don’t know what might trigger it again. Just…’ She pulls back. The ceiling creaks, from the room to the hall. ‘Just stay here. I’m sorry.’
Her fingers trail along Kira’s arm as she hurries from the bar. ‘At least one of us will be back soon,’ she calls over her shoulder. ‘I know this isn’t fair on you, but…’
Kira stops listening. Fly at you. This isn’t fair. The understatements curdle with the liquor in her stomach. S
he really does need a good sleep; apart from feeling hard-done-to, Anna’s words have brought Romy’s attack swaggering back to her mind. Lashing. Scraping. Scratching. Blood. The absent eyes behind the demon.
Fly at you.
Start listening.
She’s hot and cold and sickened. Grasping her glass, Kira drains it dry.
If only Romy saw the benefit of passcodes.
After an hour of reading her sister’s phone, Kira could combust. Implode, explode, both at once, as long as it’s destructive. Nothing she’s seen is surprising, and there’s certainly nothing to indicate that Romy was skidding off course; but the self-hatred, the cynicism, what she feels when she’s alone…it’s harrowing, it’s tender, and combined with this morning, it’s far, far too much.
Letting the phone bounce to the bed, Kira exhales in a whoosh. It sounds feeble in the stuffy room, and she does it again, louder. She needs a distraction. In this state, exam revision is useless. Worse than useless. There’s nothing to do in the village but ski, and they returned their skis last night. She knows no one, and her parents won’t be back for eons. “Soon” is always a hopeful lie.
Drooping onto her back, she shoves her hands behind her head. She can think. She can brood. She can do both and have a party.
The cuckoo clocks chime their irreverent half-hours. Time has been positively crawling. Moodily eyeing the ceiling beams, Kira’s mind flits to Callum, or rather, to his words on the sofa; something isn’t right. Romy should be dead. She was outside in short pyjamas, potentially overnight, and she should be dead. She should have been dead when Callum found her, snowbound under a tree. She shouldn’t have recovered so quickly when they got her inside. Something isn’t right.
Of course it isn’t. She broke her own hand. Kira presses her palms into her eyes, blinking through the fizzing dark. What happened to Romy last night? Callum found her in a normal part of the forest, littered with snowshoe trails that they, as a family, have followed at least twice. Yes, Romy never actually joined the family outings, having refused to leave the hotel unless it involved food, and the village tells tales of abominable snow, but the woods themselves…
Kira shakes her head behind her hands. The woods never seemed strange. Not at all. Shelters made from branches and lilting slopes, short tracks winding in on themselves and rough tarmac roads. Illustrated signs tacked to trees about imps and gnomes and local birds. It’s all so normal; it looked so safe. What could have happened to Romy?
Unless she was attacked. The word slinks in, sleazy and grimy and grey. She doesn’t want to face it, doesn’t even want to think it, but no other explanation jumps out. An attack could make her lash out, furious at herself and others. It could send her retreating inwards, losing the life behind her eyes.
But that wouldn’t explain the too-quick recove—
Kira rejects the looming thought and sits up. It’s too small in here, too warm, and brooding in place gains nothing. At least by venturing into the cold, she has a chance of clearing her mind. The sky attempts a pastel blue. The mist has mostly lifted. The fresh air beckons; there’s no reason not to go.
Besides, the room is chewing her up. Romy’s phone is an infectious mountain of misery. Romy herself, dazed and cold, left this place on a stretcher.
Now Kira needs to go.
One beer-drinker holds the restaurant’s soul. He nods at her as she weaves through the tables, ginger hair amok about his wide, blurring eyes. He’s probably stealing the Wi-Fi again. Averting her eyes from the rumpled sofa, she plucks her coat from its cushions and leaves. The horror doesn’t get a look in. Not again.
The air outside is fresh and frosted. Soothing her mind, it stings her throat. Is this what Romy wanted when she left? To clear her head, to breathe? She always did feel trapped by walls. Meandering up the drive, Kira verges on a smile. Maybe they aren’t so different.
She crosses the train line and sinks into memory. All of them laughing at the Montreux market, as Anna’s drink wound up tasting like pee. The weekend she, Romy, and Anna convinced a scandalised Mathew they’d adopted a pug named Jim. Romy’s last birthday, where she inverted the glitzy Sweet Sixteen and had a party in an underpass. It was gothic, black, macabre, full of metal and retro stereos, and Romy couldn’t stop grinning. It was perfect.
‘Kira!’
The distant shout echoes. Kira stops like it slapped her, and the world reforms. The sledging hill, the car park, the hulking forest on the far side; she’s followed the road without seeing a thing. It’s been ten minutes or more.
Turning from the mountains, rolling in valleys to the silver-grey lake, she peers at the crowd of tourists. The call must have come from there, but there’s a horde. An army. A flock. She strains her eyes. Is someone waving?
Yes. A man-shaped someone, standing at the foot of the sledging hill. Clutching a snowboard and surrounded by children, he’s signalling to her with his helmet.
Callum. Probably. Kira considers. Why not? If it’s him, it gives her something to do, and if it isn’t, well, any conversation is better than brooding.
Skirting sledges, rucksacks, and sodden paper plates in an attempt to avoid the crowd, Kira watches Callum turn back to his posse. ‘Mes amis!’ he cries. Dropping board and helmet into a snowdrift, he vigorously brushes snow from his hair. A belly-high boy sets off an imitation, and within seconds the troop becomes a giggling horde of hedgehogs.
Stopping at a safe distance, Kira huffs a laugh. Callum snorts. ‘Je suis sûr que vos parents vont adorer vos nouvelles coiffures.’ He indicates their tousled mops. ‘Êtes-vous prêts?’ A sly grin grows. Sniggering, the children nod. ‘Righty-ho.’ He spreads his hands, and they brace themselves. ‘One…two…three…run!’
The children burst like cannons. Callum jumps neatly out of the way. Barging past with a cheer and a salute, boards and helmets tucked under their arms, the race to the parents is on.
‘À toute!’ he calls, watching their snowy scattergraph with something akin to pride. ‘Ah.’ Spying Kira, he retrieves his gear from the snowdrift and trudges toward her. ‘How are you doing?’ He motions to the car park, and they walk. ‘How’s Romy? I’m assuming the ambulance was coming for her.’
Kira eyes him. ‘Tactful.’ She pushes her hands in her pockets. This time, she remembered her gloves, but they’re as ineffective as her boots. ‘You assume correctly, though. Mum and Dad went with her to the hospital, and as I’ve heard nothing since they left, I’m assuming everything’s fine.’
Holding up a finger, Callum jogs to a cabin serving beer and pancakes, collects a pair of skis and boots propped against the side, adds them to his awkward load, and returns with a nod that he’s listening. ‘Why do you need—’ Kira cuts herself off. The answer is probably obvious to a seasoned mountain-dweller, and she doesn’t much want to feel stupid.
‘Have you finished work already?’ she asks instead. Passing a coach of day-trippers, they step from the tarmac to the stretching fields.
‘For now. I’m off until three.’ The snowboard slips from his shoulder with a thud, and he growls. ‘Dammit. Can you hold these?’ He loops the helmet straps over his wrist, tucks the uncomfortable skis beneath his arm, and hands her the boots. Furry buckets with a hundred buckles. She dampens a snort of laughter.
‘I wasn’t meant to work earlier,’ he continues, obliviously bending to retrieve the board. ‘But the kid who was called in sick. Got drunk last night in a barn, I think, and woke up puking like a beast.’ He turns his sly grin on her. ‘Have you ever been on a chairlift?’
Kira raises an eyebrow. ‘Have I what?’
Relieving her of the ski boots, Callum points across the field. At the base of a gap in the trees whirs a creaky, clanking, antiquated, listing metal contraption.
‘I am not getting on that.’ Her voice rings out, too loud. A passing villager looks up, one she’s seen before with a cowboy hat and a husky. Kira contorts her heating face. ‘I want to look in the forest,’ she amends. It may be a hasty attem
pt to avoid the contraption, but now that she’s thought of it, it’s as good a plan as any. ‘Around the tree where you found Romy. And besides’—she watches uneasily as a chair soars into the trees—‘I don’t want to fall off and die.’
Callum bursts out laughing, loud and full and suited to a far bigger man. ‘You won’t fall off.’ He bites down on his grin. The passing cowboy meets his eye, also suppressing a chortle. ‘Hi, Ian.’
‘Hi, Callum.’ Ruffling the bounding husky’s head, the man nods across at the chairlift. ‘He’s right.’ He turns his amusement on Kira. ‘You won’t fall off. At least, not more than once. If you’re anything like my daughter, it’s a mistake you won’t make—’
‘He’s joking.’ Callum shoots him a half wither, half grin. ‘Thank you, Ian, very kind, very kind. Bye, Wolfi.’ Nodding at the dog, he turns to Kira. ‘And I took ten six-year-olds up there this morning. If they can do it, you’ll manage. Come on.’
He veers off toward the chairlift. Scowling at his back, Kira follows. Seasoned mountain-dwellers seem to lack empathy.
‘How many British men are up here?’ she calls, glancing across at the cowboy. Whistling, he tramps away, pulled by the panting wolf. ‘Are all of you so witty?’
‘Yes.’ Callum nods back at her, his skis an unwieldy staff in the battle of ice and snow. ‘We’re a plague of hilarity. We’re everywhere. That last bit’s actually true.’
He angles his head, as if trying to see her without appearing to check. Kira puffs through her nose. Yes, she’s still here. Call her a sheep or a toy on a string.
‘I need to drop my stuff off,’ he continues. ‘At the top of the mountain.’ He indicates the chairlift with his dangling helmet. ‘Hence that. They’ll store it until my next shift, so I don’t need to drag it around. And if you come with me’—he brandishes the helmet—‘I’ll show you where I found Romy.’
Men. ‘You found Romy in the forest behind us.’ Kira speeds up, the better to protest to his face. ‘Why can’t I wait for you to come back down? If you’re dropping stuff off, it’s not like you’ll be long.’
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