The Chalet: the most exciting new debut crime thriller of 2020 to race through this Christmas

by Catherine Cooper

  He bounces out of bed. ‘Doesn’t matter! That’s fine! Skiing holidays aren’t really about the skiing anyway – there’s the views, the fondues, the vin chaud, all the drinking …’ He wiggles his hips and I laugh. ‘And all the sex, of course.’ He dives back on the bed and nuzzles his head against me again, as if he is a puppy. ‘But if you can bear to get out of bed while we’re there – which, granted, will be difficult with me in it – I’ll teach you to ski too, if you like. Please come! It’ll be so much fun.’

  I stroke his hair. ‘OK,’ I say, ‘I’ll come.’ Instantly I start wondering how I’m going to afford it, but I push the thought away as Will starts to kiss me again.

  I don’t know the first thing about skiing, beyond watching Ski Sunday now and again, but the chalet isn’t at all what I was expecting. It’s nice enough, but it’s more like a cross between a basic hotel and a university hall of residence than the luxurious mountainside cabin full of fur throws and blond wood I had imagined. When Will told me how much the trip was going to cost I panicked – there was no way I could find that amount of money with my various credit cards almost totally maxed out. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t afford it – I never tell anyone at uni I can’t afford things. But I think he might have guessed. When he caught wind of the fact that I might not be planning to come along after all, he offered to pay for the trip as a Christmas present.

  ‘I won’t enjoy it if you’re not there,’ he said. ‘In fact I probably wouldn’t even bother going without you – just to pay for the privilege of being ignored by my brother and his girlfriend. So it’s as much a present to me as it is to you. You’d be doing me a favour by coming along.’

  I didn’t know if that was true, but it was a very sweet thing to say. Sometimes I think Will really does love me.

  When Will said we would be staying in a chalet, I thought it would be just us, Will’s brother, and his girlfriend in a little wooden house with someone to cook us our meals, but it’s not like that at all. There are about sixty guests, easily, and the rooms are simple doubles with tiny en-suite bathrooms, not that different to the ones in the more modern colleges. Downstairs, there’s a lounge with a fireplace and some wooden skis stuck on the wall, and a plain, fairly functional dining room.

  Tonight is our first night here. I haven’t met Adam’s girlfriend Nell before, but she seems to be like Will and Adam: someone who is at ease with skiing holidays and knowing the correct words for everything. Unlike me, she doesn’t have to pretend to be something she’s not. Although our hotel is far from luxurious, I still feel out of my depth; a fraud. The three of them are talking about the last time they skied in this resort and I am tuning out because I have nothing to contribute. I stroke the back of Will’s head, tracing my finger gently along the edge of his ear in the way I know he likes, trying to bring his attention back to me.

  It works.

  ‘Louisa has never skied before,’ Will says. ‘I’m looking forward to teaching her.’

  ‘Gosh, your first time?’ Nell says patronizingly. ‘How marvellous! I barely remember my first time on skis – I was only three or so. According to family legend, I cried my eyes out.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not that way for Louisa,’ Adam says, giving me a wink.

  Will squeezes my hand. ‘It won’t be. I’m sure she’ll be a natural. And I’ll be there to look after her anyway.’

  All of my ski kit is borrowed. I have one friend from home who has been skiing – something to do with being spotted as having potential when she was a child on a dry ski slope and given an EU grant – and she’s lent me some things to wear. Even when I was packing I found the amount of stuff bewildering. Why do you need both inner and outer gloves? Why so many layers? Do I really need to wear those things that look like long johns? Why do these padded trousers (salopettes?) have to be quite so padded – aren’t I going to look enormous? What is this circular scarf thing? Should I wear a hat or an ear band – isn’t that a bit seventies? Goggles and sunglasses – why do I need both? How will I know which to wear and when? I tried it all on at home and looked like I was the size of a house. Then I stripped it all off again as quickly as I could because I was absolutely sweltering. And that’s before you even get to the boots, skis, and poles which had to be hired once we got here at seemingly huge expense (I can’t let Will pay for everything, so I’ve got another new credit card especially). I find the ski hire shop utterly bewildering but let myself get swept along as Adam and Will argue about what length of ski I should have and how tight my bindings should be, whatever that means.

  So because there is so much gear, it takes ages to get ready in the morning. Breakfast is at eight (why? Aren’t we meant to be on holiday?) and served by cheerful young staff in logoed T-shirts – bread, croissants, jam, Nutella, weird butter without salt, cereal in giant plastic containers, rubbery boiled eggs, and more. I hardly eat anything, I am so nervous.

  Nell manages to look like a minor royal on their annual ski holiday. Her salopettes are sleeker and way less puffy than mine, and she’s carrying a slick black jacket with a gold belt, which makes my colourful geometric-patterned jacket manage to seem both dowdy and gaudy at the same time, as well as even more dated than it actually is.

  ‘Louisa! Look at you!’ she says. ‘How darling in your retro look!’ I smile tightly as she leans down to kiss Will then me on the cheek. My gear is not retro, it’s just old, and I’m pretty sure Nell knows that.

  ‘Adam not up yet?’ Will asks.

  Nell stirs honey and granola into plain yoghurt. ‘Yes, he’s up. He’ll be down in a minute. Then we’re going to head out, make the most of the beautiful weather. It’s supposed to close in in a couple of days.’

  I look out the window where the sky is a dazzling blue. The dining room is stifling and I am too hot. I wonder if I’ve put too many layers on, but I don’t want to ask because Nell is bound to make me feel stupid. It’s boiling and stuffy in here and it’s hard to believe it’s that cold out there with the sun shining like that.

  Will squeezes my hand. ‘OK? You ready for the off?’

  I nod. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  We pass Adam coming in as we are leaving the dining room. ‘You sure you don’t want to get Louisa here an instructor for the morning?’ he asks. ‘It’s pretty difficult teaching a total beginner.’

  I see Will’s face darken. ‘It’ll be fine. I want to teach my girlfriend how to ski.’

  Adam claps Will on the shoulder. ‘Yeah, right. More like you don’t want her spending the day with some fit French Jean-Louis and his perfect buns.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Will snaps.

  Adam pulls a mock-surprised face. ‘Ooohhh! I was only joking, for fuck’s sake. Now, off you go and have a good time. And you, Louisa, be careful. Make sure Will looks after you properly.’

  ‘I will!’ I say, beaming, trying to lighten the mood. Adam can be annoying, but I think Will is over-reacting this time.

  Will doesn’t say a word as we collect our skis and boots from the dingy underground room which has a concrete floor with broken rubber matting and reeks of smelly feet. Ski boots must be the most uncomfortable things in the world and it takes ages to get them on. Will is ready much faster than me and sits on the wooden bench staring straight ahead as I continue to wrestle my feet into my boots.

  ‘You OK?’ I ask as I finally manage to jam my heel down into the boot and start trying to work out what to do with the various buckles and straps. ‘You’re very quiet.’

  He turns to look at me and smiles. ‘Yeah. Sorry. My brother just winds me up sometimes.’

  I puff out my cheeks. ‘He seems OK to me – quite funny in his way. I wouldn’t really know not having any siblings,’ I add, not wanting Will to think I am taking Adam’s side, ‘but everyone seems to get wound up by their brothers and sisters.’

  Will shrugs. ‘I guess. He always has to have the last word on everything. Just loves to put me down. Always has done, probably always will
do. And …’

  He tails off.

  ‘What?’ I prompt.

  ‘I resent him putting me down in front of you. There’s no need for him to do that.’

  He looks away from me and bends down, pretending to fiddle with a buckle on his boot. I can see he’s gone red.

  I touch his knee. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. I promise I won’t take any notice of anything he says about you.’ I give his knee a pat. ‘Now let’s get outside so I can make a fool of myself on these slopes.’

  I’m already exhausted and have dropped my skis several times by the time we arrive at the base of a small fenced-off area of slope. We’ve walked no more than a hundred metres but I am boiling hot and can feel sweat pooling under my armpits and trickling down my skin under my many layers. I knew I’d put too many clothes on.

  ‘Right. Here we are. The magic carpet,’ Will says, indicating a conveyor belt running a short distance up the hill. It doesn’t look very magic or anything like a carpet. Tiny kids wrapped up like Michelin men are getting on, followed by the occasional man in red. I guess they are the instructors.

  ‘What’s magic about it?’ I ask, and then force a smile to try to cover my grumpiness. ‘Everyone else getting on it seems to be under five – are you sure I won’t break it? Am I allowed to use it?’

  He smiles. ‘Yes, it’s fine. I wanted you to get your ski legs on this before I inflict a drag on you.’

  I feel a stab of panic. That sounds scary. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a type of lift, but don’t worry – you’ll soon get the hang of it. Let’s take it one thing at a time, eh?’ He cocks his head towards the very unmagic-looking conveyor belt. ‘Shall we?’

  Will shows me how to get on to the magic carpet. He goes first and actually, it’s surprisingly easy. It’s like being on a travellator at an airport, as far as I remember from the very few times I’ve been to an airport, only on a slight incline. I panic as I near the top because I don’t know how to get off, but my skis pop off the end and I keep them straight, as Will told me to, he holds my hand to help me shuffle out of the way.

  After that, things get more difficult. Will explains that what I need to do is go down the hill with my skis in a position called a snowplough ‘Look! Keep the tips pointing together and the other ends outwards. Like a snowplough, see?’ he says as if I was about six years old. He’s saying something about transferring my weight from one side to the other to turn, and trying not to stick my bum out, but I’m not really listening. I’ve already decided that skiing isn’t for me. It’s a posh person’s sport. You have to have learned when you are tiny, like the little kids around me on this slope, otherwise it’s too late. What was I even thinking, coming on this holiday?

  But I’ve come all this way and Will has paid for me to be here, so I can’t say that. I force a smile, put my ski tips together and slide down the hill as Will skis backwards in front of me. There is a lot of stopping and two falls, but Will is there with an eager grin and his hand held out each time to help me up. It isn’t as bad as I expected it to be.

  ‘Yay!’ he cries, applauding and jumping about as we finally make it to the bottom of the tiny slope, to the obvious bemusement of a nearby group of toddlers who are somehow on skis even though they have probably barely learned to walk. By now Will has taken off his skis and is walking alongside me because I am so slow and have fallen so many times. ‘You were amazing!’ he lies, admittedly enthusiastically. ‘Shall we have another go, and then we’ll move on to a green?’

  A green what? I wonder. Are we playing golf later? But I don’t ask. ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Let’s do it again. And then we can move on. To a green.’

  It turns out a ‘green’ is a green piste. It’s the easiest type of proper slope, but still way bigger than the nursery slope, which was apparently what I was on earlier.

  And magic carpets are only for total beginners, no doubt to lull you into a false sense of security.

  Initially I am relieved to find out that we are going up the mountain in something called a bubble because that sounds quite fun, but it turns out to be nothing like a bubble at all. It’s actually a cable car which, alarmingly, doesn’t stop for you to get in like any normal kind of lift. No, instead you have to shuffle along in these impossible-to-walk-in ski boots, carrying your cumbersome skis and poles – ideally without letting them hit someone in the face – then you have to spot a gap while everyone else is doing the same thing, so you end up in the bubble rather than standing on the platform, waiting to get on.

  After about three bubbles go past without us, even though we’re at the front, I finally manage to hurl myself forward, or rather lurch in as Will shoves me. I fall over as soon as I’m inside, my skis clattering to the floor (why do they have to make so much noise every time?). Will hauls me up while a couple of teenage boys pick up my skis and hand them to me with a brief ‘Tenez, Madame’ and disparaging looks.

  As the lift rises up, I stare gloomily out of the window at the beautiful landscape and clear blue sky. This is not going how I hoped it would. I knew we’d be skiing, obviously, but I guess I was imagining getting up late, perhaps some sex, a massive breakfast served by fit French waiters in tuxedos, a couple of runs in the sunshine, which I would somehow be able to accomplish effortlessly, some steak and red wine for lunch, followed by a session of sledging or a sexy snowball fight like in the films, then back for a hot tub and more sex on a bed covered in furs before a dinner of oysters and champagne served by a beautiful Russian woman. Clearly I have watched too many Bond films.

  The cable car lurches and adrenaline surges through me as for a second I’m sure the whole thing is about to drop off the wire and crash to the ground. But no, it’s just that we’ve arrived at the top and it’s time to get off. I stumble off using my poles for balance – by now Will has realized that it’s easier all round if he carries my skis, thankfully. I follow him out of the lift station and squint in the bright light.

  It’s nothing like the nursery slope up here. People are whizzing past at incredible speeds. Where are they all coming from? Will can’t expect me to ski here, surely? I’ll get run over.

  Will touches my arm. ‘OK? I know it’s busy here, but don’t worry – we’re going to head over there where there’s a nice quiet slope with a gentle drag lift which is tucked away from the main thoroughfare – it’ll be perfect for helping you find your feet.’ He points off to the left a little down the hill, where I can indeed see a slope where people do seem to be skiing more slowly (again, mainly children, though bigger than the ones on the magic carpet and, what I now see was a tiny weeny slope at the bottom).

  I nod. ‘OK. But how do we get there?’

  ‘Um … we ski?’ A hint of tetchiness there. Although I can understand why he’s getting annoyed. I’m not usually so wet; as a rule, I’m up for anything. Magic mushrooms someone found in the forest? Why not? Naked cycling along the Cherwell towpath at midnight? Bring it on! But this is different. Skiing is scary and totally not fun.

  Will puts my skis down on the snow right next to me, one by each foot, and then holds out his hand. ‘You remember how to clip yourself in? Get your skis on and then we’ll go down to the bottom of the drag lift.’

  I feel tears forming. ‘But there are so many people!’ My voice is high and whiny and I hate myself. ‘I’m scared they’re going to go into me! I’m so slow and they’re all so fast!’

  He smiles semi-sympathetically and rubs my arm. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll stay right by you, above you on the hill so no one can mow you down, and it will be much quieter and calmer when we get over there. Look – you don’t even have to turn to get there – you go in a straight line, snowploughing all the way so you can control your speed. No one will go into you.’

  How do you know? a voice inside me wails, but I force myself to nod and force out a strangled ‘OK.’ Again, it seems to take forever to get my skis on but, once I’m in, Will clips his on in literally five seconds.


  ‘OK? So remember, tips together, knees bent, look ahead – we’re aiming for the bottom of that drag lift, OK? On y va!’

  ‘What?’ I ask, flustered, trying to remember all the things he said. Tips together, what else?

  ‘Never mind. I just said, “Let’s go!” It’s French.’

  He moves away and I feel a stab of anger – he said he would stay with me! I push with my poles and arrange my skis in a pizza-wedge shape to follow, very slowly.

  ‘Yay! See? You’re doing it!’ he cries as I slide behind him. I continue in my hunched position, head down, bum stuck out in spite of what Will said, following the sound of his voice until he stops. We’ve somehow made it to the lift.

  But this is unlike any lift I’ve ever seen. There’s a queue of people waiting patiently; I watch as each one takes it in turn to grab hold of a big metal bar which is hanging above them, position it so a disc sits between their legs and then let the thing pull them up the mountain. It’s even worse than the bubble.

  Will looks at me expectantly. I stare back in horror. ‘You’re not seriously expecting me to go up on that?’

  His face falls. ‘Louisa, it will be fine! Look, there are tiny children doing it. All you have to do is keep your skis straight and remember not to try to sit down on the button, just lean on it.’

  One of the men in red takes a pole and positions a particularly small child in front of one of his legs, before there is a gentle clang and they start sliding serenely up the hill.

  ‘Can’t I go up like that with you?’ I ask, attempting to inject a touch of lightness into the situation which I certainly don’t feel.

  He laughs. I realize it’s the first time either of us has laughed all day. ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll see.’

  I am not fine. The first time I try, I simply drop the pulley thing. The second time, I manage to jam it between my legs, but it pulls with a jerk I wasn’t expecting and I fall over before I’ve even moved, and then it takes about five humiliating minutes for Will and the lift operator to get me back on my feet and in position to have another go. The next time I go a few metres, but I forget what Will said about not sitting and crash down onto my arse.