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

by Catherine Cooper

  It is painful and embarrassing. Everyone can do this apart from me. I feel hot tears threatening and it’s clear Will’s patience is wearing thin.

  And then, just as I am about to throw my poles down on the ground and say I can’t do this any more, I finally make it all the way to the top.

  But by this time I’m exhausted, so I persuade Will that we should stop for lunch before I attempt any more skiing. Fortunately, there’s a café right opposite the little slope we’re on.

  We leave the skis outside – Will insists on splitting them apart and pairing one of mine with one of his to avoid them being stolen – and we take a table on the terrace. I secretly hope that the skis are indeed stolen so that I don’t have to do any more of this. I don’t even care if I have to pay for them, they can go on the credit card that I don’t know how I’m going to pay off, along with everything else. It would be worth it, not to have to do this any more.

  But then, sitting in the sun and looking out over the wooden balustrade, my spirits begin to lift. The sun is out and it is undeniably beautiful here.

  Will reaches over the table and squeezes my hand. ‘You did really well this morning,’ he says.

  I smile back. ‘That’s sweet of you to say, but we both know it’s not true.’ I pause. ‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for skiing.’

  He squeezes my hand tighter and lets it fall so that he can sit back in his chair. He sighs.

  It’s only then that I realize he no doubt had a vision of this holiday too. He probably imagined us whooshing down the slopes like everyone else seems to be, kissing on chair lifts, kicking our skis off in a few seconds to run into a bar for a quick beer or vin chaud or whatever, before effortlessly clicking them back on and whizzing off again. He didn’t sign up for tears and tantrums.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Maybe it will be better this afternoon. I’ll try harder.’

  He tips his head backwards and stretches luxuriantly, then rights himself and returns my gaze. His face seems more relaxed and I feel a wave of relief.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I know you’re doing your best. Besides, all I care about is being here with you.’

  23

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  Will

  That was a total lie.

  I love Louisa, I really do. I haven’t told her yet. I thought this trip might be the right time. But fucking hell, she’s getting on my tits today.

  I get that skiing isn’t that easy when you start out. But honestly, I was only four when my parents put me on the slopes, and I managed, so why is she being such a drama queen about it?

  Why did I say I’d teach her? Worst idea ever. So far, I’ve skied two nursery slopes, and that’s it. At this rate, I’m not going to get in any actual skiing this week at all.

  To be fair, Louisa perked up over lunch at least. A couple of beers, some wine, steak frites and an hour sitting in the sun and she was back to her usual self, gushing about the weather and the scenery, even making some saucy promises about what we can get up to later.

  I’m looking forward to that, of course, but I was also hoping to do some skiing.

  So I’ve come up with a plan. I’m going to get Louisa down the rest of the slope to the resort – it’s an easy green, even she can manage it. By that time I’m pretty sure she’ll say she’s had enough of skiing for the day, so I can leave her to it and sneak in a few cheeky runs on my own before the lifts close. She gets to go back and relax, I get to ski, it’s win-win.

  ‘Right then,’ I say as I take my card back from the waiter. ‘Ready for the off?’

  I feel her good mood instantly evaporate. ‘Oh. Yes, I guess so. What are we doing now?’

  ‘Well, I thought we’d ski down – it’s a nice, wide, easy run, nothing to be alarmed about, and then we’ll see how you feel.’ You will go back to the chalet and do whatever the fuck you please as long as you are out of my way, and I will whizz off as high up the mountain as I can go before the lifts close without you holding me back, being the subtext.

  She smiles. ‘Me, ski all the way down? Yeah right. You’re funny. What are we really doing? Another go on the drag?’

  For fuck’s sake! ‘Um, no, I mean it,’ I say gently. ‘It’s not far and it’s a very simple slope. We can have another practice on the nursery slope first if you like, but I know you’ll be fine. I’ll be with you all the way.’

  She pulls a face. For a second, I think she’s going to cry. ‘Will, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can. Is there any other way down?’

  Fucking hell.

  Be a sympathetic boyfriend, I remind myself. I take a deep breath.

  ‘Well, if you really don’t want to ski down, you can walk back up to the bubble and go down that way.’ I point at the bubble, which is admittedly quite a hike up the hill from here. ‘It’s not so far if you get the drag halfway?’ I suggest.

  She looks at me in despair. ‘Seriously? I can’t walk that far in these stupid boots, especially not up the hill in the snow.’ She looks up at the lift, and then down the slope. ‘How long do you think it will take us to ski down? Realistically.’

  ‘Um … about fifteen minutes? Twenty, tops.’ It would take me about three by myself, I add, silently of course.

  She looks at the lift again and sighs. ‘OK. We’ll give it a go. But you have to promise to stay right by me all the time.’

  In the end, it takes almost an hour, not including the ten minutes it takes Louisa to get her skis on, as usual. ‘Here you go, like this, yes that’s it, toe in, lean on me, then push down with your heel … just so. No, it’s slipped out, let’s try again,’ I say, calmly and patiently, acting like the ideal boyfriend, while inside I’m screaming. The conditions are so perfect today. I know I should be wanting to spend time with my lovely girlfriend, but right now, I could almost kill her.

  Once the skis are finally on, we set off, and almost immediately, she falls over. I can see she’s close to tears.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Don’t cry. You’re doing great.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m scared, Will. I can’t do it. I’m going to hurt myself. I know I am.’

  I touch her arm. ‘You’re not going to hurt yourself. You’re doing fine. By tomorrow you’ll be loving it – I promise.’

  She smiles weakly, takes her sunglasses off and wipes away a tear. ‘Sorry. I’m being ridiculous. I’m going to get this.’

  I feel a pang of guilt. She’s so beautiful. And she’s genuinely scared – I can see that. I vow to be more sympathetic and stop thinking about all the other pistes I could be skiing. I’m here with Louisa, that is what matters. Most men would kill to be here. They wouldn’t want to be with Adam and Nell, hooning down the red runs on the glacier before stopping off for a nice cold beer which doesn’t have to take an hour because someone takes so long to get their skis on and off.

  Really, they wouldn’t.

  But my resolve doesn’t last long.

  Louisa eventually manages to snowplough down the top of the almost-flat slope, using the widest traverses I’d ever seen. Then, just as she’s performing one of her tortuous turns, a snowboarder clips the end of the ski, and she falls over. Again.

  This time, she’s more than just a bit tearful. There are huge, heaving sobs and snotty tears – proper ugly crying. ‘I can’t do it!’ she wails between sobs. ‘Please, Will, don’t make me! I’m too scared!’

  We sit at the edge of the slope for about ten minutes, me with one arm around her shoulder and the other stroking her knee, waiting for her to calm down. I encourage her to take deep breaths while I try hard not to think about all the great skiing I am missing out on.

  ‘Thing is, Louisa, now you’re up here you have to get down the mountain,’ I say. ‘That’s how skiing works, unfortunately.’

  ‘But what about people like me who really can’t do it? Isn’t there a rescue service? I saw someone being taken down earlier?’

  I laugh, thinking she is joking, but then, looking at her face,
see she isn’t. ‘No. That’s only for people who are injured.’

  This starts a fresh batch of tears. ‘So I have to do it?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. But look, once you’re down, if you don’t want to do any more, that’s fine. I’m not going to force you. Obviously.’ Please don’t want to do any more, or at least, don’t make me come with you, I plead inwardly.

  She nods and bites her lip. ‘OK. I guess we’d better get on with it then. Sooner we go, sooner it’s over with. Help me up?’

  I haul her up, and we spent another forty-five minutes picking our way down the slope. Fortunately, this time, the snowboarders give us a wide berth.

  24

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  Louisa

  ‘So, Louisa, how was your first day on the slopes?’ Adam asks. We’re at a table for four in the soulless dining room and have been served a starter of pâté and toast garnished with some limp lettuce leaves.

  ‘It was tricky,’ I say, absentmindedly spreading pâté onto a slice of toast as if it was butter. I notice Nell has delicately broken off a small piece of toast to spread the pâté on and feel myself go red. However hard I’ve been trying to get things right since I went to Oxford, I’m always slipping up. There are so many things to remember.

  It’s not helped by the fact that I’m already more than a bit drunk. I’m not generally a big drinker, but by the time we got to the bottom of the horrible endless slope I felt I needed something to steady my nerves. Will took us into a bar and ordered two vins chauds. It wasn’t really what I wanted – I’d never liked mulled wine on the few occasions I’d tried it, but actually, it was pretty good and went down very nicely.

  As I was draining my glass and wondering about having another one, Will glanced at his watch and then reached across the table to take my hand.

  ‘Darling, would you mind terribly if I dashed off and did a run or two before the lifts close? I don’t feel like I’ve skied much today – I haven’t been in the snow since last year and the weather’s so beautiful, it’s meant to change in the next couple of days so …’

  I smiled tightly. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘You go,’ but my stomach knotted. He doesn’t want to be with me, I thought to myself. He’d rather be skiing. I’m spoiling his holiday. I’m not the right type for him, I don’t have the right background. He’d rather be with a nice Sloaney girl who grew up with pony lessons and skiing holidays and wouldn’t be crying all over the slopes and dropping her skis everywhere like me.

  He leant over and kissed my forehead. ‘You’re an angel. You should think about what you want to do tomorrow. I’d be happy to take you out again, if you’d like,’ he said, which I knew was a lie, ‘but if you’d rather not, that’s fine. Either way, I’ll see you back at the chalet in about an hour. And then perhaps we can …’

  I stroked his cheek and said, ‘Perhaps – if you’re a very good boy,’ but really I was thinking, absolutely no way. Every part of me hurt and I was exhausted.

  It felt like it was going to be a long way from the bar to the chalet so after Will went, I had another vin chaud to steel myself. And then another. Then because I was still in these God-awful ski boots and had to carry my own skis back, it took forever to walk to the chalet and I was in such a bad mood by the time I’d arrived, I treated myself to a gin and tonic before my shower to cheer myself up. By the time I was out of the shower, Will was back. He had a quick shower and then we came downstairs and started drinking again.

  ‘So Will didn’t turn out to be the excellent teacher he expected he’d be?’ Adam guffaws. I see Will’s face darken like it did this morning when Adam was goading him but, as far as I can see, what Adam’s saying is no big deal. I don’t know why Will gets so wound up by him. And to be fair, Adam has a point.

  ‘I don’t think I’m exactly a skiing natural, so Will was … as patient as could be expected,’ I say, pleased with myself for being so diplomatic. The truth is, Will wasn’t patient. Almost the whole day I could tell he didn’t want to be there. He couldn’t wait to dump me in the bar as soon as he could and race off to ski by himself, leaving me to walk back all by myself with my skis and everything. He shouldn’t have taken me on that slope on my first day. It was too long and too hard. And the more drinks I have, the more annoyed I’m getting.

  ‘So, not very patient then, by the sound of it,’ Adam says. ‘I did say she’d be better off in a lesson, Will.’

  ‘Louisa did fine,’ Will snaps, which is also not true. ‘You don’t know anything about it, Adam.’

  ‘It can be so difficult when you’re learning,’ Nell interjects. ‘Mummy told me I cried my eyes out on my first trip, with Daddy shouting at me because I was doing it wrong. She insisted on paying for lessons for me for every ski holiday we went on after that and, in all honesty, it was much better being taught by a stranger. Easier for everyone concerned, I think.’ She turns to me. ‘Perhaps you might want to give that a go tomorrow? Book a lesson?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m not sure I want to ski tomorrow. I think maybe skiing isn’t for me.’

  ‘Oh, but you mustn’t give up so quickly!’ Nell trills. ‘It’s so fabulous once you get into it. You’ll never look back. The first few times are hard for everyone. Isn’t that right, Will?’

  Will nods. ‘Yep. But it’s up to Louisa. If she doesn’t want to ski, she doesn’t have to.’

  He squeezes my knee under the table. Normally I would pat his hand but this time, I don’t. It’s abundantly clear that the reason he doesn’t want to make me ski is because he doesn’t want me to ski with him; I’m too slow and he can’t do what he wants to do. But I’m not going to let him off that lightly. I don’t want to ski tomorrow, but don’t want to spend all day on my own either. Will shouldn’t have insisted I come along if he wasn’t going to make the effort to spend time with me.

  Our plates are cleared away and a main course is brought out. It’s a chicken and mushroom pie covered in soggy pastry. I pour myself another glass of wine from the unlabelled bottle. It looks like the food is going to be pretty rank this week but, on the plus side, it’s as much wine as you can drink during dinner, even if it is pretty rough. We take our time.

  Adam and Nell are banging on about their day, referring to things like powder, off-piste, schuss, and other words I don’t fully understand. Will says almost nothing. I wonder if I can slope off to bed, I’m really tired. I hope Will won’t want to have sex. I’m still annoyed with him. The more reasonable part of me knows he tried to teach me – he can’t help it if he’d rather be off skiing properly than standing around trying to help me. But then again, thinking about that only makes the less reasonable side of me more angry.

  ‘Louisa? What do you think?’ Adam is asking.

  I’ve absolutely no idea what’s been said – my rage towards Will had made me tune out. I know I should admit that I didn’t hear, but there’s something about Adam that makes me feel like a silly little girl and I’m sure he or Nell will have a put-down ready if I admit I wasn’t listening.

  ‘Oh, um,’ I bluster, feeling myself turn red.

  ‘Sounds like a plan, hey, Louisa?’ Will interjects. He is smiling for about the first time this evening and looking hopeful so, at a loss for anything else to say, I tell him, ‘Sure, great, why not?’

  ‘Excellent,’ Adam says. ‘We’ll get you booked in for a lesson tomorrow morning then. You’ll be skiing like a pro in no time at all!’

  25

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  Will

  I am so excited about today.

  The weather isn’t as good as yesterday, but it’s far from terrible and I’m going to get to ski ALL DAY.

  Most of the time I think my brother is nothing more than a pompous twat, but that was a brilliant move getting Louisa to agree to a ski lesson.

  I could tell she wasn’t listening and didn’t know what he’d said. But she should have said so. And yes, I shouldn’t have taken advantage – I knew she didn’t wa
nt a ski lesson. But I really didn’t want another day like yesterday.

  It’s lucky she was so drunk, otherwise I think she’d have had a bit of a go at me about it. But as it was, all she did was slur: ‘You knew I didn’t want to ski again. Why did you make me agree to it like that? ’S’not fair,’ as she collapsed into bed.

  I helped her get undressed and lied that I thought she must have changed her mind. ‘It’ll be great,’ I added, ‘I hate to admit that Adam might have been right, but he probably is this time – you’re bound to find it much easier being taught by a pro.’ And even if you don’t, the instructor is being paid to listen to your whining and crying so I don’t have to, I thought to myself. I don’t even care how good looking he is or how sexy his accent might be. Louisa harmlessly fancying someone else for a day is well worth a good day’s skiing for me, I’m sure.

  ‘And I promise, come what may,’ I continued, ‘I will spend the whole of the afternoon and the next day with you. We can ski at your pace, or we can not ski at all, just stay in bed shagging or something.’

  I stroked her face. I was a bit drunk too. ‘I love you,’ I whispered, but she was already asleep.

  26

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  Louisa

  It turns out Adam was right – having an instructor is way better than having Will try to teach me.

  To my relief, we are back on the nursery slope we started on yesterday morning. Jean-Marc snakes slowly in front of me as we practise snowploughing – up the magic carpet and down the little slope, again, again, and again.

  ‘I think your boyfriend was too quick to take you to the green slope,’ he says after what seems like about ten goes. ‘I think you are ready to move on to the green now. But only if you want.’