The Chalet: the most exciting new debut crime thriller of 2020 to race through this Christmas
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‘Everybody Hurts’ plays and I watch as the curtain closes behind the coffin.
Later, I will collect the ashes. I’m going to take them to the top of the last lift Dad took and let them go. I said that that was what Adam had planned to do and I’d like to pay my respects to both men by doing it for him. No one else can be bothered with it; they’re happy to have the job taken off their hands. No one cares about my dad now but me. Everyone else is dead, except Adam, who also doesn’t care and will be dead soon too.
And as for Adam saying he was my biological father? It’s not true. Mama would have told me. He just said that in a desperate attempt to try to make me call an ambulance. Which I did, eventually, but only because I knew it was already too late for him. And either way, Mama hated him. She blamed him for killing the love of her life. It was what he did that drove her to suicide. It was what he did that ruined my childhood. I did the right thing. He wasn’t my father.
Epilogue
Six months later
Ria
I smooth my hand over my bump and feel a small kick. I didn’t ever expect to enjoy being pregnant, but actually it’s kind of nice. Cosy.
We are having a girl. Hugo is so excited. The house is full of flowers and little gifts for me; he can’t help himself.
While Hugo and I will probably never exactly be Romeo and Juliet, since I told him about what happened in the past, we’ve grown a lot closer. Hugo has made me see a therapist and while I never thought therapy would be my thing, it’s made me see things more clearly.
I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened on the mountain and have been punishing myself ever since, according to my therapist. And although I thought I’d married Hugo purely as a way out from my desperate life and failing business, the couples’ counselling we’ve also been having has made me see that there was more to it than that. More to him than being a source of money and a way to stop Cameron telling the world about what I did. It turns out I do like Hugo after all; he is a good man and he would do anything for me. In time, I’m sure I can grow to love him. I’m determined to, for the sake of our baby.
As for Adam … well, that was unfortunate. Mistakes with mushrooms happen now and again even in the smartest of restaurants, apparently, and even to people who are very experienced with funghi. There are some types which can look very like another, so they say. It was lucky we didn’t eat the risotto that night, otherwise we could have all been in the same boat. But it was only poor Adam who had the full English the next morning. No one could have predicted the consequences.
In the end, Hugo didn’t take on the Snow Snow chalets – the story about the poisoning was in the press on and off for several weeks and no business in their right mind would take on chalets where something like that had happened. I have severed all ties with Cameron – my therapist has made me see that I have nothing to fear from him, plus Hugo now knows about what happened all those years ago anyway. It turns out Cameron was right about that. Nobody is bothered about it apart from me, and even I’m learning to let it go.
I’ve read in the press that Snow Snow has had many cancellations this season. It’s even possible that Cameron may be prosecuted over Adam’s death, but that seems unlikely to me. A man’s death will be written off as an accident, like all those years before, and life will move on.
Simon invested in Redbush Holidays after the ski trip nonetheless. Ria Events has now also become an official subsidiary of Redbush and I am events manager for the two companies. And despite several travel companies going to the wall in recent years, Redbush is going from strength to strength, thanks in no small part I would say, to Olivia and me. Hugo is a good man, but he’s never really been cut out for business, bless him.
I sent a wreath of flowers to Will’s funeral, and another to the one which was held for Adam a few days later. After all, I knew them both once, if briefly. It was the least I could do.
Millie
There was an investigation, of course, and I was sacked, as I’d expected, but no one could prove what happened was anything other than a tragic accident. And just like before, press interest died down after a few weeks. I could probably get another job as a chalet girl next year if I wanted. And I might do that. It would be nice to be out in the mountains again, close to Dad. Perhaps I could even go back to La Madière.
Snow Snow’s bookings are well down though, I am delighted to read. I’ve helped this along with a few fake Twitter accounts and online reviews, complaining about food poisoning in some of Cameron’s other chalets. Hopefully the damage to the company is irreparable. Cameron is the type for whom failure is worse than death, so I feel he’s got his comeuppance for now. Not to mention that another dead body in the same resort would have aroused too much suspicion anyway. I’m happy with how things have turned out. As far as those two men go, I think I have done what Mama would have wanted.
But there’s still the other ski instructor, Andy Jones, to find. I haven’t finished yet.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to my brilliant agent Gaia Banks at Sheil Land Associates for her always-useful input as well as patiently putting up with reading all my very rough, early and unfinished drafts, and to Phoebe Morgan at HarperCollins for her unbridled enthusiasm for the book and for being the kind of editor any writer would dream of. Thanks also to her colleagues at HarperCollins for their excitement about the book from the very beginning. I couldn’t wish for a better home for it.
Thank you to beta-readers Louise Cole, Sarah Dodd, Leila Rasheed, Katrina Riley, Sarah Wells, Jackie Wesley and Laura Wilkins with apologies if I have forgotten anyone – all of you helped shape the book in one way or another.
Thank you to copy editor Anne O’Brien for tidying up my words (and making me realise how much I overuse ‘just’) and to Claire Ward for the fabulous cover.
Thank you to the WriteWords YA community from a few years back which was always so brilliantly helpful at critiquing my chapters for various books.
Thanks also to the various Facebook groups where I like to waste my time when I’m meant to be writing, especially to the Frisbees, the Manatees (much missed), the Savvies, the Debuts and the brilliant and hilarious Witches.
Thank you to Dad and Liz for sending me on my first ever skiing holiday, putting up with my teenage nonsense and everything else since. I am really grateful even if I don’t often say it.
Thank you to Toby and Livi for putting up with the 80s music, slow skiing and much more besides. You make me proud every day.
Finally, special thanks to Alex for pretending not to mind while digging a trench in the rain or chopping wood or whatever while I ‘get on with my book’, as well as the unending support and belief in me, of course.
About the Author
Catherine Cooper is a journalist specialising in travel, hotels, and skiing who writes regularly for the Telegraph and the Guardian among others. She lives near the Pyrenees in the South of France with her husband and two teenage children, and is a keen skier. The Chalet is her debut novel.
www.catherinecooperauthor.com
@catherinecooper
@catherinecooperjournalist
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