by Isla Gordon
‘Flatten your board just a little more . . . ’
‘Flat? But won’t I fall forward?’
‘No, because I’m holding you. But also because you’re only going to do it for a second to get going, then you’re going to shift your weight back a little so the edge of the board is just carving into the snow, creating a tiny platform for you.’
Alice was holding Lola’s hands and staring at the soft ground beneath her board. ‘Like this?’
‘You tell me.’
Looking up, Alice cried, ‘We’re moving! I’m doing that!’
‘You sure are,’ said Lola. ‘You show this mountain who’s boss.’
‘I am, and I’ll show it.’ Alice couldn’t keep the dopey grin off her face. It was crazy to feel such a sense of achievement, but she was actually proud of herself.
As they neared the side again, Lola said, ‘Now, whenever you feel ready, I want you to shift us to going back to the right without stopping.’
‘I can’t—’ Alice stopped herself. ‘Yes, I can do that. Let’s do it now. What do I do?’
‘That’s my girl. Just simply start leaning to the right, remembering to come a little forward on your board to help you make that forty-five degree angle.’
‘Woooooooooo!’ Alice loved the feeling of navigating the mountain. She loved the feeling of her nose getting cold, her fingers squished against Lola’s, her hair sticking to her face under her helmet. She might have run away from the real world, but if she was going to fall into Wonderland, this winter version was making her feel like she’d made the right choice.
Before she knew it, they’d traversed down to the bottom of the baby slope, and the little toddler girl had giggled her way past them twice, without a care in the world.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Lola, her smiling, patient instructor who had stuck by her side, just like she’d promised. ‘For all of this.’ She spread her arms wide, feeling gratitude, just like she’d been instructed, but in this moment to this woman who had forced her to open her heart a little today.
‘You have nothing to thank me for yet.’ Lola smiled. ‘Thank me at the end of the day, if you don’t want to smack me over the head with your board. Right, take your back foot out of your bindings, and let’s go again.’
The pair unclipped and Alice pulled her foot from the board, already walking with a gait. She subconsciously reached down and held her thigh as they walked, feeling her scar ache deep inside.
Lola caught what she was doing and asked, ‘How’s that leg? Still okay?’
Alice enjoyed the ache, her painful reminder, her second shadow. The day the ache left would be the day she’d stop thinking about Jill, surely, so it was reassuring to have it there with her. ‘I’m doing well,’ she answered.
‘Let’s go, champ,’ Lola answered. ‘And this time, I might let you go it alone.’
Off they went back up the baby slope. Baby steps, thought Alice.
Chapter 28
Today, Alice had watched the sun drift all the way across the sky. It had been a long time since she’d spent the whole day outside, the last time being summer in London, oppressively hot and crammed with people jostling for space on every pavement and in every pub garden. It couldn’t have been further removed from the snow-covered Swiss Alps.
Her cheeks were blushed pink with mild sunburn. Her lips had chapped in the cold. Her head thumped from smacking down onto the slopes at speed a few too many times. Her muscles ached with exhaustion. Her hair was a mess. Her tummy growled. She’d experienced every emotion, from embarrassment, annoyance and frustration to pride, but as she and Lola finally arrived back at the chalets late in the afternoon, she was awash with tired relaxation.
‘Are you looking forward to seeing that big Bear?’ Lola asked.
‘Oh yeah.’ Alice laughed. ‘I might fall asleep using his furry tummy as a pillow.’
‘Hey, no sleeping yet, you forget about après-ski.’
‘I don’t think I have the energy to go back out.’
‘Oh God, we’re not going out. The best thing about a day on the slopes is sitting back and looking at the mountain you just conquered with a big mug of mulled wine.’
That did sound tempting. More than tempting.
‘You go on in,’ said Lola. ‘We’re going to make the most of that massive balcony of Vanessa’s. We’ve got a couple of bottles of Glühwein at ours so I’ll go and grab them and come back. You say hi to your doggie and then get all the blankets you can find and take them outside. And no showering – bad hair and stinking socks are all part of the experience.’
Alice hadn’t even opened the door when a freckled snout was trying to crowbar its way through. ‘Hello,’ she said, laughing. When she managed to get the door open and slip inside, Bear turned into a pogo stick, boinging up on his back legs to kiss her face, twirling in circles, running around the living room, his tail wagging, and Alice sank to the ground to get covered in licks and gnaws. How amazing to have someone so pleased to see you after only one day apart. ‘I love you, you funny dog,’ she said.
‘He loves you, a lot,’ said Noah, coming in from the balcony with his laptop under his arm, rolling his shoulders back. ‘That’s one happy puppy.’
Alice stood. ‘Thank you for looking after him today. Was he much trouble?’
‘Are you kidding? I should be thanking you! I got all my writing done, with this view, and in the company of a real dude.’
He sounded so like Marco when he pronounced Americanisms, and Alice smiled. ‘Talking of the view, your wife is on her way back over here for the evening.’
‘Let me guess, she’s bringing the Glühwein?’
‘Spot on! Will you stay and have some? I can make dinner – it’s the least I can do to thank you both.’
At that moment the door opened and in burst Lola holding two bottles of wine, and bobbing behind her were David and Marco. ‘No way are you cooking dinner,’ said Lola. ‘I’ve brought reinforcements.’
‘Hey!’ Marco greeted her with a huge grin and plonked the chips and dips he was carrying down on the side, to wrap her in a big tall hug. He too was clad in salopettes and a base layer that highlighted his toned stomach. His cheeks were slightly sun-pinked also, and he had the faint outline of ski goggles framing his eyes.
Alice could get used to being welcomed home by such happy beings.
David also kissed Alice quickly on the cheek before heading straight to the kitchen to put down the heavy load of cheeses, meats and pastries he was carrying. ‘Skiing is hungry work. We basically brought over our fridge, is that okay?’
‘Sure,’ said Alice, and popped the oven on. Her contribution would be to cook up the whole stack of pizzas she’d bought. Lola was already pouring the mulled wine into a pan, Marco was rolling about with Bear, and Noah had popped back to their house to put his laptop away and grab a few extra blankets.
Alice loaded her arms with the blankets from Vanessa’s living room, and stepped back out into the cold to arrange them across the chairs. She closed the balcony door behind her to keep the heat in, and as the sun dipped behind the mountains, she turned and looked at the warm scene inside the house. Be present, Lola had suggested. So Alice took a moment and let it seep into her soul.
The sky had darkened to a soft navy, the mountains phantoms in the foreground. The five of them lounged on the balcony, warm wine their elixir, calories truly replenished. Bear lay on the wood, his fur ruffling, happy in the cold breeze, snoring gently.
Marco and Alice shared the bench, leaning into each other in companionable silence, sipping from their glasses. Two thick blankets were pulled over both of them, and as they started to slip, Marco pulled them up over Alice’s shoulders and said, ‘Hey guys? Did you realise it’s December in just over a week?’
Noah squeezed Lola, who sat on his lap snuggled into the same chair. ‘Schöni Fäschttäg!’
‘This means “Merry Christmas”,’ Marco explained.
Alice tried tying her tong
ue around the words but it took a few attempts and Bear moo-stretched to tell them they were all being too loud. ‘What are you all doing over Christmas? Will you be working it?’
‘The lovebirds have Christmas off this year,’ Marco said as Lola wobbled on Noah’s lap, reaching for more wine.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘We’re heading back to Noah’s folks in Lucerne for Christmas – we get four long days to drink and eat and be merry.’
‘Us lonely hearts have to stay and work,’ said Marco.
‘We are the unloved ones,’ David agreed, and Marco laughed.
‘You can’t pop home for Christmas at all?’ Alice asked. ‘But you’re so close.’
David shrugged. ‘Actually, I have the week after New Year’s off so I’m going home then.’
‘It’s okay, I take the Christmas shifts every other year, and I don’t mind,’ said Marco. ‘My mountain rescue crew, they are like family as well. We go through so much together and spend so much time together. And Noah and Lola are bringing my parents back with them after Christmas to stay here for a few days, so that will be really cool. My mum is cool, you will really like her I think, Alice.’ Marco beamed with pride.
‘She will really like you,’ murmured Noah, and Lola gave him a subtle nudge that Alice noticed.
‘Are you going to be around, Alice?’ she asked her.
‘No, I think I’m heading home for a few days. I’ll have been away for nearly two months by then, so I’ll be missing my mum and dad. They’re pretty cool, too.’ Not seeing her folks for a couple of months wasn’t that unusual for Alice, but she’d grown more reliant on them, more keen to make the most of them, during this year, and she spoke to them on the phone several times a week. Still though, England remained a black cloud for her, and she liked hiding in the protective casing of her Swiss snow globe.
‘Will you take Bear with you?’ Lola asked.
‘I assume so. I guess I’d better factor in a couple of extra days of driving time – it’s too long to make him sit in the car all the way from here to the UK in one day.’
‘I will look after him,’ said Marco. ‘Leave him here with me.’
Alice turned to face him. ‘I can’t do that, you’ll be working.’
‘Yeah, but between me and David we can sort shifts so we’re never leaving him alone for more than a couple of hours at a time. We are very powerful and important here.’ He puffed his chest up, making her laugh. ‘David, you would be okay with this, right? You are no Scrooge?’
‘You offer me the chance to spend Christmas with someone else instead of just you and your ugly Christmas jumper? Yes please. Very yes please.’
‘No, no, I can’t ask you to look after him for several days. I just can’t.’ Alice looked at Bear, splatted out on the decking, his nose between the banisters to get maximum cold air. He made her smile all the time – maybe the question wasn’t could she leave him with them, maybe it was could she leave him.
‘Okay, maybe think about it for a bit, but we would love to have him, he is family now. And then you can fly and it means you will be back quicker.’ Under the blanket, secret from the gaze of the other three, Marco leaned into Alice a little closer.
She smiled. She would think about it. ‘So just how ugly is this Christmas sweater?’
Noah, David and Lola groaned in unison. ‘It’s so ugly,’ David laughed. ‘But he loves it and it comes out every Christmas.’
‘My mum made it for me when I was a teenager. I told you she was cool. It’s woollen and way too baggy, I don’t know, she must have used eighty balls of wool. And it has a reindeer on the front.’
‘Only it doesn’t look anything like a reindeer,’ Noah interrupted. ‘It looks like a cat with big whiskers and pointy ears, but also with these thin branches for antlers, and a red pom pom nose.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ confirmed Marco. ‘Lola, you have a mission this Christmas to find Noah’s jumper. It will be somewhere in that house.’
‘No, no, I burnt it many years ago,’ said Noah.
‘He wouldn’t have done that, it is there. Check the floorboards.’
Lola chuckled. ‘Will do.’
Marco settled back against the bench, a happy smile on his face, and observed the now inky sky. ‘I am so happy I can nearly wear my Christmas sweater.’
The temperature had dropped further and there was a definite frost in the air, like the menthol from a strong mouthwash. But no snow drifted down, and Alice had a thought. ‘I think it’s a really clear night, shall I flick off the lights so we can see the stars?’
That was met with a unanimous chorus of yeses, and the group rose sleepily from their seats, keeping themselves wrapped in their blankets, and moved to the edge of the balcony while Alice leant inside the door and switched off the lights from inside the chalet, plus the balcony lamp. Warm gold was replaced with instant blackness, but a second later their eyes adjusted to the panoramic dome of silver star glitter above them. Alice had never seen a sky so clear. The Milky Way was visible, Orion’s Belt, the Dippers. Well, probably lots of other constellations but that was the extent of the ones she knew.
God, it was big out there. Bigger than her and her problems, bigger than the concert, bigger than divided opinions and shifting blames. The depth of the universe made her feel incredibly small, but not insignificant. Life was always forming histories and she was part of that. Alice still wanted to make her mark, something deep inside her wanted to remind her of that.
I was here, Jill. Alice was present and living. I am here.
Chapter 29
Her day on the slopes, and the night under the stars that followed it, had uncovered something in Alice. Like a pebble hidden under the sand, a small grain of hope was making itself known. Hope that maybe life could get better again.
She was afraid to admit it out loud, or to put too much pressure on it, in case it burrowed its way further down. And she was weak without it; she didn’t have the energy to force it to grow quicker than it could. It was nearly four months after the incident; who knew how many more months it would take?
But today was the first of December, and she had less than one month before she went home.
‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ Alice said on the phone that morning. ‘Happy Christmas month.’
‘Hello, sweetheart!’ Liz cried. ‘Ed? Ed? Alice is on the phone! How are you this morning?’
‘Quite good, thanks, I went snowboarding a few days ago for the first time.’
‘Oh that’s brilliant, it must feel nice to get those muscles moving again? Did it feel nice?’
‘It felt awful for a couple of days because I was so achy!’
‘Oh,’ Liz replied.
Her mum sounded so deflated that Alice clarified, ‘But good achy. Yes, it was nice to get a bit of exercise.’
‘Was your leg all right?’
‘It was okay. So I’ll see you in a little over three weeks because I’m going to come home for Christmas.’ Alice injected more brightness into her voice, ramping up the festive spirit.
‘Goodie!’ Liz cried. ‘She’s definitely coming home at Christmas, Ed!’
‘Shall I turn the heating on now?’ Ed shouted in the background, guffawing at his own joke.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Alice stated.
‘Oh, so are we. How are you feeling now? In general?’
Liz and Ed waited with baited breath, and Alice could hear the expectancy in their voices. She was pretty honest with her parents usually, and it wasn’t that she wanted to lie to them now, but the desire to prevent someone else from suffering, or worrying about her, was strong. Her parents were rocks but they were only human, and they so desperately wanted their daughter back to the happy girl they knew she could be that they were unwittingly trying to help her to the finish line via any means possible.
‘Coming out here was definitely a good move,’ she answered honestly. And then, ‘I feel a lot better.’
At least she intended to by the tim
e she went home.
*
Outside the windows of Alice’s Swiss chalet, fat flakes of snow drifted down, and inside Dean Martin sang through a compilation of Christmas classics quietly in the background while she made herself a morning coffee and thought about the phone call with her parents. Bear snoozed beside her feet, and she could almost imagine in this idyllic scene that she wasn’t broken any more.
The decision was made now. She had three weeks to sort herself out, no time to dwell.
Alice hovered in the centre of the living room, standing on a ledge. She looked up the stairs towards her bedroom, looking for that craving in her to go back to bed, draw the curtains, give into the dark until this was all over. Then she looked at the window, the view, the possibilities, the Christmassy scene and the light, and she knew if she could just stay in that, distract herself with festive traditions and making new, happy memories, maybe she could cling onto that grain of hope. Maybe she could fake it until she could make it.
And with that, a candle flame of an idea fizzed to life. The more she thought about it, the bigger it grew.
Alice pulled on her snow boots and kissed Bear’s head, saying to him, ‘Bear, be good, I’m popping next door.’
She left the chalet and trampled a path in the deep white powder between hers and Marco’s, and rapped on the door.
He answered almost immediately, his eyes warm like the fireplace. ‘Hello, you. I was just about to make some lunch before heading down to base in Lauterbrunnen for my shift. You want some?’
‘No thanks. I’m glad you’re home, though. How’s your morning going?’
‘Good. I was working late last night so this morning I slept in and then have been just doing chores, you know.’
‘Do lots of people need rescuing in the middle of the night?’
He gestured for her to come in and he closed the door behind her. She noticed one of his Air-Glaciers sweatshirts slung, crumpled, over the arm of the sofa. It looked big and warm, and she felt cosy just looking at it.