Christmas in the Snow

by Karen Swan

  ‘You are not. Wait and see,’ he smiled.

  Allegra frowned, puzzled. ‘But I can’t even walk in my boots now. I’m too tired,’ she pouted.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he said, with simple confidence.

  The others came over to them, Isobel having linked arms with Brice.

  ‘You are ready?’ Fabien asked.

  ‘Have you told them you’re married yet?’ Allegra asked her sister. She had taken her gloves off now, at least, but was everyone too drunk to have noticed, or did they just not care?

  Isobel rolled her eyes furiously. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Legs! It’s not a secret! I’m not doing anything wrong. We’re just having fun. Fun! Remember that?’

  Allegra stuck her tongue out at her in reply, making the boys laugh at least.

  ‘Come on, then. We go to the Broken Bar,’ Fabien said, heading towards the bridge over the river and the main street.

  ‘You are ready?’ Max asked her.

  Allegra hesitated as she watched Isobel and Brice walk off. It wasn’t like she could leave her sister alone with them all, lovely as they were. She shrugged – and then shrieked, for in the following moment, Maxime scooped her off her feet and began carrying her after the others.

  ‘Max!’ she cried, half protesting, half laughing as he continued apace.

  ‘You dance with me,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Only then will I let you go.’

  He carried her the whole way – switching to a piggyback halfway there – and they pushed through the doors of the Hotel Post with her head on his shoulder, her ski boots creating painful bruises on his outer thighs that he didn’t complain about once.

  ‘You see?’ he exclaimed, setting her down gently. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Where are the others?’ she asked, looking around them. They were in a dimly lit lobby, with a pub through a set of doors to their right and a staircase leading down ahead of them. The walls had been painted a matt slate grey, with split logs set into recesses as design features and a fire leaping silently behind a glass screen. But it was the only thing that was silent. The muffled beat of music could be heard – and felt – beneath their feet.

  ‘Come,’ Max said, taking her by the hand and leading her down the stairs. With every step down, the volume levels increased, the temperatures rose, and she saw coloured lights flickering on the walls before they turned a corner.

  ‘Welcome to the Broken Bar,’ Max shouted, holding out his arms and introducing a . . . heaving, sweating mosh pit. It was set down in the catacombs of the building, with low arched ceilings and thick support pillars that seemed to be propping up many of the guests as well. Everywhere she looked, twenty-something ski bunnies were downing shots, dancing with their arms in the air, having a great time. At the far end was a small stage with a couple dancing on it.

  Allegra burst out laughing. ‘I can’t go in there!’ she shouted, trying to be heard over the music.

  ‘Why not?’ Maxime leaned in closer to her, trying to hear.

  ‘I’m way too old!’ she shouted again, just as Jacques waved at them from a small bar area and started coming over with some drinks.

  ‘Allegra, how old are you?’

  ‘Too old for you, Maxime!’ She gasped and popped her hand over her mouth with surprised eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

  ‘I have twenty-three years.’

  ‘Oh God!’ she half shrieked, half laughed, even more mortified. It was even worse than she’d thought!

  ‘Age is not a number. It is a feeling,’ Max said, squeezing her arm.

  ‘Only a Frenchman could get away with saying that,’ she sighed, just as Jacques reached them and gave them each a bright orange drink.

  ‘We are over here,’ he said, pointing with his finger, and Allegra saw her sister, Brice and Fabien huddled round a table, looking at something on Isobel’s phone. Allegra breathed an inward sigh of relief. Isobel was as drunk as she was now and was no doubt showing them photos of Ferdy, from birth. If Brice had had any lingering amorous intentions towards her sister, that would kill them off once and for all.

  She took a sip of the drink. ‘What is this?’ she asked, taking a bigger sip. It felt refreshing after all the beers, and she was conscious of getting beer breath.

  ‘Aperol, Prosecco and soda. You have had it before?’ Jacques asked.

  ‘No,’ she shrugged, taking another sip. ‘But I like it.’

  They wandered over to the others. Maxime was openly keeping his hand on the small of her back now and she didn’t feel impelled to remove it. It turned out Isobel wasn’t showing pictures of Ferdy after all; she was showing the boys her stats from the MyTracks apps they had used to record the distance, speed and altitude of their runs earlier, but Allegra couldn’t be bothered to care about that either. She felt very unbothered for once and she liked it.

  They all drank quickly, each buying a round, so that within half an hour, Allegra had forgotten she was still in her ski boots and started trying to dance. It was actually rather useful having kept them on, and both she and Isobel got the giggles, swaying backwards, forwards and to the side at alarming angles, without their feet ever lifting off the ground.

  ‘Oh my God, these are the perfect drunk-dancing shoes,’ Isobel cried, leaning so far forward that Brice almost dropped his glass trying to catch her, even though her feet remained as planted to the floor as if they’d been set in concrete.

  But Allegra wanted to move properly. The alcohol had hit her bloodstream, sloughing off her post-beer lull, and she wanted to dance harder. The music sounded so good; moving felt so good; being fall-down drunk felt so good.

  All the anger and frustration that she had been so effective at hiding, even from her sister – especially from her sister, her best friend in the world – came out now as she shook her head like a teenage thrash-metal fan, her arms punching the air with force, shouting the lyrics to the songs at the top of her voice. Why had she never realized how good it felt to let go, to properly lose control? After years of hiding her every emotion behind an impassive, unflappable mask of professionalism, it felt amazing to not give a damn. No one here knew who she was; no one here cared.

  She reached down to release the bindings on her boots. She wanted at least to loosen them so that she could get some degree of movement in the ankles, but Maxime bent down and unclipped them for her – and then some. She felt him pull the tongue of the boot forward and press gently behind her knee to get her to bend it.

  ‘I can’t dance in my socks,’ she protested as he lifted up her leg. ‘Someone will break my toe if they stand on my foot!’

  ‘Just trust me,’ he grinned up to her.

  Allegra, being unusually unbothered, did. He took off her boots and then, as he had only an hour earlier, scooped her off her feet again – albeit less steadily: he’d drunk a lot too.

  ‘Max!’ she laughed as he pushed through the crowd with her. ‘Put me down. Everyone’s looking!’

  But he simply smiled in reply, breaking into a couple of surprise spins that made people cheer, before depositing her on her bottom on a huge barrel. She realized it was the small stage she’d seen on the way in and she put her hands down on it for a moment, waiting for her spinning head to catch up with her still body.

  ‘Now get up there and dance,’ he said.

  ‘What? No way!’ she laughed, one hand on each cheek with sudden embarrassment.

  He leaned forward, placing his hands over hers. ‘It is the only way to be free of me,’ he said, his eyes dancing. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  A moment contracted between them – the one that had been coming all night.

  ‘Well . . . what if I don’t want to be free of you?’ she said back, a flirtatious smile on her lips.

  Maxime stepped towards her, parting her knees to get closer, his hands sliding up her thighs. Sitting on the barrel, she was the same height as him and she closed her eyes as he leaned in, his lips touching hers with a softness that was at odds with the
throbbing music and pulsating crowd. She let the kiss ride the rest of the song, her arms trailing languidly over his shoulders as she stopped caring about whether anyone was watching.

  Beyoncé started up and he pulled back, his eyes weighted upon her.

  ‘Now dance for me.’

  Allegra blinked back at him. Folding her legs in, she slowly stood up, feeling the beat of the music vibrating beneath her feet through the barrel, feeling her body begin to sway, her eyes to close. Max was right. Age was a feeling. She was thirty-one years old and most of the time she behaved like she was twenty years older than that. But not now, not here. She was drunk, yes, but for once she felt how she thought she probably was supposed to feel: sexy, wanted, desired, needed, uninhibited, wild, young, free—

  ‘Miss Fisher?’

  Her eyes flew open, panic bolting through her body like bullets as she scanned the crowd for the source of the voice. Who . . . ? Who . . . ? She didn’t have to look far.

  Zhou Yong was standing not five metres away, a tray of drinks in his hand.

  ‘What a surprise seeing you here.’

  Allegra couldn’t reply. How could this have happened? What were the chances of running into him like this? Him, of all people! She would have given everything she owned for it to be anyone but him.

  ‘We weren’t sure if it was you or not.’

  We?

  Her eyes lifted behind him and caught sight of the familiar silhouette that was always in her peripheral vision, always in her mind. Sam stared back at her with a black expression.

  Correction. Almost anyone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Day Fifteen: Jointed Teddy Bear

  ‘Nuh.’

  Her hand flailed blindly out to the side, swatting at the sound that had jerked her out of a motionless oblivion. It stopped. Her arm dropped down again, the hand limp, limbs heavy.

  But it had been enough.

  What . . . ? Where . . . ?

  Her mind was beginning to buzz, trying to establish the basic facts of the semi-conscious moment. Where was she? The light seemed to be coming from the wrong side of the bed. She always woke up on her left, but that usually meant the sun was on her back. Not her face. But she was on her left. Wasn’t she? Left. Opposite to her right. Her writing hand. Wait, where was it?

  Her brainwaves were starting to spike. She usually slept beneath a duvet, but . . . One hand patted the bed . . . There was no duvet here. There was . . . Her hand continued patting, but lack of contact with anything except the mattress forced a frown and one eye to open.

  Too much. The eye shut again, as if in pain. The light hurt and one hand found its way to her face, providing shelter. She tucked her legs up closer to her chest, tightening like a bud.

  What day was it, then? Meeting . . . ? Daily . . . 6.30 a.m. with Bob . . .

  It came to her then, last night’s events rushing at her like a torrent of white water, drenching her as selective memories came back in vivid technicolour: her dancing on the barrel, Max kissing her, Sam and Zhou’s faces . . .

  Her eyes flew open and she sat up in a swift, ill-advised motion, her vision catching up a second later as her hands patted her body for evidence of . . . She frowned. She was alone and still fully clothed. Still wearing yesterday’s ski kit.

  She had slept in her ski kit? Her mouth dropped open in dismay at the sight of her stirrup trousers twisted up round her ankles, her jacket unbelted and unzipped, but still on. No wonder she hadn’t missed the duvet.

  She groaned, dropping her head into her hands as the shock of being upright tagged onto her body’s to-do list, along with breathing, not vomiting . . . Her mind was more beleaguered than her body, though, as she struggled to assemble the facts first. What had happened with Max? How had she got home? Had she walked back in her ski boots? Had she left them behind? Had Max carried her home again? Why hadn’t he stayed? Or had he, but then left?

  But no, no, if he’d stayed, she wouldn’t still be in her clothes . . .

  Her phone was on the bed beside her, Pierre’s controversial final text to her open on the display. She frowned. Why had she been looking at that?

  A sickening thought came to her, and with fumbling fingers, she scrolled through her outbox. Please no, please no . . . Say she hadn’t been so off her head that she’d lost that inhibition too. Her discrimination case against Pierre would be completely undermined if she’d texted him back . . .

  But there was nothing there.

  She collapsed back on the pillow. Probably her fingers hadn’t been dextrous enough to send a text last night.

  She groaned again. Oh God, how much had she had to drink?

  ‘Iz?’ she croaked, lifting her head slightly, but the door was shut and she didn’t have enough power to raise her voice.

  She dropped her head again, feeling like the whole world was against her. After another minute, she slowly swung her legs off the bed and stood up, holding on to the headboard for a moment, before walking to the door and opening it. Isobel’s door was closed and Allegra hesitated for a moment, as the blur of last night’s events swirled around her sister’s antics too. Brice . . . ?

  Knocking on the door once, she opened it. Isobel was lying face down on top of the bed, her hair over her face, also wearing her ski kit. But she was alone. Crucially, she was alone.

  ‘Iz? You OK?’ Allegra asked, one hand going to her temple as her cracked voice hurt her head.

  A grunt was all that came back in reply, but she was breathing at least.

  Allegra shut the door again and walked back to her bedroom – holding on to the walls for support – to run a shower. She stood under the hot water until it ran cold, letting it pummel her stiff muscles, the steam opening up her blood vessels and giving the toxins an escape route.

  It helped a little, but she needed food and she and Isobel hadn’t shopped yet.

  Ignoring her ski kit, which she left in an ignominious heap on the bedroom floor – she needed to draw a line between yesterday and today – she pulled on her black jeans, red Nordic jumper and Sorel snow boots, and left a note for Isobel on the kitchen table. Closing the door softly behind her, she descended the creaky stairs, pulling on her bobble hat and ski gloves, and belting up her jacket with shaky hands.

  The cold air, as it hit her face, felt like a shot of Alka-Seltzer and she inhaled deeply as she leaned against the wall for a few seconds. She was clean, fresh and she hadn’t been sick yet. She was doing well. She hadn’t drunk like that since . . . Actually, she’d never drunk like that. Not at sixth-form college, not at university, and when entertaining clients, she famously never drank more than two martinis.

  Heavy snow had fallen overnight and hers were the first footsteps to break through the new cover; her and Isobel’s tracks from last night had been completely obscured. She walked slowly down the narrow street, stopping as she emerged on the Bahnhofstrasse. It was nearly ten o’clock and most people were already on the slopes – Max and Brice too? – but the street was still crowded nonetheless with locals and non-skiing visitors soaking up the chocolate-box Christmas scene.

  She stopped outside the Bogner boutique and watched the dynamic, extreme skiing films running on loop on the TV screens in the windows. They wouldn’t be skiing today. She sincerely doubted Isobel would even get out of bed today.

  She wandered on, stopping at a hole-in-the-wall crêperie, and minutes later was leaning against a thick stone windowsill, tucking into a deep, crunchy liege waffle and wiping maple syrup off her chin with a paper napkin.

  Her physical recovery was coming in pigeon steps, but her mind was still tormented by the blanks from last night, and Zhou and Sam’s faces kept flashing in front of her eyes. Zhou’s shock, Sam’s disgust . . .

  Her head dropped again. What had she done? In just a few minutes she had undone a professional reputation that had been a decade in the making. She may have stopped short of drunk-texting Pierre, but she had given Kemp all the ammunition he needed to smear her reputation a
nd undermine her. She might be gone from PLF and he might have won the Yong deal, but he had to be worried that she was more dangerous to him now that she would be working against them. And it was all the more reason for him to play dirty.

  She blinked and started walking again, trying to push the thoughts away. Denial. That had been her strategy till now, three days of turning away from the facts – shopping, skiing, getting drunk – as she tried to outpace the shock. But she couldn’t lose any more time. She knew how Pierre operated; he’d already ‘managed’ the news of her departure to the press, and once Kemp reported back that he’d seen her last night . . . She had to start retaking control.

  She had yet to listen to a single message on her phone and the inbox had been full for over twenty-four hours now. She put it to her ear as she walked, her lower lip trembling as Bob and Kirsty apparently tag-teamed in trying to get hold of her, Kirsty’s ice-cool composure slipping as she ended: ‘I really hope you’re OK.’ Lots of colleagues – Kevin Lam included – had offered their condolences and words of support, keeping in her good books just in case she should choose to take people with her; after all, it wasn’t like morale had been high at PLF lately.

  Her feet stopped as she came to Kemp’s voice on there too. ‘Fisher? Kemp. We need to talk. Call me back.’

  She remembered his words in Selfridges, demanding her undelivered final proposal, and anger and contempt blasted through her body, more toxic than last night’s alcohol. She felt the ground beneath her drop a little and put her hands out for balance, but she was in the middle of the street and she stumbled. A church with shallow, wide steps was opposite and she walked over, collapsing onto the steps with a sob – her head in her hands as she wondered yet again how her life had imploded so spectacularly, so unfairly.

  Bells started ringing out from the tower above her as the double oak doors opened and a steady stream of people filed out, all closing their coats and pulling on gloves as they emerged into the sub-freezing temperatures, their minds and souls cleansed for another week.