The Little Swiss Ski Chalet

by Julie Caplin

  Her skis felt uneven at first and she practised her turns and snowploughing as a quick reminder at the top of the slope, glad that it wasn’t too busy yet. Gradually her confidence built and her turns became steeper as she allowed herself to face down the slope rather than cutting across. With that sudden moment of intuition, all her lessons, all the things the ski instructor had told her – bend the knees, lean forward, feel your skis – it all popped into her head and the instructions seemed to flow into her limbs. Her muscles responded and there she was, gliding over the snow, feeling her skis exactly like she’d been told and with that, she relaxed and the movements became even easier. Just think, if she hadn’t proposed to Simon, she might never have graduated beyond an indoor slope. It was the only rushing in that hadn’t turned out quite so badly after all. Everything else, she reflected, was in tatters but as she picked up speed, she felt her heart burst with happiness. She was skiing, proper skiing, and the feeling was just magical. A million times better than she’d ever imagined. To the moon and back better. This was heaven.

  She met up with Uta at a restaurant at midday by chance. The mad, wonderful euphoria of skiing down real mountains, two runs in all, couldn’t compensate for her increasingly wobbly legs and she desperately needed a rest. Following her nose rather than really understanding the map, which made no sense to her, she took a couple of ski lifts and found herself at the top of one of the peaks with the extremely welcome sight of Heidi’s Hut.

  ‘Hey Mina,’ called Uta, who was at the terrace edge already enjoying a solitary beer.

  ‘Hey.’ She sank gratefully into a chair aware that her thighs were more than a little shaky, her smile at least three miles wide. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so invigorated. ‘I’ve had the most wonderful morning.’

  ‘Perfect conditions. You ski a lot.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Mina, taking a tactical sip of coffee, a touch envious of Uta’s condensation-covered glass of beer.

  They chatted for a little while before Uta rose to her feet. ‘Might see you at lunchtime.’

  Mina laughed. ‘If I find the place.’ She waved the map.

  ‘Good luck, see you later.’

  Mina enjoyed her coffee, pored over the map and decided that even though her legs had stopped trembling, she wasn’t going to push it. She decided to ski gently down to the ski lift and then if she’d managed to follow the map correctly, she could take the ski lift up and then ski a little way to the cable car station where she’d take a cable car to Bergstation Eggishorn at the top of the mountain. Easy, she thought, clipping her skis back on and pushing off down the slope. She took it steadily, feeling the gentle protests of her thigh and calf muscles, but the views and the swish of her skis more than made up for the slight fatigue.

  This time she shared the ski lift with chatty, seven-year-old, Tara – at least that’s what she picked up from her limited German – who was on holiday, urlaub as she remembered from school, with her familie. Tara seemed content with her nods and smiles and her sole contribution to the conversation of mein Name ist Mina.

  At the top, no sooner had the bar across the front of the chair lifted than Tara hopped off like a cheeky sparrow with a backhanded wave and swooshed off away without poles, looking as if her skis were part of her body. See: it was easy. Mina lifted herself off the seat, attempting to emulate the girl’s confident departure. She did quite well at first, but then somehow one ski went one way and the other the opposite way, leaving her stuck in straddled position, bottom up and face down. At least she was no longer in the path of the ski lift, and hopefully no one would notice her here. Convinced her trousers might split at any second, if not something else, Mina tried to pull herself up with her ski poles, but her flabby muscles were in danger of giving way and her legs began to shake.

  ‘Would you like a hand?’ asked a cheery voice brimming with its usual laughter.

  So much for hoping no one would see her.

  Lifting her head to look up at him, she gave Luke a reluctant, self-deprecating smile. She must look completely ridiculous.

  ‘Please. I seem to have got myself a bit stuck.’

  He dropped the snowboard he carried and stood in front of her. ‘What’s it worth?’ he asked with a teasing smile, those electric-blue eyes dancing with mischief.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously, you’d take advantage of a damsel in distress?’

  ‘Every time.’ He grinned, still standing there not making a move.

  She groaned and tried to glare at him but it was impossible, he looked so stupidly cocky and cheerful. Instead she laughed. ‘I’m glad you find this funny. I could split in two at any moment. I might never do gymnastics again.’

  ‘Ouch,’ he said, jumping forward and clasping her around the waist. With one quick, surprisingly strong jerk, he pulled her back upright. The momentum brought their bodies together and for a second their noses were almost touching. A quick sizzle fizzed through her body, and unable to help herself, she glanced at his lips and gave herself away. From the expression in Luke’s eyes, she could tell he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  Instead of pulling back he kept his hands on her waist, his blue eyes searching her face, which she could feel turning pink. Her knees were definitely wobbly now.

  ‘Fancy bumping into you,’ she said, pulling back, slightly embarrassed by her very obvious reaction to him. She’d never felt this instant attraction to anyone, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. It was all very well to spontaneously kiss a stranger you thought you’d never see again, but this, well, she had no idea how to play things.

  ‘I keep telling you, it’s serendipity. Meant to be.’

  ‘Hmm, and there are only so many ski lifts on this mountain.’ She seized gratefully on practical truths, and if she hadn’t been laden down with her ski poles, she would have put her hands on her hips to emphasise the point.

  ‘You’re kidding. There are over 104 kilometres of piste up here. Definitely serendipity.’

  She laughed at his dogged logic. ‘Yes, Luke. Well, it will be serendipity if I manage to make it down to the cable car station.’

  ‘You headed up to the top or down?’

  ‘Up, or least I’m going to try.’ She peered upwards to the mountain peak, squinting into the sunshine.

  ‘Go for it. You’ve got to seize the moment. Life is too short for regrets, and I promise you if you don’t go up there and see the view, you’ll never know what you missed. Want some company? It’s an easy route across to the cable station.’

  ‘Sure.’ Unable to help herself, she smiled back at him, knowing that she was unaccountably sparkly-eyed. It was as if, when he was around, her face took on a life of its own, reflecting the fizzy, washing machine feelings inside, even though she knew he was not the sort of man for her.

  ‘Great.’ He threw down his board and scooted it with one foot towards the slope. ‘Ladies first.’

  Feeling a little high inside, she pushed off and allowed the delicious sense of freedom and speed to overtake her, letting her body relax into the work. Already she was much more confident with her skis and felt that she was in control, but not so much that she felt able to look over her shoulder. Luke was somewhere behind her. Almost before she knew it, she’d skied underneath the twin sets of cables and she could see the big square gondola dangling further below in the valley them looking decidedly precarious.

  Luke caught up with her when she slid to a halt near the cable station.

  ‘That was easier than I expected,’ she said, pulling off her helmet and goggles as they joined the queue to go up.

  ‘It was a blue run. And you look pretty…’ He paused deliberately, his eyes twinkling at her, before he finally added, ‘Competent to me.’

  She couldn’t help roll her eyes at his terrible corny line. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

  ‘Not all,’ he said, tilting his head as if he were giving the matter serious consideration.

  ‘I meant easier
than I expected, in that following the map was simpler than I thought it would be. The markers are easy to spot. I was worried about getting lost.’

  ‘I always figure as long as there are other people about you won’t lose your way. Not in these conditions anyway. And if you do, head downhill.’

  ‘Difficult to believe on a day like this that it’s ever anything but sunny.’

  ‘Where do you think all this white stuff comes from?’

  ‘I know that but…’ Mina lifted her shoulders and glanced up at the deep blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

  Together they boarded the gondola, which clicked and whirred with mechanical efficiency as it lifted and swayed up out of the station. As it swung out away from the building, making her feel as if they were leaping out into mid-air, Mina’s stomach lurched and dropped and she gripped the side bar.

  Without saying anything, Luke dropped his hand on top of hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze, for which she was very grateful. Even though they began to climb smoothly upwards, the mesmerizing view made her feel a little dizzy and disorientated. The view emphasised just how high up they were, and although heights didn’t normally bother her, she felt a certain sense of nature being so much mightier than mere humans, and it made her feel just a tiny bit vulnerable. Far below, the village looked like and reminded her of the model village her uncle had once taken her to. From this distance, the houses, dotted at random, looked as if you could tuck them in your pocket, and the dark ribbon of river cut through the white snow while row upon row of trees seemed to march up the wide expanse of the valley.

  ‘The village looks tiny. Odd. When you’re on the ground, you lose all sense of just how high up you are.’

  ‘We’re climbing to nearly three thousand metres,’ said Luke.

  ‘That doesn’t mean much to me,’ said Mina apologetically. ‘Except it sounds high.’

  ‘Everest is over eight thousand metres. There are fourteen mountains in the world over that height.’

  ‘OK, that sort of puts it into perspective.’

  ‘Wait until you get to the top. On a day like this it’s spectacular. You can see a lot of the Aletsch Glacier, which is the longest in Switzerland.’

  ‘Where do you learn all this stuff?’

  Luke held up the map with a smirk. ‘Most of it is on the back, here.’

  ‘Cheat, I thought you were some kind of mastermind.’

  ‘And I know about mountains.’

  ‘Well, there are certainly plenty here.’

  ‘When we get to the top you can see the Matterhorn, the Eiger, and the Jungfrau.’

  ‘Only if you know what you’re looking for. Good job I have a handy mountain expert guide.’

  ‘It might cost you.’ The devilment was back in his eyes.

  ‘Not more chocolate,’ she teased with a mock groan.

  Luke pursed his mouth in quick consideration, screwing his eyes up in thought before saying, his face alight with laughter, ‘How about a kiss?’

  Mina gave him an arch, reproving look, although inside it felt as if an army of frogs had taken up residence and were hopping up and down with mad excitement, saying yes, yes, yes. The memory of their one and only heart-stopping, ridiculously amazing, impromptu, never-should-have-happened kiss still had the power to make her toes curl. ‘I don’t give out kisses to just anyone, you know.’

  ‘I’m not just anyone.’ Luke raised his eyebrows playfully. ‘Remember serendipity.’

  ‘I think you’ve got serendipity on the brain.’

  ‘Not me. I think it’s trying to tell us something. Third time’s a charm. This is the third time we’ve bumped into each other.’

  ‘I think you talk a lot of nonsense,’ said Mina, which was in fact her talking nonsense, because it turned out that 99.9 per cent of her seemed to find the thought kissing Luke an excellent idea. Her wistful smile belied her words and Luke’s grin widened.

  ‘See,’ he said triumphantly, as if he could read her mind.

  She rolled her eyes and ignored the dipping disappointment when he didn’t kiss her. Instead he turned to the window and placed his gloved hand on the glass. ‘Sometimes you can look down and the valley is full of clouds, and at this point we’re above the clouds in sunshine and down in the valley it’s a grey day. I always think that’s a piece of magic. To be able to go higher than the clouds. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be an airline pilot. Do they live in perpetual sunshine?’

  Mina stared at him, a touch startled. It was the very thought she’d had on the way to Switzerland when the flight had left a grey, drizzly Manchester and climbed to a brilliant blue sky. No wonder pilots always wore aviator sunglasses or – duh! – why those sunglasses were called aviators.

  ‘What?’ asked Luke.

  ‘I was just thinking about sunglasses and pilots.’

  ‘Aviators.’

  ‘Exactly.’ The smile they exchanged this time was, Mina felt, was a bit deeper. An acknowledgement that they were actually on the same wavelength. Instead of reassuring her, it made her feel a little on edge.

  Her innate honesty forced her to acknowledge that despite the sparkly feelings inside her, she needed to put a brake on things. She wasn’t here for flirtation. She was here to sort herself out. To find what she wanted in life and to stop making impulsive decisions that caused chaos and created a wake of trouble. Luke, she decided, was not the type of person who was going to help her sort herself out.

  He was a mirror image of herself. Like Simon had said, she was for fun not for permanence, just like her parents had been, and look where that had got them. They’d left behind the people they should have been taking care of. If she was going to sort herself out and move forward with her life, Luke was not the man for her. She needed someone who took life seriously. Someone who would rein in her impulsiveness, not encourage her with talk of serendipity and seizing the moment. Gorgeous and fun as Luke was, he wasn’t what she needed right now, not when she was trying to create some firm footings and foundations in her life.

  ‘Luke,’ she said, knowing she had to say it now. ‘That old cliché, I really like you but…’ He raised an eyebrow as if to say, I’m listening.

  ‘I’m just going to be honest.’ She held up both hands. ‘I’m here because I left a right old mess behind. I’ve buggered up my job and stuffed up a relationship, although admittedly it wasn’t worth keeping, but I messed it up through jumping in without thinking. The reason I’m out here is to sort myself out, and that means making some changes, being more sensible about things, planning and not being impulsive. And not being impulsive means not kissing strange men on trains or believing in serendipity. I’m sorry. I am attracted to you but…’ She smiled at him and exhaled heavily. ‘We’re too much alike and I can’t be like that anymore.’ She watched his face anxiously, already regretting the things she’d said, but it would be wrong to indulge in the flirtation that so clearly bubbled and fizzed between them.

  ‘OK,’ said Luke with a quick shrug and he turned to look up at the mountain peak looming into view.

  ‘OK,’ she echoed softly, knowing that it was contrary to feel that whisper of disappointment.

  He turned back to her and gave her a cheerful smile. ‘Yeah, you might not believe in serendipity but I do.’

  ‘Luke, I’m serious. No more of…’ She waved an inadequate hand that was supposed to indicate what she meant.

  He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I understand, Mina.’ Then the infuriating creature lifted it to his lips and brushed his mouth across her knuckles. ‘But there’s nothing to stop us being friends.’

  ‘No, not at all. I just wanted to be upfront with you.’

  He grinned at her, seeming completely unperturbed. ‘I can’t imagine you being anything but, that’s what I like about you. No games.’ For a brief moment, he screwed up his eyes, ‘I hate people trying to keep the truth from you.’

  Mina wondered what he meant by that, but then the gondola swung into the stat
ion and everyone in the cable car began to crowd towards the door.

  The view from the top of Eggishorn was like standing on top of the world. With the ranges of mountains spreading out around them and stretching as far as the eye could see, they could have been in Narnia or a Tolkien landscape.

  Luke came to stand behind her, his breath grazing her cheek, and her heart did another of those inappropriate flips, but he didn’t touch her. So why didn’t she feel relieved? ‘That’s the Jungrau.’ He pointed. ‘And there’s the Eiger. And that…’

  ‘That’s the Matterhorn,’ said Mina, recognising the distinctive, crooked shape from photographs she’d seen, although from this angle it looked like a cresting wave.

  ‘What about this?’ He pointed to a wide sweep of what looked like an untouched highway cutting through the mountains.

  ‘It looks like a road no one has ever used.’ The thought saddened her, but then perhaps that had a lot to do with the realisation that putting some distance between her and Luke was going to take quite a lot of effort on her part, because she genuinely liked being with him. With an internal wince, she realised he symbolised for her a road that would never be used, although it looked as if it headed to interesting places.

  ‘It’s the Aletsch Glacier, it’s nearly fourteen miles long.’

  ‘So underneath the snow it’s ice.’

  ‘Yes, about a kilometre deep.’

  Mina’s mind did a little of boggling at that.

  ‘Sadly, it’s in retreat, melting due to global warming. Research scientists reckon it’s lost nearly a mile in length since 1980. Climate change. Deeply depressing, but it’s what I do or rather what I did. Researcher for the UN Environment Programme in Geneva.’ The downturn of his mouth suggested he didn’t want to say more.

  They both stared down at the glacier, lost in their own thoughts. Mina always thought it was incredible that things like this had been here for thousands of years before man, and that it was a terrible shame that man’s advent on the world was causing so much destruction. It made her pesky problems seem fairly insignificant. All this would be here thousands of years after she’d gone. Life was short and she ought to make the most of it.