‘I think she’s waking up.’ Matty’s voice sounded distant.
Clover tried opening her eyes but there was resistance, like pushing against a door with towels on the floor. ‘Aah,’ she gasped, wincing at the light.
‘Clo, can you hear me?’ Matty asked.
‘Yes,’ Clover mumbled. Her hands automatically went to touch her face but something – someone – applied pressure to her arms. ‘Don’t move. Try to be still.’
‘Where am I?’ Her words were indistinct, as blurry as her vision.
‘In bed.’
Clover frowned. The voice was deeper. Johnny?
‘Do you remember what happened?’
Did she? It hurt even to think. She felt battered.
Bone on bone. The memory flashed through her, making her gasp. Startle.
Her eyes opened. Only one of them. The other—
Her hand flew to her face again before Matty could stop it. There was something soft – a dressing? – over her right eye. And her cheek came to meet her hand at an angle she didn’t recognize.
She looked back at them with her one open eye. They were sitting either side of her on the narrow bed, looking down at her with concern. Matty’s own face was puffy and pale, her eyes red-rimmed. Her hair was wet but her scalp had been stained red. Johnny looked sort of haunted.
‘Jeez, how bad do I look?’ she mumbled after a second, doing her best to reassure them.
Matty gave a laugh of relief that she could joke, but Johnny still looked dismayed.
‘Mirror,’ she commanded softly, looking at him.
‘Oh, Clo—’ Matty protested, her laughter dying in her throat.
‘Mirror,’ she insisted, still looking at Johnny.
‘She has to see sometime,’ he said pragmatically. He returned with Matty’s make-up mirror.
‘Well, not that side,’ Matty hissed, turning the mirror around so she wasn’t presented with the magnified side. Clover had difficulty looking in that thing at the best of times – and she had a feeling this wasn’t the best of times.
Johnny held it up for her.
‘Oh.’ The word fell like a spirit leaving the body. An extinguishment of hope. She couldn’t see the eye itself. It was covered by the dressing, but bruising was already seeping past its edges. Her cheek was a livid puce and badly swollen. There were a few specks of dried blood at her nostril. She hadn’t thought it was possible to look worse than she felt. But apparently it was.
The image began to blur, tears gathering in her good eye.
‘That was what I was afraid of,’ Matty hissed, snatching the mirror from Johnny’s hand.
‘But you can’t hide it from her,’ Johnny whispered back.
‘I’m fine,’ Clover interrupted quietly, not wanting them to fight. ‘It’s better I know.’
They were all quiet for a few moments, as Clover tried to absorb what had happened.
‘. . . I remember . . . eyes . . .’ she faltered, feeling her body contract and tense as she tried to sink her mind back into the memories. ‘Fighting . . .’ She frowned. ‘They had Kit . . . Blood.’
‘Turned out to be red paint,’ Matty said. ‘I’m not sure what would have been better, though. Blood or paint? It’s ruined the inside of Julian’s car.’
‘Seriously?’ Johnny snapped with an anger that made both women flinch. Johnny never raised his voice. ‘That’s the concern?’
‘No. No, of course it isn’t,’ she said quickly, chastened.
Johnny shook his head at her, looking like a disappointed father with his drunk teenage daughter. He turned back to Clover. ‘Do you remember anything after you were punched?’
Clover concentrated, but nothing rose from the depths. Colours, but no visions, no sounds . . .
‘Do you remember being in the car, getting back here?’
She shook her head. ‘Should I?’
‘You were in and out of consciousness.’
Clover processed that. In and out . . . ‘How did I get in the car? Did I walk?’
‘Julian brought the car round and Kit carried you. I called the doctor on the way up the hill. He was here within five minutes.’
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ she whispered, feeling floored by the account of it.
‘He says you’ve got a bad concussion. He’ll be back in the morning.’
Morning? ‘What time is it now?’
‘Three. He told us to wake you every couple of hours.’
It was a lot to take in. She felt so groggy. Her eye wanted to close again. ‘What about Kit?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘They were all on him,’ she mumbled.
‘It broke up quickly once you went down,’ Matty replied. ‘It was horrific! What were you thinking flying into the middle of a punch-up like that?’
‘I didn’t think.’
‘And you call him kamikaze!’ Johnny shook his head despairingly again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed, closing her eye.
‘She’s tired. Let her go back to sleep,’ Matty said more quietly.
Clover felt a hand on her arm. ‘We’ll come and wake you again at five.’
‘Please don’t,’ she mumbled. She was so tired. She just wanted to sleep and sleep and . . .
The thoughts drifted away, her body heavy, back into oblivion once more.
‘Follow my finger, please.’
She did her best, but it evidently wasn’t good enough. Didn’t he know she was exhausted? Newborn babies had just had a better night’s sleep than her, with Matty and Johnny splitting the burden of waking her in two-hour shifts.
‘Hmm,’ the doctor murmured, straightening up. ‘I’ll come back again this evening. She’s to stay in bed and rest. Keep a window open; her temperature is elevated, which is concerning. Was she doing any strenuous activity yesterday, before the accident?’
‘No. In fact, the opposite – she got really cold,’ Johnny said, stepping forward from where he’d been standing in the bathroom door. Matty and Ari were both standing by the bedroom door. ‘We were pretty stationary for most of the day and there was no heating. She thought she’d caught a chill.’ He glanced at Ari.
‘Hmm. Well, it’s something that urges caution,’ the doctor said, his English excellent but deeply accented. ‘Hypothermia is known to create problems in moderate to severe TBIs; it is less well documented on mild cases. If her condition deteriorates in any way, you must call me immediately.’
The doctor looked at Ari too, standing by the wall, as he said this. Ari nodded. His arms were folded over his chest, his hands gripping his upper arms. He had been grim-faced throughout her review.
Clover wasn’t quite sure why so many people needed to be present.
‘When can I get up again?’ she asked, surprised by how her voice sounded.
The doctor looked back at her sternly. ‘You’re not to get up without assistance. You’re still disorientated and likely to fall. All bathroom trips must be accompanied.’
Matty grinned and winked at her.
‘Depending on how well you rest today, you can start walking about tomorrow.’
‘And getting on the slopes?’
The doctor looked scandalized by the question. ‘Not for a week to ten days at the earliest. I would be more inclined to say two weeks.’
Her mouth parted in dismay. ‘But—’
‘Clo, don’t worry about work for the moment,’ Johnny said firmly, knowing exactly what she was concerned about. ‘There’s still plenty of time.’
Ari shifted his weight and looked down at his feet. Clover felt a wave of despair. They were supposed to be travelling to Saas-Fee tomorrow for the Stomping Ground training camp. It was where most of the elite athletes on the European circuit would be gathering in advance of the first event of the season and it was a crucial opportunity for them to interview Foley’s new colleagues: to gauge reaction to his debut into their sport and see how he was perceived. He was already ostracized here, in his ‘backyard’ park. They couldn’t miss out on seeing how he was treated by the best of the best. What he saw as ‘his’ pack. There was no way she was going to miss it.
The doctor closed his bag. ‘I’ll be back this evening after six. Rest and stay hydrated.’
Clover nodded obediently, watching as he went out. Ari escorted him to the door. ‘Fluffy bedside manner,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘. . . I’m not missing Saas-Fee, Johnny.’
‘You’re not going if he says you can’t.’
‘Try and stop me,’ she said stubbornly. ‘You know as well as I do it’s where we’re going to get the meat for this film.’ The sentence exhausted her. ‘Ugh,’ she moaned, sinking deeper into the pillows.
‘We need to open that window,’ Matty said, crossing the room and opening it a little. The cold air whistled in, chilled and pure.
‘These just came for you,’ Ari said, walking back in again, almost entirely hidden by a vast bouquet of flowers, elegantly potted in a pink and white striped pail.
Matty gasped, her hands raising to her mouth. ‘Who are they from?’
Clover gave her a weary look. Even concussed, she knew they were from Julian. The extravagance was just his style. ‘Open the envelope and read it for me, will you?’ she asked quietly.
Matty happily obliged. ‘They’re from Julian!’ she exclaimed, looking up. ‘He says to get well soon.’
Clover smiled, her gaze meeting Johnny’s. ‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of him.’
She watched as Ari settled the arrangement on her bedside table, but they were so vast, there was no room for her jug and glass of water. He looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘Uh . . .’
‘Don’t worry, Mats will sort them out,’ she said quietly.
He gave her a grateful nod. He had seemed peculiarly muted throughout her appointment.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked him.
‘Me?’ He gave a surprised snort. ‘I’m fine . . . It’s just difficult looking at you . . . at what they did—’
‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ But their two expressions of being fine were clearly very different. ‘And Kit’s okay?’ She hadn’t seen him yet.
‘He’s fine.’
Fine, again. The word that said nothing, meant nothing.
He cleared his throat. ‘The police were here earlier.’
‘Oh?’
‘I told them they couldn’t talk to you till the doc had been. But they’ll probably come back later. They just want to ask some questions.’
‘Have they arrested the people who did it?’
‘No. No arrests yet.’
Clover felt her heart beat a little faster. ‘But they know who they are?’
‘Not yet, I don’t think,’ Ari said, his mouth drawn in a thin line. ‘But they’re examining CCTV. Don’t worry, they’ll find the bastards.’
She looked back at him. She could feel his anger.
‘How did they even know we were in there?’ she asked, looking over at Matty. ‘I mean, it’s a tucked-away little place. It’s hardly paparazzi central.’
Her friend could only shrug. ‘Someone must have seen him going in and made a call? . . . Or maybe someone saw him giving that little kid the autograph and that attracted attention?’
Clover frowned as something else came back to her. ‘. . . They were taking pictures. They were filming it.’ She paled at the thought of that footage being out there. ‘Is it in the papers?’ Clover looked at Ari. She knew the chalet received a delivery of the local and international newspapers every morning.
Ari looked away, clearly not knowing what to say.
‘It is.’ Clover’s voice sounded hollow.
‘Clo, don’t concern yourself with any of that. It’s irrelevant.’ It was Johnny again, playing dad. ‘You just need to focus on getting better.’
‘I want to see it.’
‘No.’ Johnny was firm.
‘You can’t stop me. You know I’ll be able to find it online anyway.’
Johnny stared at her with wide eyes. ‘Fuck’s sake, Clo! There’s nothing to be gained from it!’
‘I need to see it.’ Her voice was quiet but insistent. They all knew it was impossible to stop her from finding it one way or another.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ he said again through gritted teeth, striding from the room and barging past Ari without even thinking. The Johnny of last week would have been quaking in his boots at the prospect of just sharing space with Ari. How much things could change in a few days.
‘I agree with Johnny that you shouldn’t be looking at this yet,’ Ari said. ‘Your focus should be on your recovery. Looking forward, not back.’
‘But that’s just it – I don’t remember much about it. There’s just a hole in my mind, a few vague impressions that are more frightening without context. I have to see it in concrete terms.’
Johnny came back down the stairs and into the room. He was holding the local paper in his hand. ‘It’s only been reported locally so far. With any luck, it won’t get picked up internationally.’
‘Show me.’
Moving at what seemed like glacial speed, he shook open the paper to the front page. ‘DISGRACE!’ ran the headline, and below it, a large image of Kit in the middle of the melee. His arm was pulled back in momentum for another punch, his face twisted into a mask of fury, his teeth bared. He looked like an animal, the whites of his eyes making him seem crazed. On the ground, by his feet, a figure was stretched out; her face was turned away from the camera but her blonde hair fanned out over the pavement. Clover gasped to see herself, clearly out cold. Her whole body chilled at the sight of herself lying there, looking like a victim.
From the angle and – from what she could discern – the text, it clearly intimated that Kit had punched her to the ground. That he had started the fight. She couldn’t remember the choreography precisely; she had only fleeting fragments, shards of images, glinting impressions that caught and then lost the light, but she knew he hadn’t started it.
Clover looked up at them all. ‘Has he seen this?’
Ari hesitated before nodding. ‘Yes.’
‘And what does he say about it?’
‘Not much.’
Not much? ‘. . . Right.’
‘I’ll leave you to rest. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ Ari’s arm extended towards her awkwardly, as if he wanted to make contact but wasn’t sure where. Or how.
He left the room instead.
‘We’ll leave you to sleep too,’ Matty said quietly.
‘Wait.’
Matty and Johnny turned to find her holding out a hand, beckoning for them to come closer again. They gathered around, looking worried and anxious.
‘You need to get hold of that footage,’ she said in a low voice.
‘What?’ Johnny frowned.
‘The fight. It’ll need to go in the film. You’ve got to find out who took those pictures. Who was filming us?’
‘Clo, have you lost your mind? You got knocked out in that fight!’ Johnny hissed.
‘I’m aware. But this is an opportunity we couldn’t even have dreamed of. Kit’s being mobbed in the street? How can we not include it?’
Her words were met with a stunned silence.
‘Clo, he looked after you. He carried you to the car,’ Matty argued.
‘Okay. So he has some decency. No one ever said he’s a psychopath. But this has to go in. This is his reality. This is how people feel about him and what he did. We can’t ignore it.’ Clover looked back at Matty with her one eye. ‘And Mats – you are not to mention it to Julian. He cannot know it’s going in. He’s already interfering in things enough – fancy dinners, fancier flowers.’
‘He’s being kind!’
‘He’s manipulating us – keeping us on side, and you know it. But we can’t be steered. This film has to be independent.’
‘And is that what this is? Independent?’ Johnny asked suddenly. ‘Or are you just out to set him up?’
Mia’s silvered face in the moonlight flashed through her mind.
‘How would I even do that, Johnny? Showing that fight isn’t telling a lie! It happened. We can’t show something if it didn’t happen, but it did and I’ve got the shiner and the t-shirt to prove it. Johnny, last night confirmed he’s not welcome here – or anywhere. People don’t want him winning medals again.’ She looked back at them both. ‘It’s pure cinema gold. You have to get hold of that fight footage. I don’t care what it takes.’
She sensed the gaze, like a prickle along her back. She turned, looking over her shoulder, and saw Beau peering in through the crack in the doorway.
He pulled himself back, but a fraction too late.
‘Hey, Beau,’ she said, heaving herself up and round. ‘It’s okay. Come in.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Whoa.’ He couldn’t hide his shock as she lifted her head and he saw the scale of her swollen cheek and bandaged eye, the bruise seeping past the dressing like a shadowy nimbus. ‘Fuck.’
‘It’s honestly fine,’ she said quickly. She felt a peculiar pressure to somehow console others about her appearance. ‘I feel fine.’
He looked unconvinced.
‘The doc’s only keeping me in bed because I’ve got a temperature, otherwise I’d totally be up and about. It’s ridiculous really.’ She saw how awkwardly he hovered by the door. ‘Please come in. Sit. You’re making me nervous.’
‘I don’t want to disturb y—’
‘I’m going out of my mind with boredom. You’d be doing me a kindness, honestly.’
‘. . . Okay.’
He perched at the furthest end and she saw how hesitant he seemed about being here – as if he was going against an order. Crossing enemy lines. ‘Cheer me up. Give me some gossip. What’s going on up there?’
‘Nuthin’,’ he shrugged.
‘Nothing at all?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I’m now top hundred in the Fortnite league.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘It’s a computer game.’
‘Oh . . . You’ve not been riding?’
His face fell. ‘Nup. Which is killing me, cos it’s been dumping up there. Incredible pow.’
‘So why don’t you go then?’
He shrugged but didn’t reply. Clover watched him. She couldn’t understand why he . . .
The penny dropped. ‘Is it because Kit’s not going?’
He looked away.
‘But he wouldn’t stop you from going, surely? You’re a free agent.’
‘Just doesn’t seem right, going without him,’ he shrugged.
Clover stared, baffled. Why did Beau have to stay in, just because Kit was in hiding?
‘Is Kit okay?’
‘Oh yeah, he’s totally fine.’
‘So then . . .’
‘He’s just not wanting to be out at the moment. Doesn’t want eyes on him.’
‘Understandable,’ she said quietly. But that made it even less acceptable to force Beau to stay in too.
‘Especially when we don’t know who those guys were yet. Who’s the enemy, y’know?’
‘Yes. It’s so awful.’
Beau bit his lip, his eyes narrowing as he pulled at a hangnail. ‘Kit can’t get over how they knew he was in there. He’s convinced it was a set-up. Like an ambush.’
Clover frowned. ‘I’m inclined to agree. It was very strange that they found him there. Someone must have tipped them off. But why would anyone want to set him up?’
‘To make him look bad. It’s practically a sport at the moment, kicking a man when he’s down.’ He looked up at her sharply as he realized what he’d said. It was thanks to her that Kit’s fame had become infamy. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that you . . .’ He flinched at the sight of her injuries again. ‘. . . Ari said no broken bones?’
‘No, I was lucky. Apparently!’ She gave her best attempt at a grin. Winking wasn’t an option. ‘Lucky Clover.’
But he missed the joke. ‘He could’a killed you. Kit said the guy was twice your size. If you’d hit your head going down . . .’
Her smile faded. ‘Well, I’m trying to focus on the positives.’
‘Are there any?’
She watched him. One of the very first things she had observed about Beau was that he was a conduit of his brother’s moods: when Kit was happy, Beau was energized and relaxed. When Kit was stressed or distracted (which was almost all the time, certainly in her presence), he was jumpy and restless. ‘Beau, is Kit really okay?’
‘Totally,’ he said quickly. ‘He’s just pissed off.’
‘It was spectacularly bad timing,’ she agreed, remembering Julian’s embargoed press release. ‘He’s lucky to have you looking out for him. I can see you two are really close.’
Beau looked momentarily startled by her tentative foray into a more personal topic. But she kept her eyes down, as she picked lightly at the embroidery on her duvet cover, so as not to appear challenging. ‘You’re lucky. I miss my brother. I don’t get to see him anywhere near as much as I’d like.’
‘No?’
‘He lives in Geneva so . . .’ She smiled. ‘Ironically, I’m closer to him here than I have been in years and there’s still no time to meet up.’
‘You could get over there surely, for a few days? Or he could come out here? Does he ride?’
‘He’s a skier, like me,’ she said with a rueful grin.
‘Agh, never mind. I guess he can still have some fun,’ he teased.
‘You really love boarding, don’t you?’ she asked, watching him closely. ‘Even more than surfing?’
He shot her a sly look from under his lashes. ‘Don’t tell Kit.’
Clover smiled, but she wondered why it had to be a secret that he loved the snow more than the surf. Moving into this arena had been Kit’s idea, after all. Why couldn’t Beau love it too? ‘You do look completely natural up there. So in your element.’
‘Feels like it’s in my blood.’ He looked around the room idly. ‘Maybe it is. We boarded before we surfed. Our dad taught us.’
‘Oh, really?’ She mentally sifted through the profiles and timelines Matty had spent the summer preparing.
‘Yeah. Everyone thinks we’re Aussies but we’re Kiwis, just with Aussie accents – did you know that?’
‘I did, yes,’ she smiled.
‘Yeah. We were born in Queenstown, South Island, twenty minutes from Coronet Peak. We didn’t move to the Gold Coast till I was five and Kit was ten—’
Clover quickly did the maths: that would have been straight after his parents’ divorce.
‘—and Kit ate up being an Aussie. He just went headlong into the surfing thing. Got so good, so quick. I always just followed him, of course – whatever he did, I did.’
‘But snowboarding was really your great love?’
‘Hey, I was just a toddler when I was first strapped on. What did I know? But there must have been some muscle memory there, I guess. It’s felt so natural being here. Like it was always meant to be.’
‘Well, maybe it was.’
‘I dunno.’ He looked down and Clover could see the guilt on his face. They were here because his brother’s life in the surfing world had fallen apart, refugees from another sport. He wouldn’t countenance the thought that his destiny to board came at the cost of Kit’s destiny not to surf.
He stared into space and Clover wondered what a half-life it was for him, to be perpetually living in his brother’s shadow. If he wouldn’t even hit some powder without Kit . . . She remembered his unexpected blow-up at Ari the other morning, as his wishes had been subverted to Kit’s training regime. He almost subsumed himself . . .
He jumped up suddenly. ‘I should let you rest. I never meant to disturb you. I just wanted to check you were okay.’
‘That’s really good of you, Beau, thanks,’ she smiled. ‘I appreciate it.’ It was more than his brother had bothered to do.
‘Let me know if you need anything?’
‘Of course.’
He gave her one last look and shut the door behind him.
Clover settled back into the pillows thoughtfully. Her mind had caught on something he had said – about Kit feeling he’d been set up. Ambushed. Were there people out to make Kit look bad?
Because if so, she wanted to meet them.