They waited for the helicopter. Kit’s jacket had been fitted with an emergency transponder, pinpointing his position to within three feet. All they had to do was sit tight.
Which was easier said than done. Clover had never sat tighter as she stared into the abyss. She was shivering, in spite of her ski jacket and thermals and gloves. She wasn’t sure there was any technical clothing that could counteract sitting still, unable to move off a rock, on a north-facing slope in the Austrian Alps, in the growing dark, in December. They couldn’t even dig a snow shelter, the wind whipping around them in menacing gusts. Climbing back up wasn’t an option; she’d realized that without having to ask. It was too steep and, below the fresh layer of powder, the snow here was hard-packed and icy. In their boots they could slip. They were safer waiting for help to get to them.
‘I don’t understand how I didn’t see,’ she said.
‘You were in shock.’
‘But how could I not notice the pitch?’
‘Adrenaline,’ he replied. ‘The body steps up in flight mode. It can adapt to almost anything. I used to get it, surfing heavy water. I’d feel physically sick when I looked back at some of the footage of the stuff I rode, but when I was out there, in the moment . . .’ He shrugged.
‘I would have just skied over the edge,’ she whispered, staring at it, the swirl of air where the mountain wasn’t.
He looked back at her. ‘. . . Yeah.’ He swallowed, looking away again. ‘Lucky for you I’m a Kiwi . . .’ And when she appeared not to understand, he added, ‘Rugby? I can tackle?’
‘Oh. Yes . . . I played netball at school. Not sure how much use that would have been if I’d been trying to save you.’
He gave a faintly bemused look. ‘. . . No.’ It was growing so dark, so quickly, the snow appeared to glow ultra-violet.
‘How did you even know I was down here?’ She stared at him.
‘I was talking with Tipper when he got the call from the US team coach. He told me, just a few moments before I saw you barrelling out past the pipe. I knew you’d . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Had a thing with him . . . so I realized you must have heard, to be skiing like that . . . Then I saw you miss the turn and go off-piste.’
‘But you could have been killed too,’ she said quietly.
He didn’t respond for a few beats. ‘Well, you dived into a fist fight to save me. I figured it was the least I could do.’
‘Fist fight? Right, yes. Completely comparable to skiing off a cliff.’
He shrugged. ‘. . . I don’t like being beholden.’
A small snort escaped her. ‘I didn’t have any sense that you felt you were.’
He looked at her but didn’t reply. His arms were clasped around his knees as he looked out over the drop. He had made her sit cross-legged, clutching the sapling – ‘in case there’s an avalanche’; no word of what he’d do in that eventuality.
They were stranded in a couloir that faced deeper into the mountains. Kaprun and Zell am See were at their backs, and in the absence of any light pollution whatsoever, the stars were beginning to wink at them, peeping out, one, two, three, four . . .
‘Jeez, it’s cold,’ she murmured, rubbing her gloved hands together. Snow had got inside her coat as she’d rolled down the slope; it had melted, leaving her skin chill and damp.
He looked across and saw how she was shivering. ‘Take my jacket,’ he said, beginning to unzip his coat.
‘No!’ She looked at him, horrified. ‘No.’
‘I’m fine. I don’t get cold.’
‘Everyone gets cold in minus twenty. Even polar bears get chilly in that.’
He gave a small grunt but zipped his jacket closed again. ‘You’re shivering.’
‘I’ll cope. They’ll be here any minute.’ Wouldn’t they? How long had it been? Forty minutes? Surely they should be here by now? She suppressed a tremor of fear at the prospect of being stuck out here all night. They’d die of exposure on this rock.
They sank into silence. As much as they struggled with being in each other’s company, for once she was glad of it. She felt grateful for the sound of his steady breathing, telling her she wasn’t alone in the dark. She could still remember the feel of his arm swooping around her waist, knocking her sideways and pushing her into the lee of the slope.
‘. . . I keep thinking of Mikey’s parents,’ she whispered.
‘I know,’ he murmured back. She looked over and saw that his head was hanging.
‘Did you know him?’
‘Not as well as you.’
She recoiled, taken aback by the comment, a sudden flash of his usual temper.
‘Sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘Shit, I . . . I didn’t mean that . . . I really didn’t.’ She heard him inhale. ‘I just . . . didn’t behave well, the last time I saw him.’
She remembered the pushing and shoving between them at the chairlift, Mikey’s bafflement. ‘Why?’
He looked sidelong at her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said after a pause. ‘I don’t know.’
A northerly gust rounded the cliff and hit them square in the face. She gave another shiver, which he saw. He leaned over and looked at her more closely. ‘Your lips are going blue,’ he murmured. He pulled off a glove and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. ‘You’re freezing.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Stop saying that.’ He put his glove back on and carefully scooched over to her. ‘You need to get out of the wind. Lean in to me.’
‘What?’
He held his arms and legs out wide. ‘You need body heat. Lean in to me.’
‘No.’
‘Fuck’s sake, Clo. This isn’t a cuddle. You’ll suffer from exposure. Lean in to me.’
More than anything, she was surprised by him calling her Clo. But reluctantly, she let go of the sapling and scurried on her bottom over to where he sat.
‘No. Face the other way.’
‘So bossy,’ she muttered. She changed direction, sitting side on to him, her back now to the wind. He lifted up his knees and brought his arms around her in a windbreak. He tipped her off-centre so that she was leaning against him. Immediately she felt warmer.
‘That any better?’
She nodded, her hair rustling against his jacket.
‘Good.’ She felt him drop his head down, trying to keep warm too, his breath warm into her hair. She closed her eyes, trying not to remember the last time . . . ‘Don’t tense your muscles. It restricts blood flow.’
She tried to relax them. She could hear his heart against her ear, slow and steady.
They sat there quietly, trying to conserve heat as the evening grew blacker, the wind sharper.
‘What if they can’t find us?’ she asked him.
‘They will.’
‘But they’re taking so long.’
He paused. ‘They’ll come.’
She shivered again and he clasped her tighter, holding her so closely she could have been a baby in his arms. She felt herself warm against him.
‘. . . You’re being very kind to someone you hate so much . . . You could push me off this cliff and no one would be any the wiser.’
‘Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me.’
She lifted her head and looked up at him. He looked back at her, the whites of his eyes the only bright spots in the dark. He looked cold and haunted, incredibly tired – and she felt a sudden, inexplicable, urge to press her lips to his. As though it was the natural thing to do for warmth, human contact, body heat . . . A kindness she could give back.
She saw it run through his eyes too, a surrender of the hostilities that marked their every encounter. She watched his gaze roam over her face in that way it had in the pool, when acrimony had shape-shifted into passion, when suddenly shouting wasn’t enough and the verbal had had to become physical. She felt it again now, the need for emotional conflict to find a physical form. They were both cold, frightened, shocked, grieving . . .
She heard a thud-thud-thudding and he lifted his head, like a wolf nosing the air, as a bright light suddenly rounded the mountain, heading closer. Almost instantly, his grip released her, his legs sliding down and letting the wind twist around her once more. ‘. . . They’re here.’
She walked, her head tucked down against the wind and sleet. It felt strange to walk on the flat in trainers after weeks of trekking on slopes in ski boots. So many bodies, so many lights . . . The shop windows twinkled with extravagant displays – snow-dusted reindeer and life-size sleighs, giant wooden Advent houses and mannequins dressed in velvets and sequins, broadcasting that it was time to sparkle, to celebrate . . .
She kept her gaze averted, eyes fixed on the rubber-soled feet of the people coming towards her, stepping around her. Mikey Schultz was dead. That beautiful, vibrant man-child, on the brink of glory and success . . .
She kept putting one foot in front of the other, her hand on the strap of the backpack on her shoulder which was her only luggage. She had packed nothing more than toiletries, knickers and a couple of t-shirts. She didn’t want stuff; she didn’t want to wait. She just wanted to get away from there and from everything that had happened. She had caught the first train back to Salzburg this morning, only Matty aware of her plans and up to wave her off as the chalet slept. The plane had taken off and landed without her even noticing as she’d sat by the window, her head pressed against the glass.
The world felt like it had been pulled inside out; everything was inverted. Life felt chaotic and as fragile as glass. She had almost died. Blinded by shock and horror, she would have skied straight off a cliff if Kit Foley hadn’t chanced to have seen her . . . If. Her life right now, today and for ever after, hung upon that singular if.
She’d barely slept, her body jolting violently with the sensation of falling. And when she did dream, her mind kept replaying the image of that solitary snowboard swinging up and down the walls of the pipe as the news about Mikey reverberated through the band of brothers. She already knew she wouldn’t ever step foot up there, on that glacier, again.
She turned into the street. There was a playground and she could hear the sound of children playing; she realized how alien it sounded to her – unbridled laughter, sheer joy . . . When had she last heard laughter like that? When had she last laughed like that?
The slam of a car door made her look up. A little boy was scrambling out of the back of a black Audi estate, having to slide down the side of the seat till his feet touched the ground. His father stepped out too, reaching back into the car for something in the central compartment. His phone? Glasses? A beautiful dark-haired woman in a padded Moncler coat walked around from the far side and picked up a toddler from a car seat, kissing pink, chubby cheeks.
Wasn’t theirs the life Kit had told her would inevitably be hers?
Clover watched as the father walked around and opened the boot of the car, pulling out a Christmas tree, still constrained in its net. The little boy was hopping on the pavement excitedly, clapping his hands as his father effortlessly hoisted the tree onto his shoulder and shut the car boot. She watched the locking lights flash twice as the young family turned towards the smart stone apartment building, the little boy charging up the steps first.
The mother clutched the baby close to her chest, shielding her daughter from the cold and sleet, as she followed. The father went last, glancing around protectively before he turned in to climb the steps.
He stopped at the sight of her, standing there, watching them, crying.
‘Clover?’
It was a moment before she could fully catch her breath. ‘. . . Hi Tom.’