One by One(89)

Fuck. The helmet won’t fit.

I am hanging from my neck, and I’m beginning to choke, the strap of the helmet is digging into my jaw and throat, and I’m twisting like a fish on a line. My mittened hands are at my neck, desperately trying to relieve the pressure of the strap. My feet are scrambling in the soft snow, frantic to get enough purchase to loosen the strain on my throat.

My foot finds something, loses it again, and then finds it once more, just for a second—just long enough for me to unclip the strap.

And then I fall, gasping and retching, into a heap of soft snow and painful obstructions that after a minute or two I identify as my own skis and poles.

There is no time to recover.

Liz is yanking furiously at the helmet, stuck in the aperture, trying to pull it free so that she can follow me. I expect her to shout or swear, but she doesn’t, and somehow that’s more terrifying. She says nothing, all I can hear is her grunting breath as she struggles to get the helmet out of the window. I have to get away before she pulls it free.

I manage to stumble to my feet, sinking into the snow as I do, and using my skis as crutches I stagger down the drift to the hard-packed snow.

There, I take a split-second inventory. Mittens—yes. Skis—yes, both. And my poles.

Scarf—gone. It must have got pulled off with the helmet. And no hat of course. I don’t wear one now—the helmet is usually warm enough, but with the cold wind scouring my cheeks and face I know I’m going to regret that. Still, there is nothing I can do. I can’t turn back. I have to make it down to St. Antoine, somehow.

I also have no avalanche pack.

Fuck. Fuck. Which way?

Slowly, painfully, I drag myself and my skis around to the side of the chalet, and survey the piste.

The long blue down into St. Antoine is a wreck—there is no other way to describe it. I saw the top of the run when Danny and I made our way painfully back from the crushed funicular—the avalanche has dumped everything straight down it—huge boulders, lift poles, tree trunks. It’s not just unskiable—it’s impassable. And the path through the woods to the green run, Atchoum, is totally inaccessible—the little copse has taken the full force of the avalanche and the trees are crushed and obliterated, buried under a hundred tonnes of snow.

But there is another way.

It’s called the Secret Valley, or at least, that’s what the English skiers call it. I don’t think it has an official name—it’s not a piste, just an unofficial route that you can just about ski if the conditions are right, and if you’re very good and you enjoy a challenge. Besides, “piste” gives completely the wrong impression anyway—it conjures up the image of a flat apron of snow, with skiers crisscrossing each other with elegant turns. This is nothing like that. It’s a long couloir between two sheer rock walls, formed by a deep crevasse in the mountains. It needs a lot of snow to blanket the jagged boulders at the bottom, and even when conditions are good, the path at the bottom is so narrow that it can only take a single skier, and in places if you reach out, you can touch both sides with your fingertips.

If I can get down to it, I think it will be passable—surely we’ve had enough snow to cover the worst of the jagged rocks, and it’s out of the path of the main avalanche.

But it’s not a run so much as an obstacle course—a twisting, turning slalom of boulders and tree trunks, hard enough to navigate in daylight, let alone with no light but the moon. It’s also very prone to mini avalanches—the snow builds up on the ridges above, and breaks off without warning, deluging the skiers below.

That’s not the worst part though. The worst part, the part that is making me hesitate, is that once you’re down there—there is no way out. The sides of the crevasse rise higher, and higher, and there is no way of getting a helicopter or a blood wagon down to someone trapped there. You just have to keep going, until the chute spits you out among the trees at the top of the village.

It is my best chance. And Liz very likely doesn’t know about it. There’s no way of finding it unless someone shows you the entrance.

It’s also my worst nightmare.

But I have no choice.

Holding my skis like a crutch, I begin to walk towards the head of the pass.





LIZ


Snoop ID: ANON101

Listening to: Offline

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Erin is missing.

I almost don’t notice. When I first walk into the living room, I am so sure she will be there that it doesn’t even occur to me to check. But then something catches at the corner of my vision—something that is not quite as I left it. When I turn around I see what has changed, the sofa is empty.

For a moment I just stand there, too puzzled to be worried. Has she woken up? Stumbled to the toilet?

“Erin?” I shout. I go back into the lobby. I stare around the dark space, shining my torch up the stairs, into the kitchen. “Erin, where are you?”

She cannot have gone far. She drank enough of those pills to knock her out for a week.

It is only when I go back into the living room that I see the dark spreading stain on the sofa. I touch it and sniff my fingers. It smells of tea. That is when I understand. She never drank the tea at all.

I don’t often swear, but I do when I see this, and I realize how she tricked me.

I run. First to the door in the lobby, but the snow outside is untouched. She hasn’t left the building by that route at any rate.