One by One(90)

Then into the kitchen—but she is not there either.

I am halfway upstairs, ready to check the bedrooms, when I hear a noise. It is very faint, but it sounds like something falling onto the snow outside. It is coming from the back of the building, where the ski entrance is.

I make my way back down to the lobby and I open the door to the rear part of the building, where all the ski lockers are. It takes a moment for my eyes to get used to the darkness—and then I see something—or someone—moving at the far side of the room. It is Erin. She has climbed up on top of the ski lockers, and she is almost out of the window.

I hurl myself across the locker room, scramble up the bench she has placed below the window, ignoring the twinges in my knee, and grab hold of her helmet, which is just about to disappear through the window.

Then I realize why she is still there. The helmet won’t fit through the gap. She is stuck. She is dangling from the helmet, horrible wheezing noises coming from her throat, kicking and kicking to try and get enough purchase on the snow to twist free.

But before I have had time to figure out what to do, there is a sudden jerk, and the weight on the helmet falls away. The catch has broken—or she has unclipped herself, I am not sure which. For a second she lies, gasping and winded in the snow, and then she staggers to her feet, picks up her skis, and begins to hobble off towards the front of the chalet and the path that leads up to the funicular.

I have to follow her, but the helmet is stuck in the frame, blocking it. It is only after a few minutes of fruitless tugging that I realize, this is stupid. Erin has her skis and poles. She is clearly intending to ski to St. Antoine—and I have to stop her.

I have to ski after her.

Letting go of the helmet, I turn back to the room. I am wearing my jumpsuit already. All I need are boots, skis, and mittens. Fast, before Erin gets away.

I have two realizations to comfort me—first, in the soft snow, she won’t be able to hide her tracks. I will be able to tell exactly which way she has gone.

And second, I can ski faster than her. My wrenched knee has almost recovered, while her ankle has only been getting worse. I saw the way she hobbled back from the kitchen with the tea just a couple of hours ago. She couldn’t put any real weight on it at all. I am pretty sure it is broken—and there is no way she can ski aggressively with a broken ankle. She will have to go slowly and carefully, and it will take her a long time to clamber over the broken-up snow at the beginning of the blue piste. I saw what it looked like after the avalanche—a mess of rubble and debris. It will take a while to pick her way through that, even if it clears further down. I will be able to catch up to her. If I act quickly.

I make up my mind. I ram my feet into my boots and grab my skis and poles from the rack. My mittens are in the pocket of my jumpsuit. But my helmet—where is my helmet? It’s missing from the locker, and after a few seconds I realize: it’s the one that Erin took, and it is wedged into the window.

I have another go at trying to free it, but it’s useless, and I cast around for an alternative before realizing that I am wasting time. If Erin gets too much of a head start, even with her ankle, I won’t catch her.

Shoving Elliot’s phone into my pocket, I hoist my skis onto my shoulder and clack-clack my way back along the corridor to the lobby, where I open the door into the snow, and squeeze into the night.

It is unbelievably cold outside, and I realize that however chilly the chalet was without heating, it was actually doing a pretty good job of protecting us from the elements.

Now, out here, I don’t know what the temperature is, but it can’t be much over minus twenty. Maybe even less. The sky is clear, and the moon has that strange frost halo around it that you only get in extreme cold.

Shivering, even in my warm jumpsuit, I clip my boots into my ski bindings and then straighten up, looking around for Erin’s tracks.

There they are—deep slashes of furrowed snow, dark against the moonlit white.

But they are not leading up the track to the smashed-up blue piste. They are going the other way, into the forest.





ERIN


Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 10

I had forgotten the beginning. Oh God, the beginning. It’s like a sheer wall of thick, soft snow, hemmed in with trees, studded with boulders, narrowing to a steep path just a few feet wide. And taking the first step is basically like jumping off the edge of a cliff and trusting to the snow to hold you.

With two good legs I could do this—probably not elegantly, but I could do this. I’m rusty, but I’ve done enough off-piste skiing that I am pretty confident in my technique. I know how to manage the deep, dragging snow, how to navigate the heavy turns, how to avoid plunging into drifts and how to keep up momentum.

I know all that in theory. It’s just that it’s more than three years since I’ve skied off-piste. And I don’t know if I can put any of it into practice with a broken ankle.

My heart is in my mouth. But Liz will have seen my tracks in the snow. She’ll be following after me. I have to do this.

My downhill leg will be bearing most of my weight. I clip my ski boots into their bindings, and then turn and angle myself so that my good ankle is down the slope. Then, with a sick feeling, I tip off.

At first it goes okay. I schuss sideways in the fresh, fluffy snow, feeling like someone trying to swim with a duvet around their legs. But I’m heading rapidly towards the trees. I’m going to have to turn—onto my bad leg.