‘Let me try.’
Zoe blinked. ‘What are you gonna do? Turn the key a different way?’
‘Let me try it, will you?’
Zoe sighed but climbed out of the driver’s seat to let Jake try his hand.
Jake had a kind of ritual in these situations. He shuffled his bottom into the seat, flexed his fingers like a concert pianist, wobbled the steering wheel, pressed down the clutch pedal and flicked the key in the ignition. Nothing. No spark. He rocked the car a little and went through his ritual all over again. Nothing. ‘Is it petrol?’
‘Of course it’s not petrol. There’s half a tank.’
‘Don’t get snitty. What did you do before it died on you?’
‘What did I do? Nothing! I drove it, normally, standard fucking normal driving with no extra added female flourishes, okay?’
‘Just be calm.’
‘I didn’t sing to it, or spit on the steering wheel or breathe too hard when I changed gear… Stop making out it was something I did!’
‘Well, you always screw up the DVD and the Apple Mac and the—’
‘You shit!’
‘Okay, you changed gear as we came up the hill?’
‘No!’
‘I’m just trying to establish—’
‘Well, don’t establish anything.’
He tried the ignition one more time. It failed again. He could almost feel the battery exhausting itself a little more every time he turned the key. ‘We’re on a hill, that’s good. We’ll bump it in reverse. I’ll take the handbrake off and you give it a little push.’
Zoe went around to the front of the car. Jake engaged the clutch and put the gearstick in reverse. He nodded to her. She didn’t respond. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Any time today would be, like, cool, as they say on MTV.’
She looked furious but said nothing. She compressed her lips and pushed at the front of the car. As it rolled backwards she slipped and fell on her knees. Jake let the car run for several metres before disengaging the clutch. The gears groaned and the car juddered to a halt. There was not even a cough from the engine.
He pulled on the handbrake, got out of the car and walked towards her. With the snowflakes swirling around her, settling on her hat, on her scarf, she stood in the middle of the road rubbing her skinned knees. ‘Now what?’
With his back to the road leading up from the village, he stood at the T-junction and looked east and west. At least they could just about make out the road this time. There was a good chance they wouldn’t fall off its edge. It was just a question of deciding which direction they should go. He took out his compass, squatted and laid it on the ground. After a few moments, he gently put it back in his pocket. ‘Piece of shit!’ he said softly. He was red in the face.
Zoe felt her heart squeeze for him: him with his useless compass. ‘You decide.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You have a better sense of direction. You always have had.’
‘Okay. No recriminations if I’m wrong, right? I say… that way.’
They linked arms and set out along the road. They didn’t even bother to look back at the abandoned police vehicle. It stayed at an angle in the middle of the road with the driver’s door open, looking like the aftermath of a hijacking.
A little over an hour later they were back in Saint-Bernard. The familiar church tower confirmed it long before they reached the centre.
‘Sorry,’ Zoe said, while they were still on the road.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t be. I would have picked that direction, too.’
Pretty soon Zoe had another idea. ‘Follow me.’
‘Seems like every time I follow you we land up in trouble.’
She ignored him, leading him back to their hotel and into the ski store: a pine-clad locker room where a giant piste map was displayed on the wall behind a sheet of Perspex. It showed that the village of Saint-Bernard nestled in a valley, with pisted ski runs flanking the village on both the north and south sides of the valley. The south side was less popular because the sun melted the snow early, but after the recent snowfall the pistes would be in good order anywhere. Zoe’s plan was to get hold of some skis, ascend the south slope of the valley and ski down the other side to the neighbouring resort.
She pointed it out on the map. ‘There are chairlifts right up to the top. We know the power is still on, so we can take a chairlift up. There’s at least one pisted run down the other side that’s marked, with a big T-bar drag lift to come back up. We’re at nineteen hundred metres here, right? There’s another resort over the other side at sixteen hundred metres and just a few kilometres across the mountain. There are no runs marked after the pisted one, but we can make a steady traverse. The snow’s good.’
Jake breathed out. ‘That might be a bit beyond our skiing abilities. You don’t know what the terrain is. Rock. Trees. Deep snow. You don’t know the gradient. Anything really.’
‘You’re a good skier. I’m a good skier.’
‘Why don’t we just try to walk out again? Follow the mountain road. It’s much simpler.’
‘Yes, we could do that. But—and it’s a big but—you said yourself it’s a four- or five-hour hike. We’ve left it too late after what just happened—we’d end up walking in darkness again. If we’re going to hike out of here we’ll have to stay another night in the hotel and head off first thing in the morning. Or we grab some skis, get up the mountain, and from the top we could be down to that village at sixteen hundred metres in what, twenty minutes?’
‘Twenty minutes? Not a chance.’
‘Half an hour tops to drop down that sort of distance on skis. No more. Half an hour, Jake.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not happy about it. Do you think we have enough daylight left?’
‘We will if we stop yakking and set off right way. Do you really want to spend another night here?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s go for it then.’
‘Look at you. You really think it’s that easy, don’t you?’
Zoe dusted her hands together, to show him how easy it would be.
5
They pushed open the door to a ski store and set about choosing themselves a good set of skis apiece from the rack. They told each other that they would return the skis eventually, and that no one would blame them for ‘borrowing’ skis, given the circumstances, though Jake joked about the growing size of their theoretical bill.
‘I’ve always wanted some of these,’ Zoe said. ‘Flame orange. Top spec.’
‘You would. You want new boots?’
‘Sure. What about these?’
‘Rack your skis up here, then, and sling me one of your boots.’
While Jake adjusted the ski bindings, Zoe poked around the shop. The owners had left in a hurry. A CD player was still switched on and there was a half-empty mug of coffee. Someone had even left a wallet under the counter. She opened it. It contained credit cards and a wad of banknotes.
She waved it at Jake. ‘Look.’
‘Just put it back.’
‘I am putting it back. Did you think I was going to steal it?’
‘I’m just saying, leave everything exactly as is. Except what we absolutely have to take.’
‘Like I might do different?’
‘I’m just saying.’
