Every cloud had been chased from a sky rendered the thrilling lapis lazuli of a Pharaoh’s death mask. The early-morning sun had been reborn white-gold.
‘Today is the last day that I intend to ski,’ Jake declared.
‘Oh?’
‘It’s stunning. These are perfect ski conditions. We will never get another day like this. I want to finish on this high.’
‘Why do you need to finish at all?’ There was a slight tremor in Zoe’s voice, one which she couldn’t hold back. It was as if Jake was declaring a loss of faith in some religion. ‘Why not ski while we can?’
‘I think our time is limited. I can’t tell you why. I just sense it. And I’ve stopped enjoying it.’
Zoe didn’t argue. Jake seemed resigned. But she didn’t believe it; couldn’t believe it. This was not the end. He had been into the kitchen that morning and had reported that the beef on the stainless steel worktop was beginning to smell. His clock was running. But she, after all, was running an anti-clock in her belly.
She was still testing regularly, and in every case the test was positive. The baby was still alive inside her and she knew, in a way that required no test, that it was thriving. It might be no bigger than a fingernail, a crescent moon in a vast night sky, but she felt it drawing on her, feeding on her every heartbeat. While it was growing, while it was quickening—and she didn’t care how old the foetus was because she felt the tapping of a butterfly’s wing no doctor would ever convince her was gas or stomach pains—this could not be the end for them.
She wanted to shout this to Jake but didn’t have the strength. It just seemed absurd to philosophise about their predicament. She couldn’t accept that this ‘death’ was to be one long debate. She knew that this baby was alive inside her and that it would come to term. She didn’t know what would happen at that moment. It was just unimaginable to be in death and pregnant at the same time. Unless Jake were correct, and they were all the twisted offspring of some marriage between physics and dreaming.
Jake had gone out of the hotel to put on his skis. Zoe clumped across the lobby behind him. As she crossed the lobby she dropped one of her ski gauntlets and bent down to pick it up.
As she did so she heard the unmistakable sneeze of the air brakes of a luxury bus, and as she straightened up, glove in hand, she almost dropped it a second time. There was the bus parked outside the hotel, and the lobby was thronged with chattering people all over again. The babble of their voices filled the air. Zoe could feel the warmth from their bodies as they crowded the lobby space and they all spoke with great animation.
She turned back to face the reception desk and the same three women were in place, in their smart hotel uniforms, each engaged in exactly the same activities as when she had first seen them. The young woman with the ponytail had the phone pressed to her ear. The lady with the auburn hair and black glasses was processing a credit card, and the third receptionist struggled to hear what her grey-suited manager was trying to say above the racket.
The people were mostly dressed in ski gear, apart from the arrivals coming in trailing their suitcases-on- wheels. Though she was standing in a different part of the lobby, the same man came by and winked at her. She caught a whiff of his cologne all over again. She had to check to make sure she wasn’t wearing her towelling robe as before, but no, she was properly equipped with ski gear this time. She turned to the reception. There were the two English women talking about an avalanche.
Zoe felt her breath coming short. She looked out through the glass doors to see if there was any sign of Jake. But there were so many people thronging the lobby, and both they and the newly arrived bus obscured her view of the road outside.
Bewildered, she was about to turn to speak to the two English women at the reception desk, but at that moment the concierge at his blond-wood desk happened to look up and catch her eye. He raised his eyebrows quizzically, and then opened his eyes wide, as if suddenly remembering something. ‘Madam!’ he called to her. ‘Madam!’ He raised an arm high, fluttering his fingers at Zoe in a come-hither motion.
Zoe was at first mesmerised by the concierge, who was smiling and beckoning. Then she was sure that he was not calling to her, and that he was after all beckoning some other person behind her, perhaps someone at the reception desk. She turned almost a half-circle to look over her shoulder.
But there was no one behind her. No one at all.
The English women, the three receptionists and their manager and the people waiting in line at the desk had all gone. The sound of animated voices had been sucked away. Even the whiff of cologne had vanished from the air.
Zoe turned back and the concierge had disappeared too, along with all of the other skiers and hotel residents, and along with the luxury bus that had parked outside. She could now see, through the plate-glass doors, Jake waiting for her to come out.
She paused for a few seconds, then glanced back again at the empty reception desk before leaving the hotel. Jake was standing with his legs apart and his arms folded. He smiled. It was obvious that he’d seen none of it.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Zoe said.
From the very top of the mountain, and with the great coin of the sun imprinted in the sky behind her, she watched Jake ski. He swooped down the slope ahead of her, executing perfect turns, carving the snow, attacking the slope. His long shadow raced ahead of him like an independent spirit. She’d never seen him ski so well. He seemed to have mastered technical perfection. Though she had always been the superior skier, there was no doubt that now he was outstripping her in ability. She watched him speed through the trees at the bend in the slope, and disappear over the next rise.
She set off after him, determined to catch up. But her early turns were cumbersome, poorly executed. At one point she let the tips of her skis cross and had to pull up to compose herself. She was exasperated that while Jake appeared to have perfected his technique, she seemed to be moving backwards. Perhaps it had been the second hallucination of people thronging in the lobby that had so unsettled her. Or perhaps it was the presence of the baby, unconsciously urging her to caution. A fall could be dangerous. She had good reason not to want to attack the slope.
The awesome silence of the place crept up on her. The spruce and pines, all still loaded with snow, spread their limbs in a frozen ballet, breathing a ghostly incense from dark, arid chapels sheltered by their branches. She inhaled the cold, wine-sharp air deep into her lungs.
She said this to herself defiantly, but considered it might be an affront to some angry God of the underworld. She looked down the slope. Her shadow stretched ahead of her for maybe twelve metres. Then she noticed a movement, a faint twitch at the periphery of her vision.
Next to her own, there were other shadows.
On her right-hand side was a cluster of shadows, roughly human in form, swaying gently. The dark shapes were clearly imprinted on the snow ahead of her. She stopped breathing. She dared not turn her head to look behind her. There she could feel the presence of several beings. Perhaps they were people. Perhaps not.
She kept her eyes on the swaying shadows, convinced that they were unaware she had spotted them. Her skin prickled. It flushed cold and became an abrasive substance, like sandpaper. She felt the fluid in her eyes freeze.
There were perhaps five or six of them, huddled in a group. It seemed incredible that they hadn’t seen her. She could hear them talking, murmuring quietly to each other. She studied the outline of their shadows on the wax- like snow. They were certainly human in shape but with extra tall limbs like long poles or long-stemmed trumpets emerging in front of them, perhaps from their mouths. They were moving, advancing towards her, and yet at the same time not seeming to come closer.
Zoe was already standing with her poles at the ready. She made her limbs unlock, flexed her feet in her boots, preparing to make her fastest descent down a ski slope ever. At the last moment she took her gaze from the moving shadows, and with an insane sense of defiance, she turned her head to meet her adversaries eye to eye.
She almost slipped backwards. There was nothing.
Behind her was the crest of the slope, and beyond that the great, forbidding and crumbling horn of a white mountain peak, goring the blue sky. Beyond that the implacable sun.
