Christmas in the Snow (38 page)

‘It’s fine. Just keep your weight forward. Stick your ass out more,’ he said.

‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me,’ she muttered, knowing he was right. She heard him laugh softly behind her and it reminded her of a moment she’d been determined to forget
in the hotel room in Zurich that first night. She refused to grin too.

They began traversing slowly across the slope again, dropping in height by mere inches.

‘Now get ready to turn left on three,’ he said. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . .’

They turned as one, Sam’s weight forcing the skis into a wide radius, Allegra’s ski flat on the snow and following effortlessly. He’d been right! If she would just follow, he
could lead them down.

He must have been exhausted taking on all the effort himself, but turn after turn they swooped together – after three turns, he didn’t even need to count for her; she could feel the
rhythm herself – Sam angling the poles down on each pivot, keeping them balanced, his body like a wall around her.

There was no sound, just the
shush
of the snow beneath their skis, the caws of rooks in the trees, their breath hard but steady. Several times her ski or confidence slipped, but
Sam’s own body was like a shell around her, a harbour wall keeping the boats safe.

She didn’t know how long they skied like that for – thirty, forty minutes? It could even have been an hour – but exhilaration rushed through her as she saw the
stepping-stone-hatted roofs of the chalets finally come into view, Zermatt seemingly rising to meet them and shortening the last section of their hard journey.

And then, as suddenly as it had happened, it was over.

She felt profoundly grateful to him – a new emotion in their fractious relationship – and so happy not to have to stand on one leg any longer; she was actually pleased to see Zhou
and Massi standing waiting for them with relieved faces (in spite of the teasing that she knew would be inevitable now). And she couldn’t wait to have something to eat. To get into a hot bath
and ease her bruised, depleted body. To get warm again.

And yet there was something else too, something that was surprising and shocking, bewildering, illogical . . .

Because in spite of all those things, she realized she also didn’t want it to end.

They decided to call it quits for the day. Allegra had to buy some new skis now, and with the weather having closed in as threatened, no one fancied skiing in blizzard
conditions. They also all knew – though no one said it – how easily the situation could have turned far more treacherous. The teasing had started up almost as soon as they took in the
sight of Sam skiing her down the mountain like a child, but there was also a nervy energy in the air as adrenalin and relief fused, and she sensed they were all going to let off some steam later,
at the party.

Massi was keeping her company in town – Sam and Zhou had gone back to the chalet – and they rock-walked through the snowy streets in their ski boots, wolfing down waffles to recharge
their sugar levels, while Massi regaled her with stories about the cut-throat reality of the cupcake business.

But Allegra – though amused – was distracted. Sam, in spite of skiing with his arms around her for several miles, hadn’t met her eyes on level ground and she felt deflated by
the immediate resumption of hostilities. More than deflated.

‘Oh my God, that is
it
!’ Massi proclaimed suddenly, making her look up. He was staring at a boutique just a few shops down and seemingly at a mannequin in the window that
was wearing a dress that almost looked couture. Thousands of gold sequins had been sewn onto a fragile knitted mesh that fluted from the hips, and it had split cap sleeves that draped at the
shoulder. The neckline plunged in a deep ‘V’, and the entire effect was of dripping liquid gold. It was a goddess dress.

She looked back at him. ‘No.’

Massi looked scandalized. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t do gold. Nor do I particularly want to look like a phoenix.’

‘It is not about you. This is Zhou’s moment. His life is not so easy as you may think.’

Allegra looked at him unsympathetically. Private jets on standby? An army of staff? His every whim catered for? ‘Massi, plenty of people have difficult relationships with their parents. It
doesn’t mean I have to dress up as a dead bird.’

Massi’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. But instead of saying another word, he simply grabbed her by the wrist and marched her across the road.

She laughed, protesting all the way, only noticing the gift shop next to it as they passed the beautifully decorated window display.

‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, stopping laughing, stopping walking, her hands framing the glass to better allow her to see in. Plush fronds of fir had been arranged in swirls to
create an opening like a camera’s aperture, and in the middle, where Isobel’s nativity scene had been, was a wooden Advent calendar – significantly larger in scale, but otherwise
almost exactly the same as hers, right down to some of the gifts visible in the opened drawers: that wooden Angel Gabriel? ‘He’s got cheeks like Barry,’ Isobel had said, and she
was right. She’d recognize him anywhere. It was the same figure she’d seen in Isobel’s nativity set.

Behind the glass, in the shop itself, which was painted a glossy pillar-box red, were hand-carved wooden Matterhorns, miniature rocking horses and teething toys lining the shelves. Round rattan
baskets of wooden painted candy canes and angels sat by the till, and the entire wall behind the counter was given over to tens of cuckoo clocks, their pendulums all moving slightly out of time
with one another.

‘Uh-uh.
Andiamo
,’ Massi said, scooping her away and bundling her into the boutique next door. The bells jangled prettily above their heads, announcing their arrival.

‘I wanted to have a look in that shop!’

‘And you can. After you’ve tried on the dress.’

‘But I don’t want to try on the dress. I already told you that.’

‘A-llegra, your sister made me promise to try to get you off the shelf,’ he said, folding his hands over his heart.

‘Oh, I bet she did.’ Allegra planted her hands on her hips.

‘Come. We will try it on, you will look ravishing, and my duty will be done.’

‘
We?
’ Allegra realized two assistants were waiting to get their attention, their eyes sweeping up and down her waisted Moncler jacket, skinny salopettes and bespoke ski
boots.

‘
Guten Tag
.’

Massi replied in fluent German, while Allegra stood mutely beside him, beginning to sulk – Isobel was bang out of order on this. One of the assistants disappeared into a back room.

‘Massi,’ she scolded, ‘I am
not
wearing that dress.’

‘I am a man. I can see very well what looks good on a woman. You, on the other foot, are too concentrated on what you think looks properly.’

She thought she knew what he meant. ‘It’s not me.’

‘Are you the best judge of you?’ he asked sceptically, his thick eyebrows knitted together.

‘Yes!’

The assistant came back, trailing a hanging bag over her shoulder. She smiled and inclined her head for Allegra to follow her to the changing room.

‘I’m not putting it on,’ she said, folding her arms and shaking her head.

‘Go,’ Massi said, pushing her gently in that direction. ‘Just try. Where is the farm?’ he shrugged.

‘
Harm
, Massi! Where’s the harm!’

‘ Exactly.’

He shooed her into the dressing room. The assistant had unzipped the bag and was draping the dress over a toile-upholstered bedroom chair.

‘
Danke
,’ Allegra nodded, pretty much exhausting her knowledge of German. The door closed behind her and she stared down at it suspiciously – limp and shapeless, its
beauty was just a faint promise from here.

She slumped against the wall and looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Her clothes were still sprinkled with snow, the ends of her hair wet and matted together from where she’d been
lying down in the drifts, her cheeks pink, her eyes uncharacteristically bright.

Her hands flew up defensively – she knew why. It was the adrenalin: she hadn’t yet come down from the drama on the mountain and her nervous system was still alive to the memory of
Sam as close as a shadow, his presence like a warm blanket on a cold body.

It would pass. It was shock, of a kind.

There was a knock at the door. Massi’s voice.

‘Principessa Allegra,’ he murmured in his velvet accent, making her name sound like a musical score, ‘are you ready?’

‘One more minute,’ she said, hurriedly unzipping her jacket and wriggling out of her clothes. The dress – weighted by the sequins – moulded around her, the ribbed,
knitted mesh beneath creating discreet transparent panels that ran down to the hem in rivulets. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. It was everything she feared.

She opened the door, shaking her head. ‘Right, I tried it on. Now let’s go.’

But Massi wasn’t by the dressing-room door. He was across the floor at the till, the assistant handing something to him with a brilliant smile, and when he looked back at her, his eyes
widened with delight. ‘
Fantastico!
’ he cried, throwing his arms up into the air. ‘Sold!’

Two minutes later, they stepped back out onto the street.

‘You’ve just totally wasted your money. I’m not wearing it,’ she said, making a beeline for the gift shop. She pushed against the door, but it didn’t budge. No
jingling bells, no helpful assistants rushing to make a sale. She turned back to him in a huff. ‘Massi! It’s bloody well closed now!’

He shrugged, nonplussed. ‘So we come back tomorrow.’

She wanted to shriek with exasperation. This had to be the shop her grandfather had meant when he had been talking about his cuckoo clock. And she was almost certain the Advent calendar had come
from here too, but generations earlier.

She took a step back, staring at the bijou shop that ticked to the sound of a hundred clocks and glowed red. In the middle of the snowy white silence, it seemed to her like a little beating
heart.

Beads of condensation trickled down the glass door, the lights overhead morphing from blue to violet to magenta to pink like a ripple of captured aurora borealis. Thick
blankets of lotus oil-infused steam buffeted off the walls and back into the tiny room again and Allegra half expected Kate Bush to suddenly emerge at any moment, with the announcement she’d
come home now.

Isobel was lying on the bench opposite, her ‘bad’ leg in the knee brace and propped up on four folded towels.

‘So, we get to keep these, right?’ she asked, prodding at her non-existent ‘mummy tummy’ in the brand-new Heidi Klein bikini. ‘I mean, once the tags are off,
it’s not like . . .’ She wrinkled her nose with distaste.

‘Yep.’

‘Cool. I’d better do this again tomorrow, then. Get another one,’ she winked.

‘You are outrageous.’

‘As if they’ll even notice!’ Isobel laughed. ‘So, tell me about today, then. What did I miss?’

‘Oh, not much. We just went off-piste; I lost a ski and almost got stranded on the mountain.’

‘No!’

‘Yep.’

‘That could have been seriously dodgy. How did you get down?’

‘Sam helped me while I skied on one leg.’

‘That’s it?’

Allegra shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

‘Massi made it sound much more dramatic.’

‘Listen, Massi makes reading the back of a cereal box sound dramatic,’ Allegra wise-cracked.

‘It’s true – he’s a riot,’ Isobel cackled with laughter. She looked anxious suddenly. ‘D’you think we’ll stay in touch once . . . you know? We
leave.’

‘Well, thank God you are actually planning on leaving. I was harbouring serious doubts.’

‘Awww, I miss my boys too much to stay, even though I could totally get used to living like this . . .’ She closed her eyes as she inhaled the luxuriously lotus-scented air, as if
proving the point. ‘So do you think we will?’

‘That’s entirely up to the two of you. Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, because, you know, he’s a . . . millionaire. He’s a power player, a mover and shaker.’

Allegra frowned at her. ‘We’re still talking about Massi, right?’

‘Yes! You can’t deny he’s successful, Legs.’

‘I’m not. But that doesn’t mean he’s some power-tripping egomaniac who can only be surrounded by people just like him. He clearly adores you – the two of you are
like very non-identical fraternal twins.’ Allegra worried about her sister’s persistent insecurities. How could she still think she wasn’t good enough? Everyone who met her loved
her.

‘Yeah,’ Isobel sighed, just as the door opened, letting in a blast of cold air that made Allegra shiver.

‘Oh!’ It took a moment for the steam to clear, but even that short word came with an accent. ‘Sorry. I—’

‘Hey, Sammy!’ Isobel cried, bottom-shuffling along the bench. ‘Come and join us.’

Sammy?
Sammy?
Allegra glared at her sister, wanting to smother her with one of those towels. What, were they best friends too now?

She looked back to the door and found Sam’s gaze already on her – they hadn’t seen each other since he’d released her from his safe embrace at the bottom of the run
earlier and she felt strangely unsure how to behave with him if not aggressively.

‘No, it’s fine. You’re talking. I’ll go for a swim first,’ he said quickly.

‘But—’

‘Really. I’ll catch you in a bit.’ And he closed the door.

Isobel turned to face Allegra, her mouth dropping wide open in slow motion.

‘I know. Rude, right?’ Allegra said, one eyebrow arched and pretending to look for in-growing hairs on her calf.

‘What the
hell
is going on between the two of you?’ she asked slowly.

Allegra froze. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on, Legs! Don’t tell me you’re expecting me to believe there’s nothing going on there. He almost had a heart attack seeing you sitting there in that bikini. And
you went bright red.’

Allegra threw her arms in the air. ‘We’re in a bloody steam room, Iz. Of course I’m bright red! Now I know how lobsters feel!’