Chapter 25
On Saturday morning, Alice was awake and curled in her nook hours before the sun rose. She’d had a bad night, her demons finding her all the way up here in the mountains of Switzerland, scratching away at her protective surface. By four a.m. Alice couldn’t lie down any more, feeling like the weight of her memories was crushing her, so she’d got up and wrapped herself in her blanket, under an amber pool of fairy lights, keeping watch out of her window for any trespassers.
By six a.m. Alice sighed in frustration with herself, shifting her weight, and Bear blinked up at her before going back to sleep.
Vanessa was arriving today. She would get to Mürren mid-morning and be gone by the same time on Sunday; it was a whistle-stop tour back to her home.
Vanessa was going to want to talk about Jill.
Alice didn’t want to talk about Jill. She hadn’t told her new neighbours about Jill yet, more than a passing mention – they didn’t know about her being at the incident as well. She hadn’t hung out with Vanessa before without Jill around. And why the hell did Jill have to be the web that held everything together?
She was spiralling again, the worry and the imagined conversations of the past and future twisting and poking at her brain.
Also,also, today was the ‘big day’ that everybody kept talking about, the day Mürren was going to be overtaken by happy, noisy holidaymakers. Though the night was still very present, yellow lights were starting to be switched on down at the Hotel Eiger and the Alpin Palace opposite it. The low moon was showing off the streaks of snow on the mountains. Occasional sounds of boots crunching through unbroken snow were lifting towards her nook.
Stop. Alice instructed her mind to stop wallowing, and stepped down from the window seat. She walked down the stairs, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible as if that would preserve her peace and quiet for just a little longer, but then Bear thundered past her to be first to the bottom. He stopped in his tracks and waited for her, not knowing where they were going.
‘I’m going to make a cup of tea,’ she told him. ‘You want a cup of tea?’
Alice busied herself for the next couple of hours with tidying up the house (though it was fairly tidy anyway) and doing a few chores. She was still lost in herself though when she walked Bear through the deep snow at the back of the village, where it was always shaded by the chalets and mountains so the sun never reached it. Even this weekend it was quiet.
She looked up and saw Marco behind his house, stabbing a long metal stick into the deep snowdrift that had piled up. She watched him for a moment, and then made a decision.
‘Marco?’ she called.
He saw her, waved and propped the stick against his chalet. ‘Hello, good morning, neighbours!’
‘Hey, so, Vanessa’s coming home today, as you know.’ Alice was speaking fast, wringing her hands together like her body was trying to tie knots around her to save her from speaking out loud.
‘Oh yeah, cool.’
‘Yeah. But listen, can I tell you something?’
‘Of course.’ Marco pulled off his gloves and wiped the trickle of sweat off his forehead, ready to give Alice his full attention.
‘I just wanted to tell you, tellsomeone. I wanted to say something about Vanessa and me and my friend Jill. It’s just that Vanessa might mention what happened and I didn’t want it to be awkward if we were all hanging out together.’
‘I am intrigued.’ Marco smiled.
‘Ugh, I’m not making a lot of sense. I’ve only known you guys for like, a week, so you probably don’t even care, but you know the other day at the spa when I told you about how I got the scar on my leg?’
He nodded and edged closer to her, as if wanting to put a hand on her shoulder but stopping because he didn’t know if it was appropriate. ‘Yes.’
‘And you asked if I was all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, the reason I said no is because . . . is because . . . ’ This was so hard to say aloud. This was why she didn’t want to see a counsellor, or go to therapy, or sit in a support group sharing stories of death and shared misery. ‘Because I lost my best friend that night. Jill. Jill died.’
Marco dropped any respectful distance and pulled her into a hug, hidden behind the chalet, in the snow up to their knees, and for the first time since tossing and turning her way through the night she felt a frisson of relief.
‘Sorry, I just thought Vanessa would probably bring her up and I’m probably over-thinking things,’ she said into his jacket.
‘Don’t apologise. This is really shit for you.’
‘Well, yeah. It’s been a tough few months.’
‘I bet. And I know raising a big Bernese Bear isn’t easy, on top of that.’
