‘I just think you deserve to have a moment here, on top of the world, with nature and fresh air and no mad puppy to look out for and feel grateful for being alive.’
Alice was about to protest, but before she could Lola continued, her voice softer.
‘I know it sounds callous, honouring the dead doesn’t mean you should stop living. Be grateful to be here, right now,becauseyour friend can’t be. See the world for her. Have experiences for her. Build a future because she won’t get one and I bet she’d be pissed at you if she thought you were in any way throwing away yours.’
Alice inhaled. She wasn’t expecting this today, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about Lola bringing it up like she knew anything about what she was going through.
They sat in silence for several minutes, Lola’s words sinking in through Alice’s toughened skin, until Lola said: ‘I know none of this is my place to say, but I kinda know what I’m talking about. I lost both my mum and my dad to cancer in the same year, and yeah, they’d lived much longer lives than your poor mate, but they were still full of health and happiness before it happened. The difference was they had a bit of time before they passed to tell me what they wanted me to do, whereas I think you’ve been dealing with this blind.’
Alice nodded. She had refused help, outside her family and friends, and what a pressure to put on them; they weren’t grief counsellors.
‘Everyone’s different, and I was never lucky enough to know your friend, but my parents told me I had to bloody well grab everything I wanted from life, and be present in everything I do. And my mum told me that doing that didn’t mean I was forgetting her, it just meant she would go in peace knowing I was going to live the life she always wanted for me.’ Now it was Lola’s turn to take a deep breath of the frosty air and she briefly closed her eyes, her face to the sun and a small smile on her lips. When she opened her eyes again she said, ‘And my mum was a professor who had the smarts, so don’t go telling me she didn’t know what she was talking about. Now, no more crying until you fall over, okay?’
Alice laughed, wiping off her misted goggles. ‘Deal.’
‘Are you ready for Lesson Two?’
‘Does Lesson Two take place on an emotional rollercoaster, too?’
‘No, lesson two is clipping ourselves into our boards.’
‘Oh okay, actual snowboarding.’
‘Of course. We’re not out here to talk about your dead friend and my dead parents all day.’ Lola smiled and squeezed Alice’s shoulder, and through the lenses, Alice held her gaze for a moment in a thank you. Another optical fibre lit up and connected.
Lola spent a while demonstrating how Alice should pull the hard plastic straps as tight as they could go, and then how to get out of them again.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
‘Are you cold?’ Alice stalled, looking at Lola who was considerably less bundled than she was, wearing just salopettes and a long-sleeved base layer, which was pushed up to her elbows.
‘Are you procrastinating?’ Lola stood on her own board and curved through the snow with a gentle whoosh sound, similar to a pencil on paper, to stand in front of Alice, and she held out her hands.
Alice’s soundtrack consisted of heavy thuds of landing in the snow, and now was no different. Even standing took three goes. Finally she reached up and clasped her gloved hands into Lola’s and allowed herself to be pulled to standing. She wobbled. ‘Woah, it feels weird to be nailed to a board.’ She instinctively leant her bum back, feeling like if she let her weight come forward they would both tumble back down to the ski school office.
‘It sure does. But I’m going to be holding on to you all the way down, okay?’
‘All the way down? You’re sure?’
‘Yes, Alice, I promise.’ Lola held her gaze. ‘Just keep holding my hands and move with me.’
‘You won’t let go?’
‘You’re safe.’
‘Okay, let’s move.’
‘We are moving.’ Lola smiled and Alice broke eye contact with a gasp, to notice for the first time the vista behind Lola’s head drifting to the right.
Alice felt a bubble of happiness pop out in the form of a laugh. ‘How are we doing this, I’m not moving?’
‘I’m moving us just by leaning my weight a little.’ They came to a stop. They’d drifted all the way across the wide baby slope in a lazy diagonal. ‘Now you’re going to take us back to the other side again.’
‘Back up to where we started?’
‘Back to that side, but we’ll keep travellingdownthe hill. Snowboarding uphill is more Lesson Twenty-kinda stuff.’
‘I think you’re joking about that,’ said Alice. ‘So how do I move us?’
