Chapter 30
Back in her chalet, Alice sat on the floor with Bear, who looked up from where he was lying and gave her one of his paws.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Now listen. I love your company so much. But I think we both need to learn how to be on our own a little bit more.’
He peered at her.
‘I don’t mean for long. I’m not going to leave you for long, but I think it’ll do us both good if we get used to spending a bit of time just in our own company.’ Alice didn’t really want this – she would spend all her time with Bear if she could, he was her comfort blanket. But she didn’t want him to grow up with separation anxiety, scared of being left alone in the house and wondering if his family was ever coming home. And she’d committed to being apart from him for a period in just over three weeks. This was for his own good.
There was a café that she passed whenever she walked through Mürren that kept catching her eye – Café LIV, which sat snuggled in the bottom corner of a chocolate-brown chalet, under green and white awning. Outside sat a couple of wrought-iron chairs, with faux-fur rugs draped over them and snow piling on their arms. When Alice looked through the window the inside always seemed warm and inviting, like looking into the house of a happy family at Christmas time.
Today Alice would go in.
She bid goodbye to Bear, who already had two feet on the bottom stair waiting for her to leave so he could go upstairs and sleep on her bed and, dressed in her warmest clothing and her big woollen hat, she stepped out once again into the falling snow.
Over the familiar white pathways through Mürren she trudged, head down and blinking eyelashes against the big, blobby flakes that dampened patches of her hair that poked out from under her hat and hood. The clouds hung low, but there was still a freshness in the air that moistened her skin and seeped into her lungs as she breathed. Stomp, stomp, stomp up the slope past the Alpine Sports Centre and the ice rink, which was empty of holidaymakers today. Stomp, slide, stomp through the shortcut between two chalets, the snow piling against their sides.
And there was the café, looking more inviting than ever in this weather.
Alice opened the door and stepped into the warmth. Small pine tables dotted the floor and a long bench covered in grey and sage green cushions lined the two windowed walls. The counter brimmed with homemade cakes and tray bakes, with a sprinkle of fairy lights hanging from the ceiling above. Chalk boards advertising daily specials and shelves loaded with baskets displaying local crafts for sale decorated the internal walls.
The soft, bluesy voice of Sarah Vaughan played in the background. The foreground was a gentle buzz of chatter rising from the tables, the cash register chinging and the noise of steam puffing from the coffee machine behind the counter.
Alice hung her wet ski jacket on a peg by the door and picked her way to an empty table in the corner by the window to put down her gloves and hat. The sweet smell of cakes led her back to the counter where a smiling gentleman asked her in English what he could get her.
‘Um . . . ’ she glanced back around the café, a sanctuary from the snow but with a wonderful view, and felt instantly at ease. She’d like to stay a while. ‘Please may I start with your nachos special? Then one of these.’ Alice pointed at a flat-topped cupcake with a pool of baby-pink icing sinking into the bun.
‘Nachos and a vanilla plumcake, of course. Would you like a beer with that? It’s just an extra two francs with the nachos.’
‘Sure,’ Alice replied. She had nowhere to be this afternoon.
The man waved away her credit card. ‘You can pay at the end. I’ll bring your beer over to you shortly.’
Alice took her seat and gazed out of the window, where a snowcat was edging back and forth, its big rubber tracks creating a pathway between mounds of snow, and her mind wandered.
Alice needed something to do. She’d been thinking it for a week or so but the thought had crystallised in her mind this morning. She needed to feel normal again, to do something that meant she was pushing forward. Specifically there was a longing in her for passing, fleeting interactions with the outside world that could help rebuild her, brick by brick, while she practised being alive even though Jill was not.
Her beer arrived, cold and bitter, the perfect accompaniment to the sweetcorn and tomato salsa topping on her nachos, which came shortly after. She ate slowly, allowing her surroundings to seep into her, and outside the window the sun broke through a crack in the clouds. It danced on the snowflakes, which had relaxed into gentle silver glitter falling from the sky.
With the same hesitant, careful slow motion as the snow outside, Alice reached into her cross-body bag and pulled out the thin, six-by-four sketchbook and pencil that she carried everywhere but hadn’t taken out in months. In her eyeline, leaning her head back against a window, sat a customer with a coffee in her hand and her eyes closed in bliss. She had ski goggles pushed onto her forehead and hair that stuck out in carefree tendrils around them. She looked as contented as a cat, and Alice created a postcard-sized sketch of her using a few simple lines.
It felt good to flex her drawing fingers again. Pulling out the page and leaving it to one side, she next doodled the window and the scene outside. And then the counter covered in cakes. And then the snowcat, only she made the driver a cat, and smiled.
The man from behind the counter appeared and reached for her nachos bowl. ‘All done? Do you want a coffee to go with your cake?’
‘Oh yes please, a coffee with cream, please,’ Alice replied.
He tilted his head and looked at her drawings. ‘These are nice – you just did these?’
‘I did. They’re very rough, though. I’m an artist back home but it’s . . . been a while.’
Off he went to make her coffee, and the woman from her sketch stood up and rolled her shoulders, ready to head back out into the cold.
‘Excuse me,’ Alice said, catching her attention.
The woman turned and pointed at herself with a questioning look.
‘I drew a picture of you,’ said Alice. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ She held out the sketch, giving it to the woman.
