Christmas in the Snow (21 page)

‘It’s to say thank you,’ Allegra said quickly, as she poured the wine and handed Isobel her glass.

‘Man!’ Fabien laughed, raising his with a flourish. ‘To new friends, uh?’

Isobel met Allegra’s eyes finally as their glasses were all raised in a convivial toast and Allegra looked back sternly. She had seen that look on her sister’s face before, many
years ago.

‘So how did you find the snow today?’ Brice asked Isobel.

‘White and fluffy,’ she said, and they all laughed.

‘Your first time in Zermatt?’ Fabien asked her, leaning in towards the table and forcing Isobel to twist in his direction instead.

‘That’s right. Our first day, in fact. We only got here this afternoon.’

Allegra watched with practised patience. Men had always fought over her sister. She idly wondered at what point Isobel was going to announce she was married with a kid, but she saw her sister
had kept her silk liner gloves on – obscuring her rings – and knew it wouldn’t be for a while yet. Isobel thrived on male attention.

‘Where are you from?’ Max was watching her.

‘Oh. Uh . . . London.’

He nodded as if he’d already guessed the answer.

‘You?’ she asked back, taking a sip of her wine.

‘Lyon.’

‘I’ve never been there.’

‘That’s really saying something. Legs has been everywhere,’ Isobel said, cutting in as the waitress brought over a basket of fresh bread. ‘She goes to Switzerland, like,
twice a week and does things like have breakfast in Rome, lunch in Paris—’

‘My sister’s exaggerating,’ Allegra said quickly.

‘You are jet set?’ Max asked, his eyes taking in her sleek, expensive clothes and the discreet yet flawless diamond studs at her ears.

‘Not in the least. I travel for work. It’s very boring.’

‘What are you, then?’

Isobel giggled at his error as she tore apart a small roll. ‘She’s a hedgie.’

The Frenchmen looked confused. ‘Hedgie?’

‘Like a banker. Only richer.’

‘Iz!’ Allegra snapped. She looked back at Max and forced a smile. ‘I work in financial services.’

Max nodded as he lifted his beer, his eyes steady and dark.

‘What about you?’ she asked, deciding to pass on the bread.

‘I am . . . how you say . . . ?’ He shut his eyes, trying to find the word, and Allegra noticed how his lashes splayed on his cheeks, like a young child’s. He really
couldn’t be more than twenty-four, twenty-five, she decided. He opened them again and caught her staring. ‘I shape the gardens.’

‘Oh, you’re a landscaper?’ she clarified. ‘So you spend your days trying to tame all this?’

‘This can never be tamed,’ he said, sitting back, one arm stretched along the veranda railing behind them and staring into the view. ‘I know that every time I ride the
mountains.’

She noticed the view behind them suddenly – her focus had been more on table-bagging and carb-loading when they’d arrived – and she twisted in her seat too.

‘Oh wow,’ she murmured, looking down into the steep-sided wooded valley. Zermatt was hidden from view, the clouds below them here sifting snow over the streets down there, but the
trees were heavily laden with powder, their fronds sagging beneath the weight. She looked up and saw the Matterhorn closer than ever, its jagged peak so familiar to her already. It almost felt like
she could reach across and touch it. How could she not have noticed it before now?

‘Beautiful,
non
?’

She nodded. Had Isobel noticed it? She went to point it out to her.

‘Like you.’

Allegra looked quickly back at Max, not sure she’d heard correctly. His voice had been low, like he wanted no one else to hear, like he barely wanted her to hear.

‘What? It is just a fact,’ he laughed quietly, seeing her expression. ‘You must know it, surely?’

She closed her mouth again, not sure what to say, but sure her cheeks were burning. She grabbed a piece of bread after all and made a play of breaking it apart.

Max watched her.

The waitress arrived with their food, setting down the plates before gathering up the empties. ‘Any more?’

The boys looked at the sisters.

‘What do you say? We owe you a drink now,’ Brice smiled at Isobel.

‘Really, it’s fi—’Allegra began to demur.

‘Fab!’ Isobel cried, making Fabien jump to attention.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘No, I meant . . .’

Jacques, Max and Isobel all laughed.

Brice grinned up at the waitress. ‘More beers, please.’

It was dark before they slid back into town – using the torches on their phones to light the way – and Zermatt looked even prettier in its night garb. The peaks of
the Savoyard roofs were picked out with fairy lights, creating a miniature Alpine rendition of the Manhattan skyline, and the snow glowed golden beneath the street lamps. Another few inches had
fallen just in the time they’d been on the mountain and it was getting heavier, in-filling the footprints that tracked back and forth between chalets and bars.

The boys had rented lockers down by the Sunnegga funicular and they locked the girls’ skis in with theirs for safe keeping for the night. Allegra had picked up strains of excited plans to
ski together tomorrow, but the details eluded her. She and Max had been locked in conversation for over two hours, head to head, glass to glass, and she had long since stopped keeping track of the
number of beers they’d had.

She leaned against the wall, watching as they all changed out of their ski boots. ‘We should go, Iz,’ she sighed, beginning to feel her bed beckoning. They’d been up at five
thirty that morning.

‘What? No!’ Fabien, Jacques and Brice cried. ‘You have to come dancing with us. You can’t come to Zermatt and not go to the Broken Bar.’

Allegra wanted to reply that actually they could. They weren’t twenty-four any more. One of them was a happily married mother-of-one, and the other was more used to socializing with bald
men in bespoke suits than moshing in a sweat pit with a bunch of handsome, cocky French snowboarders. But her voice didn’t work and it felt really nice to rest her head against the wall.

Maxime came up to her, resting his head against the wall too, his face just a centimetre from hers. ‘You must dance with me, Allegra.’

She opened her eyes and looked back at him. Their posture felt surprisingly intimate given that they were standing up, clothed and not even touching. ‘And how am I supposed to dance in ski
boots, Max?’ she asked, one eyebrow arched in amusement and wondering what it would be like to kiss him.

‘You are not. Wait and see,’ he smiled.

Allegra frowned, puzzled. ‘But I can’t even walk in my boots now. I’m too tired,’ she pouted.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said, with simple confidence.

The others came over to them, Isobel having linked arms with Brice.

‘You are ready?’ Fabien asked.

‘Have you told them you’re married yet?’ Allegra asked her sister. She had taken her gloves off now, at least, but was everyone too drunk to have noticed, or did they just not
care?

Isobel rolled her eyes furiously. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Legs! It’s not a secret! I’m not doing anything wrong. We’re just having fun. Fun! Remember that?’

Allegra stuck her tongue out at her in reply, making the boys laugh at least.

‘Come on, then. We go to the Broken Bar,’ Fabien said, heading towards the bridge over the river and the main street.

‘You are ready?’ Max asked her.

Allegra hesitated as she watched Isobel and Brice walk off. It wasn’t like she could leave her sister alone with them all, lovely as they were. She shrugged – and then shrieked, for
in the following moment, Maxime scooped her off her feet and began carrying her after the others.

‘Max!’ she cried, half protesting, half laughing as he continued apace.

‘You dance with me,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Only then will I let you go.’

He carried her the whole way – switching to a piggyback halfway there – and they pushed through the doors of the Hotel Post with her head on his shoulder, her ski boots creating
painful bruises on his outer thighs that he didn’t complain about once.

‘You see?’ he exclaimed, setting her down gently. ‘No problem.’

‘Where are the others?’ she asked, looking around them. They were in a dimly lit lobby, with a pub through a set of doors to their right and a staircase leading down ahead of them.
The walls had been painted a matt slate grey, with split logs set into recesses as design features and a fire leaping silently behind a glass screen. But it was the only thing that was silent. The
muffled beat of music could be heard – and felt – beneath their feet.

‘Come,’ Max said, taking her by the hand and leading her down the stairs. With every step down, the volume levels increased, the temperatures rose, and she saw coloured lights
flickering on the walls before they turned a corner.

‘Welcome to the Broken Bar,’ Max shouted, holding out his arms and introducing a . . . heaving, sweating mosh pit. It was set down in the catacombs of the building, with low arched
ceilings and thick support pillars that seemed to be propping up many of the guests as well. Everywhere she looked, twenty-something ski bunnies were downing shots, dancing with their arms in the
air, having a great time. At the far end was a small stage with a couple dancing on it.

Allegra burst out laughing. ‘I can’t go in there!’ she shouted, trying to be heard over the music.

‘Why not?’ Maxime leaned in closer to her, trying to hear.

‘I’m way too old!’ she shouted again, just as Jacques waved at them from a small bar area and started coming over with some drinks.

‘Allegra, how old are you?’

‘Too old for you, Maxime!’ She gasped and popped her hand over her mouth with surprised eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

‘I have twenty-three years.’

‘Oh God!’ she half shrieked, half laughed, even more mortified. It was even worse than she’d thought!

‘Age is not a number. It is a feeling,’ Max said, squeezing her arm.

‘Only a Frenchman could get away with saying that,’ she sighed, just as Jacques reached them and gave them each a bright orange drink.

‘We are over here,’ he said, pointing with his finger, and Allegra saw her sister, Brice and Fabien huddled round a table, looking at something on Isobel’s phone. Allegra
breathed an inward sigh of relief. Isobel was as drunk as she was now and was no doubt showing them photos of Ferdy, from birth. If Brice had had any lingering amorous intentions towards her
sister, that would kill them off once and for all.

She took a sip of the drink. ‘What is this?’ she asked, taking a bigger sip. It felt refreshing after all the beers, and she was conscious of getting beer breath.

‘Aperol, Prosecco and soda. You have had it before?’ Jacques asked.

‘No,’ she shrugged, taking another sip. ‘But I like it.’

They wandered over to the others. Maxime was openly keeping his hand on the small of her back now and she didn’t feel impelled to remove it. It turned out Isobel wasn’t showing
pictures of Ferdy after all; she was showing the boys her stats from the MyTracks apps they had used to record the distance, speed and altitude of their runs earlier, but Allegra couldn’t be
bothered to care about that either. She felt very unbothered for once and she liked it.

They all drank quickly, each buying a round, so that within half an hour, Allegra had forgotten she was still in her ski boots and started trying to dance. It was actually rather useful having
kept them on, and both she and Isobel got the giggles, swaying backwards, forwards and to the side at alarming angles, without their feet ever lifting off the ground.

‘Oh my God, these are the perfect drunk-dancing shoes,’ Isobel cried, leaning so far forward that Brice almost dropped his glass trying to catch her, even though her feet remained as
planted to the floor as if they’d been set in concrete.

But Allegra wanted to move properly. The alcohol had hit her bloodstream, sloughing off her post-beer lull, and she wanted to dance harder. The music sounded so good; moving felt so good; being
fall-down drunk felt so good.

All the anger and frustration that she had been so effective at hiding, even from her sister –
especially
from her sister, her best friend in the world – came out now as she
shook her head like a teenage thrash-metal fan, her arms punching the air with force, shouting the lyrics to the songs at the top of her voice. Why had she never realized how good it felt to let
go, to properly lose control? After years of hiding her every emotion behind an impassive, unflappable mask of professionalism, it felt amazing to not give a damn. No one here knew who she was; no
one here cared.

She reached down to release the bindings on her boots. She wanted at least to loosen them so that she could get some degree of movement in the ankles, but Maxime bent down and unclipped them for
her – and then some. She felt him pull the tongue of the boot forward and press gently behind her knee to get her to bend it.

‘I can’t dance in my socks,’ she protested as he lifted up her leg. ‘Someone will break my toe if they stand on my foot!’

‘Just trust me,’ he grinned up to her.

Allegra, being unusually unbothered, did. He took off her boots and then, as he had only an hour earlier, scooped her off her feet again – albeit less steadily: he’d drunk a lot
too.

‘Max!’ she laughed as he pushed through the crowd with her. ‘Put me down. Everyone’s looking!’

But he simply smiled in reply, breaking into a couple of surprise spins that made people cheer, before depositing her on her bottom on a huge barrel. She realized it was the small stage
she’d seen on the way in and she put her hands down on it for a moment, waiting for her spinning head to catch up with her still body.

‘Now get up there and dance,’ he said.

‘What? No way!’ she laughed, one hand on each cheek with sudden embarrassment.

He leaned forward, placing his hands over hers. ‘It is the only way to be free of me,’ he said, his eyes dancing. ‘Don’t you remember?’