Snippet:
Flailing wildly in midair, the sky blistering white with snow rotating violently into vivid blue as you tumble, until you bite the ice with a blood-bubbling crash that ricochets right into your skull so hard you see colours; and still you’re sliding downwards in a cloud of cold dust, which after a surprisingly long time gently lays you down in a snowdrift where you lie uncomprehending with both legs bent at strange, non-Euclidean angles.
Sunday
This is what plays over/over/over in my head, after the mountain rescue people showed up with a bright yellow stretcher speaking quick-fire French where I can only caught occasional words like “accident” and “hopital”, after the eye-wateringly expensive taxi ride - “the ambulance wouldn’t be any faster”, said Janine, apologetically, “and I checked, the insurance will cover it” - after the long wait in the clinic, when they’ve bandaged me up and stuck me full of delicious Continental painkillers, and after I got back to the chalet and the rest of the group burst into spontaneous applause. “On a blue run, too!” gushed Kevin. “I think that has to be some sort of record.”
By that point I was too far gone to feel any pain or indeed much of anything at all, so I just smiled and nodded as the rest of my temporary housemates poked and prodded the splint and expressed admiration for my audacity for injuring myself on day one, rather than waiting until later in the week to be incapacitated. In short, it was all a bit of a whirlwind, and by the time I pleaded an early night and hauled my now deadweight leg into bed, I could breathe deeply for the first time since I’d dived off the top of the piste that morning. Maybe it was the mountain air or maybe it was the drugs, but I felt an unsettling sense of vertigo. It was like I was still sliding down that snowdrift, uncontrollably, scrabbling for purchase and unable to stop.
Monday
The view from the chalet living room window looks like this:
Above, blue skies. I say this for context, because it’s the extraordinarily clear weather we’ve been having that’s compacted the snow down to ice and left the pistes hard as a Brummie mobster; and because I need to eke this description out as long as I can, in as much detail as I can, because there really isn’t much to describe and if I run out of things to look at I will slowly go mad.
Below, the distant mountaintops glisten. My sense of scale is totally out of whack. I should be appreciating the raw magnificence of Nature, but all I see is a desktop background circa 2005. It has rocks in it. Here and there chairlifts and gondolas criss-cross the valleys carrying enthusiastic (and affluent) wintersports enthusiasts up for them to come right back down again, hopefully with a bit more skill than me. There’s a distant tower - radio mast? Secret lair? - on a far peak, from which the view must be truly stupendous, though I suspect if I was teleported up there I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Mountains are mountains are mountains, if you catch my (snow)drift. (Yassim described puns as a coping mechanism, which I’d usually argue with but under the circumstances I’m not really in a position to.)
Fortunately, I don’t have the trauma of looking at many skiers swarming over the pistes like so many ants over a sandcastle, because the view is blocked by the rooftops of the town. We are staying in three adjacent self-catered chalets which are only very expensive, as opposed to the hotel to the bottom right of the frame which is extremely expensive, and the luxury apartments to the left which are exquisitely expensive and come with wood-burning fire pits in each room. I can only expect that they’ve been designed such that when you look out of the window you see wild forests, gleaming peaks, and no poor people. From our window you can also see a multi-storey car park and a Carrefour.
This completes our tour for today. Please like, comment and subscribe, while your host takes a break to finish this John Grisham paperback and wait for the world to end.
Tuesday
I don’t know the others on the trip particularly well. It was Katie who persuaded me to come, and who then (in typical Katie fashion) caught COVID the week before, leaving me with a bunch of her friends and a niggling suspicion that I’d been had. After all, we were all in the same year at the same halls, and had had all the same opportunities to meet each other and socialise. Which meant that my failure to know anybody else was entirely my own fault.
But I wasn’t about to cancel on such a breathtakingly large fraction of my student loan, so I forced a smile onto my face and decided I’d take the opportunity to meet new people. Well! That’s worked out nicely, hasn’t it. (Imagine me laughing to myself, in an empty apartment.)
I’m being unfair - they’ve all been super nice. Janine stuck around for hours getting me to the clinic and back, and Tom has been treating me like an empress, fetching me cups of tea and unusual French biscuits and anything I can think of to ask for, so I don’t need to move from the sofa. But come 9:30am they’re all off to the slopes and I’m on my own. Like… fair enough! I would much rather they actually had a holiday than stuck around to entertain me. Especially when it’s with a sort of “please-handle-gently-otherwise-she-might-shatter” manner like Tom’s. (Does he fancy me? That might explain it. Poor lad. Or maybe I’m just a narcissist.)
Like a baguette, the courtroom novel I brought was crummy to start with and is getting more and more stale by the minute. Why oh why didn’t I bring something good to read? Or a laptop? Can I buy a Switch and get it delivered here? Would the insurance cover it? I can claim it’s necessary for my mental health, because otherwise I’ll go insane. At least I don’t have any course notes or any way to do actual work.
The hotel’s windows are measly little things compared to the floor-to-ceiling glass walls on the posh apartments, so I keep finding myself staring in and making up backstories for all the people I can see in there. On the third floor, for instance, there’s a fabulously dressed woman with this amazing grey coat which looks like something out of a Bond film, who lounges on the uncomfortable-looking designer sofa and stares at her phone for hours on end. I try to imagine what she’s seeing. Surely someone so glamorous can’t be doom-scrolling through Reddit. Maintaining a finely-tuned social presence in the salons of Moscow, or coordinating her lobbyist agents to counteract a series of anti-competition bills in the lower house of Ecuador, which I have just looked up on my phone and is called the Asamblea Nacional. I spend a malleable amount of time doing a Wikipedia deep-dive into the legislative systems of Latin America and by the time I resurface Grey Coat Lady is gone.
Wednesday
On the bottom floor of the apartments is a spa, with a jacuzzi right by the big windows looking over the valley, so you can sit there in your swimming costume and laugh at the people going by who are less extremely rich than you. It’s most busy at the end of the skiing day, when it fills right up with spoiled teenagers showing off their bruises to each other, but at lunchtime it’s deserted. Which is why the three people who show up as I’m eating my meagre bread-with-Comte-but-not-quite-a-sandwich pique my interest, the same way as an unusual bird might. Why aren’t they out skiing?
There are two men and one woman, all maybe mid-late twenties. One of the men does slow laps in the pool while the others sit in the jacuzzi. They accentuate their conversation with wild hand-gestures, which are so physical-theatre-esque I feel I ought to be able to infer what they’re saying just by reading the gestures. The woman is wearing the sort of swimwear you see in designer ads that most people would look totally ridiculous wearing: asymmetrical, skimpy, probably very expensive. I realise she is Grey Coat Lady from yesterday. Come to think of it, why wasn’t she skiing yesterday either? God, imagine being so rich you just end up spending time at ski resorts without even any intention to participate. Having that much money must mess you up completely.
My leg hurts, but through the painkillers it’s just a dull ache. Probably more from disuse than from the injury itself. The French doctor I saw on Sunday said I just had to ride it out and get a proper prescription from my GP when I’m back home. Spoilers: that prescription will be “stay at home and don’t do anything stupid.” Can’t wait.
Swimming Pool Guy finishes his laps and comes over to stand by the jacuzzi with his hands on his hips. It’s an antagonistic pose, a “come on and try me” pose. Jacuzzi Guy and Grey Coat Lady gesticulate a bit more at him until he turns around and leaves. If I could see it any better I’d call it “storming off”. Their backstory is pivoting away from James Bond and more towards Made in Chelsea, albeit a more ambiguously European one. I’ve decided they’re Italian. Something about the sign language. Haven’t figured out why they’re in France though. I’ve got time.
Thursday
Forty-eight hours to go; forty-eight hours of window, before twenty-one-and-a-half hours of coach (minus a few toilet breaks in the great motorway service stations of France, which everyone else will use as an excuse to stretch their legs, though it’s not clear I’ll be afforded the same honour) before we arrive back home. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the trip, but increasingly it looks like a better deal than what I’m currently seeing. In short, I can’t wait to leave this room. Except for a limp downstairs to the bar yesterday evening, when I couldn’t even have a pint because it would interfere with the medication they’ve got me on, I haven’t been outdoors in four days.
Grey Coat Lady is back in her coat, standing against the window with her hands clasped behind her back. I’ve called her Andrea, she looks like an Andrea. She broods, like a mob boss surveying her kingdom. I haven’t seen anyone else in there all day, though the angle isn’t good - someone else could be behind her at the counter and I wouldn’t be able to see.
She turns, and clearly someone is talking to her from across the room. She’s got her arms folded and shrugs once or twice, with a sort of “I don’t know what you expect me to do about that” look. Then she turns to face the window again. I think at first the other person has left, but then Swimming Pool Guy appears by her side in a black hoodie and joggers, arms right around her shoulders, not in a nice way, pure creepy. He’s trying to get something out of her but she’s not having any of it. She shakes his hands from her shoulders - yeah! You show him! - and squarely faces away from him. It’s clear the conversation is over but he needles for a really long time. I wonder where Jacuzzi Guy is and whether he knows this interaction is happening.
Eventually Swimming Pool Guy tries to kiss her, and that’s when she properly goes off on one, screaming and stamping, arms scrabbling on his hoodie to get him to go away. God, this is high drama! He’s really not getting the message, holding on to the end of her coat sleeves to pin her down, presumably saying a lot of things like “Whoa, I didn’t mean it” and “No need to get hysterical” (which by the way is a sexist microaggression from the original etymology of hystera, meaning womb - another factoid from the Wikipedia factories) and “Why are you being such a bitch”. But in Italian.
She literally spits in his face. What a power move. He wipes it on his hoodie and looks rather confused, then he leaves. She stays watching the door for a long while, before turning around to face the window. She looks almost like a different woman, hair all dishevelled and a number of creases in the coat I can see from all the way over here.
I want to reach out and comfort her, tell her he’s an arsehole and there are plenty more fish in the sea, but we are worlds away.
Friday
This morning I surprised myself by waking early to say goodbye to the skiers on their final day, and once they were gone I hurried (as much as I can hurry at the moment) to the window to look for Grey Coat Lady. But no dice. 10am passed without anyone setting foot in the apartment, then 11am, then 12. Maybe I was wrong when I thought they only came here to spend money and not to ski.
But soft - what light at yonder window breaks! It’s Grey Coat Lady, not in the apartment but in the spa, wearing salopettes and a ski jacket. She must be roasting. Was there no “no shoes indoors” sign? She turns and who should it be but Jacuzzi Guy with her at the window. Oh! They kiss. Well then. This changes things.
Then they both turn around, because Swimming Pool Guy is approaching in his speedos, and .he looks pissed. He’s yelling at them and gesticulating; if there were pot plants or glassware around, he’d be smashing it. Jacuzzi Guy steps forward to try and calm him down, and it’s then that Swimming Pool Guy properly lashes out at him and straight up knocks Jacuzzi Guy to the ground with a punch. Shit! Jacuzzi’s shiny snow shoes are completely without purchase on the wet tiles, and Swimming Pool takes him by surprise; his head hits the floor and jerks violently, then is still.
Shit, shit. I need to call an ambulance. Or the police. Or both.
I grab my phone and realise I don’t know the French emergency number. Crap. I google it with the crappy resort wifi and one eye on the window. Oh my god, Jacuzzi is lying on the floor not moving, with blood pouring from his head. Swimming Pool guy has advanced on Andrea and she’s wrestling with him. He might not have any clothes on, but he’s stronger than she is. I’ve seen movies - I know where this goes from here.
I dial 112 and an operator answers almost immediately in a solid stream of French. I start stammering in broken schoolgirl French interspersed with English. We’re in the resort, I say, and there is a man who has done something bad in the hotel spa. His friend is bad in the head. No, that’s not right, that means a headache. He’s killed him. Not quite either. Please come quickly. She is in a battle with him and it will be quickly over.
Swimming Pool has thrown Andrea to the floor by the jacuzzi and she’s scrabbling away from him, away from Jacuzzi’s body lying on the ground. Swimming Pool stands over her casually, like a character from a Hitchcock film, advancing slowly.
He leans down to grab her and suddenly she lashes out and grabs him by the hair. He doesn’t have much but he has enough for her to gain purchase with one hand and thrust his entire head into the jacuzzi.
Please, please come quickly.
Swimming Pool Guy’s feet slip and now he’s flat on his stomach with his head under the bubbling, foaming water. She wrestles to stay atop his spasming body and despite the difference in size she seems to be winning. His hands rake at her wrists and I think I can see scratch marks. The pool of blood beneath Jacuzzi’s head is slowing to a stop but still covers the tiles in slick blue-black blood.
Under her hands, Swimming Pool Guy starts to scrabble a little more weakly, then his hands go limp.
Then Andrea drops him and sticks her hands in the air. I can’t tell at first what’s going on, but then a member of the local gendarmerie steps forward with a baton in one hand trained on her. There are at least two others who see to the men. My heart is pounding like an express train. Grey Coat Lady is shouting at the police at the top of her lungs, but her hands are cuffed so I imagine the sound is feeble.
As they lead her out she looks out the window and for an instant catches my eye. We stare at each other. Then they take her away.