Love You Dead

2 Tuesday 10 February

Jodie did what she and Walt had agreed if they lost each other, which was to ski down to the Croisette and wait in front of the entrance to the ski school.

It was much warmer down here than it had been up at the top of the Saulire, and just as the Englishman they’d met in the gondola had predicted, the weather was now improving. The falling snow had turned to flecks of sleet, and the sun was trying to break through. And apart from that man, no one in either of the lifts in which they had travelled to the top had taken any notice of them.

She removed her helmet so that, maybe later, someone would recognize her and be able to back up her story. That guy from Brighton might even prove useful. He’d be able to verify she and Walt had both set off skiing together in the poor visibility. A shame she hadn’t asked him his name.

She glanced at her watch, wondering just how long would be considered a respectable waiting time. An hour, she decided. An hour would be a perfectly reasonable time before she headed into a bar for a nice warm coffee and an Eau de Vie schnapps — maybe a double — to take the edge off her nerves. Somewhere to sit and plan her story carefully.

She pushed back her sleeve and glanced at her watch. 11.05 a.m. The day was still young, and more skiers were venturing out of their hotels and chalets now that the weather was clearing, and heading into the lift stations around her. Suddenly an idiot on a snowboard ran over her skis and grabbed hold of her, trying to prevent them both falling over.

‘Awfully sorry! Pardonnay-moi!’ His apology was as clumsy as his actions.

‘Dickhead,’ she said, freeing herself from his clutches.

‘There’s no need to be rude.’

‘Oh, right, I’m just standing here minding my own business and you crash into me. What do you want me to do — dance?’

She stepped away from him, huffily, and resumed staring up at the slopes, clocking anyone in a black jacket and trousers who might, possibly, be her fiancé. Not that she was expecting to see him. But she continued watching, her story prepared just in case — however unlikely it was — he appeared.

An hour and a half later Jodie stepped out of the bar, pulled on her fur-lined Cornelia James gloves, hoisted her skis onto her shoulder and trudged the short distance up the steep incline towards the Chabichou Hotel. Above her she heard the wokka... wokka... wokka sound of a helicopter and looked up at it. Maybe it was taking a group heli-skiing up to some off-piste powder. Or maybe it belonged to the local emergency services.

Had someone found his body already? A bit sooner than she had planned — damn the weather, she’d hoped for the white-out to last a bit longer. But no matter.

Popping a piece of mint chewing gum into her mouth to mask the smell of alcohol, she placed the skis and poles in the rack by the ski-room entrance and went inside and into the ski shop. There were rows of new skis lining one wall, a rack of helmets on another and several mannequins clad in the latest in skiing chic dotted around.

The young, handsome Frenchman who was the ski-shop manager, and had kitted them out with their rental skis, greeted her with a smile. In a charming French accent Simon Place said, ‘You’re not skiing? We have the best conditions here in the mountains in weeks — beautiful powder — and I think this afternoon the weather will be sunshine!’

‘I’ve lost my fiancé — it was a white-out at the top when we went up. I don’t like skiing on my own. Stupidly left my phone in our room — I’m going to call him to try to find him. That’s one problem with this resort, it’s so big.’

As he helped her off with her boots, he asked, ‘You liked the skis?’

‘Yes, they’re good.’

‘Stockli skis — they are — you know — the Rolls-Royce skis.’

‘Too bad they don’t come with a chauffeur,’ she said and walked out into the corridor, leaving him puzzling over the remark.

She picked her key up from the hotel’s reception desk, telling the receptionist she’d become separated from her fiancé out skiing, and was worried because she’d waited for him at the bottom for an hour and he hadn’t turned up. She added that he was an experienced skier and she was sure he would be fine, and asked the receptionist, when Walt eventually turned up, to tell him she’d be in the spa if she wasn’t in their room. Then she took the lift up to the third floor.

The room had already been cleaned; it looked neat and tidy, and there was a faint, pleasant smell of pine. She removed her phone from the back of the shelf where she had placed her underwear and dialled Walt’s number, wanting to be sure that if the police were subsequently to check her phone, she had done what she had said.

She heard Walt’s phone buzz and then begin warbling as well. She ended the call, removed his phone from under the pile of his clothes in the drawer where she had hidden it, and placed it on the desk beside his laptop. Then she peeled off her wet jacket, hung it over a radiator, dumped her gum into the waste bin and sat down on the freshly plumped duvet, thinking hard.

So far so good. She felt hungry. And the large schnapps had gone to her head a little. She had a witness that she’d travelled up to the top with her fiancé. She had another witness in the ski shop that she had returned without him, having become separated in the white-out, and that she’d gone back to the hotel to get her phone.

And no witness to what had happened at the top of the Saulire.

When they had got engaged, Walt had told her that he had written her into his will. So sweet of him.

There was a nice spa downstairs, with a swimming pool. She’d check her emails, have some lunch in the restaurant and check with the receptionist again. Then, if no update, she’d have a relaxing afternoon in the spa and perhaps get a massage. Around 5.30 p.m., a good hour after the lifts had closed, she’d go back to the reception desk and reiterate her concerns about her fiancé not having returned — and ask if they could check with the police and clinics.

Just like any anxious loved one might do.

She was feeling pretty happy with herself.