Zoe sat at the table in the restaurant; the table was laid, with crisp linen and silver cutlery all in place. Her hands were folded under her chin. She’d found a bottle of champagne.
‘Don’t ask the price. We’ll hide the empty bottle. No one will ever know.’
With the operatic vocals soaring above their candle-lit table and the darkness thickening outside, they ate their second meal in the deserted restaurant. The music had a phantom beauty, swooping between the empty rows of tables. Without a word Zoe got up and changed it, pointedly, for some upbeat Pixies tunes.
‘Why has no one come for us?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
The champagne went to Zoe’s head. They guzzled it, and Zoe fetched a second bottle.
‘Enjoy this,’ she said, pouring freely, ‘because the cost of those two bottles amounts to roughly the same as the cost of this holiday.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not. They’re on what’s called the “reserve list”.’
‘What’s a “reserve list”?’
‘Well, there’s the wine list and then there’s the reserve list. It’s for special occasions. If you can’t find anything expensive enough on the wine list you ask for the reserve list. It’s for special people with a discerning palate and a big fat arse.’
‘You do realise we’re going to get landed for this?’
‘No we’re not. We’ll deny everything. And I’ll tell you something else. For these two nights I’ve felt like you and I were the last two people on earth. I have you totally to myself, with not even a waitress to distract you. And some perverse part of me has really enjoyed it. Tomorrow it’s going to be over and there will be things I’ll wish I’d said to you when I had you to myself.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like how long ago was the avalanche?’
‘Uh? Only yesterday morning. Incredibly.’
‘Exactly. Only yesterday morning. And it feels like an incredibly long time ago.’
‘You’re right. It does.’
‘A long time ago since we almost lost each other. We almost died, Jake. And every second since then seems to have expanded, and it’s because there’s just you…’ She held her glass up, a little unsteadily, to clink it with his. ‘And me.’ She looked around the empty restaurant. ‘Everyone else sucks our time from us. I could almost stay here a few more days, just out of bloody-mindedness.’
‘Do you think we’re on a reserve list?’
‘What?’
‘God’s reserve list. Nature’s reserve list. Like everyone else is on the ordinary menu and we’ve been kept back here cos we’re on the reserve list.’
‘That’s a weird idea.’
He half-smiled at her. ‘All the other people will be back soon.’
‘I know. And we’ll leave first thing in the morning. Come on, let’s go to bed.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Bring the rest of that bottle since it cost so bloody much.’
She was indeed drunk. When the elevator doors opened she pushed him inside and lunged at him. With the lift doors closing she leapt on him and bit his lip, fumbling with his belt and hoiking down his trousers. Falling to her knees she fellated him. His elbow hit the lift buttons and the doors opened.
Jake froze. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, ‘my wife will be finished in a moment.’
Zoe stopped and looked up as if she half-expected to see a shocked guest in the lobby. She took a swig of bubbling champagne from the bottle, swallowed, and put his dick back in her mouth.
The elevator bell chimed and the doors closed again.
‘Wake up.’
Zoe groaned. Her head felt like someone had split it with an ice-axe. Jake was dressed, standing over her, holding a mug of gently steaming coffee under her nose. ‘What time is it?’
‘Time to go.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s snowing again. We don’t want to leave it too late. We’re going to have to hike for maybe four hours before we get to the next village. It’s snowing heavily and with all this snow coming down, all the time we’re here the avalanche risk increases. So please get your sweet, shiny arse out of that bed.’
‘That cheap champagne went to my head,’ she said, dragging herself off to the shower.
He’d brought up a breakfast of toast and rolls, and cheese and salami. He’d packed a rucksack. While she slept he’d been out and found the rucksack, a torch and a magnetic compass in a store.
Before they left she made him sit and tilt back his head while she applied eye-drops. ‘You still look like a zombie. Red then blue then black. Like an archery target.’
‘That’s not an archery target.’
‘Oh shut up. Now you do me.’
They were out on the road by seven-thirty that morning. The snow had thickened. The clouds overhead were like buckled steel and though the flakes were light they were falling in thick profusion. A fine mist came along with it.
They followed the road. Pretty soon they passed the police car with its wheel dangling over the precipice. The snow had made a thick crust on the windscreen and on the bonnet. Jake stopped and looked at the vehicle wistfully. The mist was thickening and Zoe told him not to even think about it.
The road climbed steeply. After another half an hour of ascending the mountain road the snow-mist became impenetrable. It had that same oyster-grey quality,with traces of iridescence where the light played. They walked on steadily, but couldn’t see where they were going.
Jake stepped off the road and turned his ankle.
‘I don’t like it,’ Zoe said. ‘We’re walking blind.’
‘It’s okay. I’m okay. We just follow the tarmac.’
‘I can’t even see the tarmac. Or feel it underneath me.’
Jake took his compass out of his bag. He squatted down and placed it on his knee. ‘That’s north and we want to go west. This is okay. Let’s press on.’
There was confidence in his voice, but Zoe neither shared it nor trusted it. He was made of different stuff from her. He’d had an upbringing that had taught him to simulate confidence when he didn’t feel it in his bones, and she knew the difference. She had been taught to trust her instincts, and to be guided by them. She thought that her way got it right or wrong just as much as his way.
They took it slowly, holding hands, sometimes following the outer curve of the road. The road twisted wildly, a serpentine track winding around and across the mountain, and they followed it almost blind, reduced to a shuffling pace. Then Zoe must have put a foot off the road because her boot went through snow up to her thigh.
‘This scares me, Jake. It scares me. I feel like we could easily walk off the road. Why don’t we take shelter for half an hour? See if the mist lifts a little?’
‘It’s not going to lift.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘This is in for the day. You can see that. If we hunker down we’ll just get cold. We have to press on.’
So they did. And after another ten minutes there came a gust of wind that for a tantalising moment revealed the road parting in opposite directions. Then the image of the parting in the road was instantly swallowed up by the thick mist. The snow came down harder.
Jake squatted in the road again and took out his compass.
‘What’s this?’
Zoe squatted beside him, peering at the compass. The needle was circling the compass, hunting.
‘You haven’t got it level. Put it down flat.’
Jake cleared some snow from the road with his ski gauntlet and placed the compass down on the snow. The needle continued to hunt, moving steadily clockwise across the face of the compass. Then it stopped. Almost immediately it resumed its hunting, now moving anticlockwise.