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‘Here she is, Mrs Hunt.’
Katie swept her daughter into her arms. ‘Thanks again, Mrs Chaney. Have you been good, sweetheart? Have you had a nice day, huh?’
‘We don’t speak through the children at this crèche, remember, Mrs Hunt?’
Katie was so desperate to laugh she buried her face in Jess’s coat. Sam did an impersonation of their fierce childminder that blew her away. So she was an old ratbag to the parents, but she was all they could afford. Jess liked her and the climate of chaos caused by dozens of children running wild in a big house, but Katie and Sam reserved the right to think the woman was a jerk. The phrase Elsie Chaney just delivered was the one Sam used when he wanted to crack up his wife. Sometimes he would duck beneath the comforter in bed and re-emerge as Mrs Chaney.
Katie recovered and withdrew her face.
‘No you’re right, Mrs Chaney. I’m sorry. Has Jess been good?’
The wide fifty-year-old woman crossed her hands in front of her and smiled. ‘This little pixie has been a perfect gem. A perfect gem.’
Jess shrieked in delight at the bare wall over Katie’s shoulder, deafening her mother in the ear nearest the outburst.
‘Okay. I’ll just pay you now if I can, Mrs Chaney. I think we owe you for last week too.’
‘No, your husband settled up last Friday thank you. Just this week is due. Shall I?’
She held her arms out for Katie’s wriggling child, so that her customer could get to the cash in her pocket-book.
Katie handed over the beaming Jess and dug around for her dollars.
‘I believe this blizzard is one of the worst I can recall.’
Katie was still fumbling.
‘You’re right, Mrs Chaney. It’s a stinker. But you have to admit the snow’s real pretty.’
Mrs Chaney wished to admit no such thing. ‘Claimed a life a few nights ago I hear.’
Katie looked up. ‘Oh?’
‘Joe Reader. You know. Estelle Reader’s husband.’
‘My God. What happened?’
Katie was horrified. She knew Estelle Reader to nod to in the supermarket, no more, but she was genuinely shocked to think of her being widowed so young.
‘Few nights ago, Tuesday it was, his pick-up went over the cliffs at the top of Wolf Mountain.’
‘My God,’ repeated Katie.
‘That’s the blizzard for you. For all his conceit, man hasn’t a chance against the forces of nature you know, Mrs Hunt. We have to learn to respect it.’
Katie handed over eighty dollars in twenties and scooped Jess back into her arms. Jess, however, had other plans. She’d spotted a small frightened-looking child in the doorway and struggled to be let down to go and greet it. Katie released her.
‘You know, that was the night that Sam was in Stoke. He got stuck on account of that storm. Thank God he stayed put or … well …’ She trailed off, shrugging, and watched her daughter trying to hug the small boy behind Mrs Chaney’s bulk.
‘Or it might have been him? Yes indeed it might have been, Mrs Hunt. And well might we thank God. He moves in mysterious ways. Mrs Reader’s loss, your gain.’
The childminder tucked Katie’s money into the big pocket on the front of the apron she never took off.
Katie got annoyed. ‘Hardly, Mrs Chaney. I don’t think that was the deal. I’m sorry to hear about it. Please tell Estelle we’re thinking of her if you see her.’
Her attention was focused on Jess now, and she used it to change the subject. She didn’t want to discuss poor Joe Reader with this woman any more. ‘Hey. Is this a new man in Jess’s life?’
Elsie Chaney looked down at the two children. ‘That’s the Belling boy. You know.’
Katie didn’t know, but she knew she would be told. ‘No. I don’t believe I do. He looks a bit lost.’
‘The son of that man. You know.’
Katie still didn’t know.
Mrs Chaney sighed. ‘Put away. For abuse.’ She mouthed the words as if they were too foul to be spoken aloud.
Katie’s heart dropped down a rib or two in sympathy.
‘Oh. The poor darling.’
She leaned towards Katie.
‘Welfare pays his bills here. The mother can barely cope. Heartbreaking, though, to know it’ll all happen again.’
‘You’re kidding. You mean they’re letting the guy see the boy again?’
Elsie Chaney looked at Katie as if she were one of her children. ‘No no. He won’t be back. I mean when the boy grows up he’ll repeat the sins of the father.’
Katie looked open-mouthed at the innocent blue-eyed mite, now having one of his cardigan buttons sucked by her daughter. ‘You can’t say a wicked thing like that, Mrs Chaney. He’s a tiny child for heaven’s sake.’
Mrs Chaney was clearly irked by the accusation of being wicked. She straightened up, no longer keeping her tone soft. ‘Seems you don’t know your social psychology, Mrs Hunt. The abused always becomes the abuser. Text book.’
Katie held her gaze for a moment, itching to challenge her. But this was the only crèche that suited them. She couldn’t blow it. She bit her tongue and went to pick up her daughter.
The little boy backed away as she bent down to Jess. Katie looked into those frightened eyes and wanted to cry.
What had they seen?
‘It’s okay, pumpkin. I’m Jess’s Mom. Would you like a hug?’
He turned and ran. Jess shrieked in delight again.
Mrs Chaney looked triumphant. ‘Same time tomorrow, Mrs Hunt.’
Katie hesitated, still looking into the empty doorframe where the boy had stood. ‘Yes. Same time.’
Elsie Chaney went back into the cacophony of tiny voices, smoothing her apron as she went.
Katie’s mood was very different now as she walked along the snowy sidewalk with her daughter kicking the snow up and hanging on her hand. Scary thoughts were bouncing around in there. Thoughts about how it could have been Sam’s truck losing control and crashing in the dark.
But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be. She got rid of that one before they turned into their street. The one she couldn’t shake off was still there when they reached the house. The abused always becomes the abuser. The stupid woman. The stupid, stupid woman.
15 (#ulink_487cbabc-710e-5862-a747-d8f0e75fbd62)
Only three trees felled. That had been Don Weaver’s boast and marketing slogan when he started the Silver Ski Company back in ’sixty-eight, for the absurd investment of a hundred and twenty thousand bucks.
The turn-over now in ’ninety-three was in the millions, and they’d sure felled more than three trees in the last twenty-five years. But the picture of Don that hung in Eric Sindon’s office was the photograph of a principled man with dreams, who despite the changes that had happened to his fantasy resort, would not be happy to be remembered as anything other than ‘three-trees-felled Weaver’.
Eric was sitting back thoughtfully in his canvas-covered office chair, gazing up at the picture of Don. He saw a black-and-white, ten-by-eight photo of a tanned young man on long wooden, hinged binding skis, smiling in front of an almost unrecognizable Beaver Lodge. Eric grimaced as he scanned the picture of the old lodge with its Alpine porch and cute carved window-boxes. The present-day lodge was more like a bus terminal but it did hot business and what shareholder would want window-boxes over profits?
The tree Eric wanted felled real bad was laughing its head off on the other side of the thin partition separating their offices. If he’d known that Don’s daughter Pasqual was to come in and run the company after Don died, Eric would have tied his spotted hanky to a stick years ago and headed for another resort. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been made offers. There had been plenty, but he hadn’t jumped. Like a fool he stayed put, trusting in Don’s judgement and friendship, only to find himself number two yet again, but this time to a privileged, brainless bitch who couldn’t run a shoe-shine stand.
The big question was what to do now. He was forty-seven years old and time was almost up. Pasqual had been running the resort for a season and a half and things weren’t going to get any better for Eric.
She knew what he thought of her and he was just as sure she was going to make a move soon to pluck him out like a bad tooth. Sure, the resort would suffer, and sure, she would be sorry when she discovered the guy who really ran the place had gone. But it would be too late. He would be pushing fifty with no shareholding partnership in the business he’d helped build up from nothing, and Miss Dumb-ass would be moving some twenty-six-year-old business school graduate into his office.
He remembered Pasqual two decades ago when she was a cute kid, hitching a ride on the back of her Dad’s skis down to the lodge, squealing with delight as she hung on round his broad waist. If he’d known that apple-cheeked kid would one day turn into the hard-faced vixen, who overturned every good decision he made in this resort, he might have done something about it.
Eric sat upright in the elderly chair. What did he mean by that, he wondered? He felt suddenly uncomfortable.
He swivelled the chair round to face the desk again and shuffled some papers around. Next door, Pasqual was shrieking down the phone, not a business contact by the sound of it.
‘C’mon. He did NOT!’ She guffawed like a horse snorting.
Eric got up and left the room. If there was no business that needed to be done in the front office he would make some up. He had to get away from that farmyard braying or he would do something he might regret.
The administrative block of Silver Ski Company was labyrinthine and depressing, a series of what amounted to no more than concrete sheds, growing at random from a central two-storey lodge like barnacles on a shipwreck. Eric stalked through its corridors on his way to the front office, his fists clenching and unclenching in frustration.
When he arrived, only one person was where they were supposed to be. Betsy was on the phone, the new guy Sitconski, gone from his desk.
‘Where’s the rest of the shit-hot team?’ Eric addressed the question to the empty desks.
Betsy gesticulated sternly that she was listening to someone on the line. She cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘The fun-run. They’re all up at Beaver.’
Eric made a small noise of discontent, more because he’d forgotten than that he disapproved of their absence, and sat down heavily in an empty chair. Two lines rang simultaneously. Betsy hung up her call and answered both of them before he could make it to any of the phones on the desks.
Eric left her to her ridiculous martyrdom of efficiency and let his eyes wander round the empty office. A pile of posters lying on a desk for the fun-run that was already under way suggested that the publicity department hadn’t been bothering their ass much. Eric was annoyed. He’d put that poster together with the designer. Two colours, advertising the fancy-dress race down Beaver, prizes highlighted in red. Why bother? The lazy bastards obviously hadn’t distributed them to the local hotels and shops as ordered. They’d be lucky if anybody showed at all, even with this tiny break in the weather. Betsy finished one call, punched up the other, dealt with it and hung up.
Eric pointed at the posters. ‘So are the public just expected to come in here and take one? I thought a poster meant you posted it someplace.’
Betsy looked at him with disdain, sliding a pencil behind her ear. ‘They’re left-overs.’
‘So they posted them all over Silver?’
‘All over Silver and Stoke. Even took some to Calgary.’
Eric gave in. If he needed someone to take out his temper on today, Betsy wasn’t going to let it be her.
‘That new guy up at Beaver too?’
‘Guess so.’
The phone warbled again and she picked it up, still looking directly at Eric. ‘Silver Ski Company, Betsy speaking. How may I help you?’
Eric got up and wandered over to Sitconski’s desk. Looked like he’d been working on the rota, very thoroughly indeed. Beside two names there were pencil marks. Of course there was nothing odd about making pencil notes beside names that needed attention. There was plenty wrong with making marks so hard that they ripped through the paper and left shards of broken lead embedded in the paper like shrapnel.
‘Hey, hey, hey! Here comes Sean! Would you get that!’
The high speed quad delivered an eighteen-year-old boy on skis dressed inexpertly as an Indian chief. His gaudy feather head-dress fluttered madly in the breeze, and a makeshift loincloth that was wrapped around tight ski pants was lifted to his friends in a burlesque gesture of vulgarity that passed as a greeting. Eight people hollered and fell about shrieking with laughter as the blond boy skied up to them performing a mock war-dance with knees wreathed in neck-ties, then toasting them with a bottle of cheap whisky he fished surreptitiously from his pocket.
‘Shit on you white men. Me pray to um spirit for heap big powder. Me drink fire water. Make me win dumb fucking race.’
The gang of laughing youths were in no position to mock. Two were dressed as cowboys, one as a clown, three girls attempted to look like Playboy bunnies, diminishing the effect by the thermal tops they had on under the bustiers, and the remaining two, a couple, had made little more effort than buying masks of a Jurassic Park velociraptor and ET.
Sean was the best, which wasn’t saying much. But with the odd assortment of clothes he wore combined with that huge waving head-dress, he was more like a real Indian chief than anything Hollywood could come up with. Apart from his pink Rossignols and ski boots, he could have stepped out of a sepia photograph from the town museum. Those long-dead men had sported the same rag-bag inattention to detail that Sean boasted, though they were saved from ridicule by a glint of power and nobility in their eyes that was plainly absent from the boy’s. Yes, he looked like an Indian. The wrinklies lining up a few yards away thought so too. Their frowns and muttering indicated they were offended.
One of them, a woman in her fifties dressed in Victorian skirts and a bonnet, skied over to where Sean was busy being slapped on the back by the cowboys and touching the heads of the genuflecting girls in front of him.
‘That’s in rather poor taste don’t you think?’
Eight young, golden-tanned faces looked at the woman, then at each other, and burst out laughing.
The woman’s voice became shrill with anger and embarrassment. ‘Our Native Canadian heritage is not a joke.’
The kids laughed even louder and kicked up the snow, until the woman’s husband in Victorian plus-fours and a motoring cap skied across to rescue her. ‘You guys are way out of order. Try and show a little respect. Come on, honey.’
She slid away, hot and bothered. ‘God help Canada,’ she said in a loud voice as they retreated.
‘God help America, lady! We’re from California!’
That sent them into a new wave of hilarity, interrupted only by Mike Watts, the ski patroller at the start line, clacking his ski poles together for attention.
Sean hid the whisky.
‘Okay guys, welcome to the Silver Fun-Run. Well, well, we’ve got some neat costumes here today.’
The kids started imitating the patroller. Neat was not how they liked to be described.
‘Hey, Barney. Neat costume, man.’
Hoots and shouts of mirth. The patroller smiled wearily and carried on. Kids. They could give him as hard a time as they liked. Soon as they started moving on those skis, Mike would have their respect. He could ski the fanny off any of them and they could shove their Californian tans. It was always the ones who made most noise standing at the top of a trail who went very quiet on their way down the hill in the meat wagon, strapped into that stretcher after breaking their bodies in dumb accidents. Despite the temptation, Mike Watts never leaned over the stretcher and said I told you so.
‘Yeah, right, guys. We’re goin’ to start out from the line here …’
The Californians were finding Mike’s Canadian flattened vowel sound on out the funniest thing they’d heard. From the group came lots of oowt sounds accompanied by cries of neat. Mike sighed before continuing. It was going to be a long day.
‘… and then the race will commence down the Beaver run, through the slalom poles you see there, ending at Beaver Lodge, where you’ll be judged not only on your time, but on the originality of your costume.’
