Page 31 of Snowed In with You

‘Do you ever meet nice men here?’ asked Lucy, imagining the parade of Swiss bankers who must stomp through the Guntherhütte on winter weekends, waving their gold credit cards. Or men like Kristoff, with perfect teeth and casual ambitions to evict the incumbent family and build an executive gin palace. Probably best not to mention that.

‘No,’ said Chantal bleakly. ‘Sometimes a man comes in and I wonder if he will be the one who will take me away, but it never happens.’ Lucy wondered if she’d had that thought about Nate, and whether he was prepared to be the object of her Cinderella fantasies for the next twenty-four hours.

‘This is not such a terrible life,’ said Monica. ‘You have grown up in these mountains with your family.’

‘And now I would like to have someone in my life who is not my family,’ said Chantal grumpily. ‘That does not seem so unreasonable.’

‘We always wanted you to carry on the family business,’ said Monica.

‘Not on my own,’ huffed Chantal.

‘Felix and I have been married for ten years,’ said Andrea, a little louder than strictly necessary. ‘He was a friend of my father’s.’

‘Was?’ asked Lucy.

‘He married my papa’s only daughter and took me away from our home town to sing music in bars,’ said Andrea, and Lucy could feel the pain even though she was smiling. ‘They are not friends any more.’

‘Do you enjoy singing in bars?’ asked Lucy.

‘Yes,’ said Andrea. ‘I always wanted to be a singer. But I would like to sing other things, sometimes. Felix only likes the Bee Gees.’

‘Wait, what?’ said Lucy, momentarily horrified. ‘You only sing the Bee Gees?’

‘Yes. Felix has been a fan all his life.’

‘He takes the idea of being a tribute band very literally,’ added Monica, her mouth pursed in disapproval.

‘He would think of it as disrespectful to sing anything else,’ said Andrea. ‘He once waited many hours for Robin Gibb after a concert and told him that he only ever sang the Bee Gees, and Robin said that was a wonderful thing. So now he says it is a matter of honour.’

‘Can’t he ask Robin for permission to diversify?’ asked Lucy.

‘Robin died in 2012,’ said Andrea. ‘Please don’t mention it to Felix, he gets very upset. He tried to go to the funeral in England, but they wouldn’t let him into the church. So now we go every year in May to lay flowers on his grave.’

‘Right,’ said Lucy, as Monica raised her eyebrows to communicate how entirely unhinged she thought Felix was. ‘What if I made a request? Asked you to sing something else?’

Andrea shook her head, looking alarmed. ‘Felix does not take requests. Unless it’s a Bee Gees song. But when I’m alone, I sing Adele songs. She is a beautiful singer.’

‘Isn’t a Bee Gees-only set quite short?’ Lucy could only think of three or four Bee Gees hits, but she was hardly a superfan.

‘You would be surprised,’ said Andrea wearily, like this wasn’t the first time she’d had this conversation. ‘They had many hits, and also wrote some very famous songs for other artists. For example, they wrote “Islands in the Stream” for Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.’

‘Oh, I love that song,’ said Lucy.

‘So do I,’ said Andrea, looking slightly haunted. ‘Thankfully.’

Lucy pressed her lips together, suppressing the urge to laugh. The realisation dawned on her that she was trapped in a mountain bar with a Swiss ladies’ man, his long-suffering wife, their lonely daughter, two Dutch gays, one of whom was possibly a minor royal, an anxious work colleague who was secretly sleeping with their boss, and a Bee Gees tribute act that didn’t take requests. Even in her wildest dreams, she couldn’t make this shit up.

‘Shall we carry this through?’ asked Monica, picking up a tray of plates of artfully placed meat and cheese. They gathered up as much as they could carry and transferred it to one of the tables in the bar, where the rest of the group were knocking back shots of Jägermeister, their cheeks pink from the cold.

‘The weather is pretty scary,’ said Nate, his face crumpling into a grimace as he swallowed down the shot. ‘But Gunther says the best way not to think about it is to stay drunk. This stuff is disgusting.’

‘Can I get some of that?’ asked Lucy, holding out Nate’s shot glass so Gunther could fill it up with the dark, syrupy liquid. The snow was still battering the windows, but there was now a stack of logs next to the blazing wood burner, and the room felt warm and steamy after the cool of the kitchen. The prospect of not sobering up suddenly felt extremely appealing.

‘Be my guest,’ said Nate with a shudder. Lucy tipped up the glass and swallowed it down, a foul mixture of cough medicine and aniseed. She pulled a face at Alex, who was shooting a video of everyone knocking back shots and chatting animatedly in various languages, most of which she didn’t understand. Monica started handing round plates for the buffet, and the whole scene felt like the most bizarre party Lucy had ever been to.

‘I need a caption,’ said Alex. ‘Something funny.’

‘Jäger party in the snowbound Guntherhütte,’ said Lucy. ‘If you can’t get home, you might as well get drunk.’