Page 39 of Snowed In with You

‘Hopefully we’re only here for one night, though,’ said Nate, yawning again. ‘With any luck we’ll be with the others in Geneva tomorrow.’ He glanced at his watch and pulled a face. ‘Well, today now.’

‘Mmm,’ said Lucy. Nate would probably be shacked up in Sasha’s hotel room this time tomorrow, and she’d be in bed alone. She hadn’t messaged Anthony and Marco yet, although presumably neither knew about her Swiss drama and so had no reason to be concerned. She’d spent years cultivating a life where she was emotionally beholden to no one, but right now the idea that absolutely nobody was worrying about her left her feeling strangely empty.

‘You OK?’ asked Nate, looking at her doubtfully.

‘Yeah.’ Lucy smiled sadly. ‘I need some sleep, I think.’ She turned off the torch and snuggled down under the duvet, rubbing her cold feet on the mattress and hoping the friction of skin against polyester didn’t start a fire.

‘Goodnight, Lucy,’ said Nate quietly.

‘Night,’ said Lucy, wishing for the first time in forever that she could snuggle into the warmth of someone else’s body and just sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘Lucy, wake up,’ said a man’s voice. She dragged herself out of a dream where she’d been waiting on the side of the road for a bus that Leo was on, but somehow he never arrived. She’d had variations on the same dream for years – sometimes the bus drove straight past and she’d catch a tantalising glimpse of Leo through the window, and sometimes the bus stopped, but when she climbed aboard to sit with her brother, he’d disappeared. Night after night of waiting for buses, so that she could talk to Leo about the morning that had tipped him over the edge. To ask him why he hadn’t called her, or texted, or left a note, or done anything that might give Lucy some answers rather than this gaping, unfathomable void. But Leo was always just out of reach, and the conversation never happened. So she’d wait for the next bus, and maybe that would be the one.

She peeled open her crusty eyes to find Nate looming over her. ‘You need to come and look at this.’

‘What is it?’ she said sleepily, turning her head and clamping her lips together so he wouldn’t be subjected to her fetid wine breath. The loft had no windows so it was still dark, with the only light coming from the open door to the stairs and the floor below.

‘Come and see,’ he said, with the excitement of a little boy at Christmas. She huffed and hauled herself out of a bed that was now nothing more than a synthetic membrane on the floor, scraping away the bits of hair that had stuck to her face. She followed him stiffly down the stairs, noting that Gunther’s grey pyjamas paired with a white T-shirt really didn’t look entirely bad on him, even through a rancid hangover.

‘Look,’ he said, pulling open the curtains covering the window on the landing.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Lucy, recoiling from the dazzling glare and shielding her eyes. It took her a moment to process what she was looking at. She’d never seen so much snow in her life – it had entirely submerged the edge of the terrace, and the trees were groaning under the weight of it, with barely a branch visible. It felt like some kind of extreme Narnia.

‘It’s stopped snowing,’ said Nate. ‘Hopefully that means we can get out of here today.’

‘Hope so,’ said Lucy, turning away from the sunlight scorching her eyeballs. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly half eight,’ said Nate. ‘I went looking for coffee, but then I saw the view and thought you’d want to see it.’

‘It’s amazing,’ said Lucy, not wanting to rain on his puppy-like enthusiasm. ‘I might go back to bed for a bit, though. My head hurts and I feel like shit.’

‘Me too,’ said Nate. ‘My tongue feels like an old blanket.’ He pulled a face, and Lucy decided she could probably trudge back up the stairs without causing offence. Mostly she was keen not to spend too much time in daylight until she’d found a mirror and assessed how terrible she looked.

‘If you find coffee, I’d definitely be interested,’ she called back. ‘Just black is fine. And also my clothes. Monica hung them in the bar to dry.’

‘OK,’ said Nate. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

Lucy picked her way through the boxes and climbed back into bed, wishing she’d used the bathroom while she was downstairs, but not feeling desperate enough to go back down again. She lay in the murky twilight of the loft and waited, trying to remember how she’d started the day before the advent of smartphones. She’d been at school then, so presumably she’d slept until the very last minute. But now she set her alarm for twenty minutes before she needed to get up, so she could ease herself into the day with her phone. No actual news, obviously – nobody needed war and famine and politics at that time of the day.

She comfortably dozed off for a few minutes, until Nate reappeared carrying two mugs of coffee with a stack of Lucy’s dry clothes under his arm. The loft was less murky now that the curtains downstairs were open and flooding light into the stairwell, so she was able to watch him navigate the tiny space. He was barefoot and handsome even through crusty eyes, and she thanked the heavens that it was still dim enough up here to shadow her crumpled face.

‘You’re a legend,’ said Lucy, sitting up so she could take the mug. ‘What’s going on downstairs?’

‘Not much,’ said Nate. ‘Monica and Gunther are both up and showed me how to use the gas stove. No sign of anyone else.’

‘What’s the plan for today?’ She sipped the coffee, which was hot and strong and glorious.

‘Monica said we should all meet in the bar for breakfast at half nine, and they’ll give us a briefing. Gunther has a plan, apparently.’

‘Is it a plan for us both to be sipping wine by Lake Geneva by dinnertime, celebrating my fake birthday?’

‘I’m not sure,’ laughed Nate. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, which looked like it had survived the night and was marginally less airless than Lucy’s.

‘Other than a hangover, how are you feeling today?’ she asked, conscious that this time yesterday he’d been worrying (prophetically, as it turned out) about getting caught in an avalanche.

‘I’m OK,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It feels safe here, I guess. I’ve decided to look at it all as a big adventure. Something to tell the grandkids one day.’