Games People Play (18 page)

We lie awake, I think, for the rest of the night, holding hands, not talking any more.

Susie

The weather was much worse the next day, with the mountains suffocating under thick grey cloud and relentlessly falling snow. It had been beautiful to see at first, the way it iced the tree branches and thickly frosted the bushes, but there was something almost sinister about the way it wouldn’t stop. And it was a bone-chilling wet kind of cold, not like Kansas. Kansas was undeniably freezing in winter, but it was a different sort of cold; one that, to my disappointment, I could handle much better than this. I’d imagined it would be the other way round.

‘Well, looks like we won’t be skiing today!’ I said cheerfully at breakfast over my dry roll and what appeared to be luncheon meat.

Our vacuous tour operator, whose name was Nadia, was sitting several places away on the long table. She looked up from the lone apple she’d been peeling and cutting into eighths, and laughed. ‘Of course you will! If the lifts are open, which I’m told they are, you’ll be fine to ski!’

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I scowled at Nadia. Actually, Rachel and I had been discussing her, with much hilarity, the previous night in the bar after dinner. She was a beautiful English-rose-type girl, but so boring in her beauty that none of the men were even half-heartedly trying to chat her up. She was tiny; anorexic, probably, with delicate little cheekbones and the sort of wrists you could snap in two. She had an unfortunately drony voice and a penchant for word misuse, which Rachel had pounced on instantly. At dinner, she’d stood up and made a speech about the resort, during the course of which she explained the procedure in case anyone were to ‘ascertain’ an injury, and how, on the slopes, it was best not to ‘dilly’ once the light began to fail, as it had that day. Rachel and I had had to smother our giggles. Laughing with my daughter had been the best feeling (albeit at poor old Nadia’s expense, but still…)

I wondered why I hadn’t thought of taking a holiday with Rachel before. I supposed it had just always seemed so difficult, with her tournament schedule and Ivan breathing down her neck. Perhaps Mark dumping her was a blessing for my relationship with her.

An hour later, blinking our way through the thick snow, Rachel helped me negotiate the chair lift (‘Turn round! Look behind! Poles in that hand, grab it with that hand! Sit!’ I felt like a dog being trained) and we were swinging our legs in the wet, cold seat of an open chair, on our way up the mountain. Everything was eerily silent, and we could only just make out the jackets of the people in the seat in front of us. Apart from the two splashes of colour of their ski jackets, the world was monochrome. You couldn’t tell where sky ended and slope began.

‘Is this really safe?’ I asked, trying to sound brave although I felt petrified. My backside was soaked through and it was so cold that my lips would barely form any words. I wished I was tucked up in a warm bed with a good book.

‘Well, it’s not ideal, but it’s not dangerous,’ Rachel replied. ‘Just follow me. I’ll go really slowly, and we’ll be fine.’

‘You seem happier today,’ I ventured, fiddling with my jacket to try and cover a gap of bare skin on my wrist between sleeve and glove. It nearly caused me to drop one of my ski poles – I had to lunge for it, making the chair sway back and forwards.

‘Mum! Be careful,’ Rachel said, and I thought, was she always this bossy? I had that strange role-reversal feeling again. ‘But yes, I am feeling better. A bit. I wish I was here with Mark—’

‘Thanks very much,’ I said, trying to joke but wishing that
I
were there with Billy.

She tutted, although whether in an amused or irritated way, I couldn’t tell.

‘Anyway, I think it’s really good for me to have a holiday, a break from tournaments. I’m going to be really busy again in the next couple of months, and I know that’s getting away too, but somehow I can never
escape
on tour. It’s Mark’s world too, that’s why. I can’t help seeing everything through his eyes – including Dad – and it does my head in.’

It’s Mark’s world and we all just live in it, I thought.

I wasn’t sure that I liked the sound of this Mark. He ought to have been living in Rachel’s world, not the other way round. I pictured both their worlds: the endless flights, the endless matches, the endless debriefs and recriminations or congratulations.

Then I thought of Billy’s world. Before Eva, his world had been big enough with just me at the centre of it: me, his pot, his garage, the cats. Then Eva had come along and casually plucked him off Planet Billy into a different galaxy, far, far away ...I
hated
Eva. How could she do that? She must have known that he belonged to me. But there must have been whole other continents of Planet Billy which I hadn’t even known about, and ought to have done. Perhaps those uncharted territories held the key to Billy’s dissatisfaction – for he must have been dissatisfied, otherwise nobody, not even Pamela Anderson (for whom Billy, to my disgust, had an embarrassingly soft spot) could have tempted him away. I remembered Audrey once saying, ‘No one can break up a happy relationship.’ I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth of this, because to do so seemed to undermine our whole lives together.

I tried hard to think of other ways in which Billy might have perceived our relationship as unhappy, aside from my unwillingness to marry him. Not spending enough time together? We saw each other every day. Not enough sex? True, the frequency of our love-making had decreased quite a bit, but our sex life was still passionate, and far from dead. Drifted apart? Maybe. I supposed I’d been pretty obsessed with my job – but then again, so had he with his. We had, at various stages, talked about taking up more hobbies together, but neither of us had really pushed it. Or at least I hadn’t, and Billy hadn’t seemed to mind ...

It must have been deeper than that. But if he didn’t talk to me about it, how was I to know? I just kept going over it in my head, again and again, getting nowhere. It was easier to blame Eva – so I did. I hoped she couldn’t sleep at night.

The thought gave me scant consolation, though. It only made me imagine that it was Billy keeping her up, not her conscience; Billy, doing that little trick of his with his hash-furred tongue which always made me scream and sent the cats shooting off the eiderdown in panic...It seemed like a lifetime ago. I wondered if I’d ever sleep with him again.

‘Do you think Mark met someone else?’ I asked abruptly, through chattering teeth.

Rachel turned and looked at me indignantly. I remembered that expression of hers from when she was a little girl being told off: all frowny outrage and cross incredulity.

‘No! I’m sure he hadn’t ...Maybe he has now though.’ She slumped down in the chair, her skis swinging disconsolately, then straightened up again.

‘Here we go. Are you ready?’

The top of the lift station loomed, a huge net spread out beneath it to stop the incompetent or premature skiers from alighting too soon. I gripped my poles as hard as I could and gritted my teeth as Rachel lifted the bar pinning us into the chair.

‘Ready, steady ...
now
,’ she said, pushing herself off the seat and sliding gracefully down the small slope away from the lift. I tried to follow, but in my panic my skis crossed and the edge of the seat bumped into my backside, and I fell in an undignified tangle of poles, legs and skis at Rachel’s feet. She helped me up, laughing, and I felt clumsy and embarrassed. She was my daughter, for heaven’s sake, why should I feel so awkward in her presence?

Not for the first time, I questioned the wisdom of my having moved so far away when Ivan and I split up. At the time, I’d thought that they were so wrapped up in training and competition that she wouldn’t have noticed if I’d moved to Mars, but perhaps I was wrong. I should’ve dug in my heels and waited in the wings for the time when I could become the pressure valve in her relationship with Ivan the Bully. Now was that time – but was it too late? How could I help her when I felt, at times, almost in awe of her?

I sometimes felt I had run away when I moved back to Kansas after the divorce. It had seemed the logical place to go: somewhere I still had friends, where I understood the life and enjoyed the laid-back social scene. Somewhere that I had some history, even just a year as an exchange student. But blood was thicker than watery American beer. I should have stayed in England.

If I’d stayed in England, Billy and I would never have got together. But perhaps, in hindsight, that would have been for the best. At least I wouldn’t have gone through all this pain...

I brushed the wet, sticky snow off my body and tried to de-mist my ski mask, which had become dislodged. Every time I tried to replace it, it steamed up again. I couldn’t see a thing – not that there was much to see.

‘Come on, Mum, I’m freezing,’ Rachel said, in that impatient voice again. I peered at her through my misty goggles: tall, glamorous without a scrap of makeup, just a thick layer of Chapstick, and I envied her. I envied her youth and beauty and confidence. I envied the fact that, even though she couldn’t see it yet, her broken heart would heal whole, and she’d love again, better. I envied her success and the independence my selfishness had bestowed upon her. My daughter the stranger.

After an interminable amount of fiddling, frozen-fingered, with my mask, I was eventually as ready as I’d ever be. The run down was narrow, but not too steep, as it wound around the side of the mountain. At least there were hardly any other skiers around, due to a combination of the unfashionable resort and the inclement weather.

‘Let’s go!’ said Rachel jubilantly, and pushed herself off, skiing exaggeratedly slowly to enable me to keep up. I followed, wobbly at first, then more strongly. I didn’t have the hang of that pole-planting thing – I couldn’t work out which side which pole went down – but it didn’t seem to matter. I glued my eyes to Rachel’s back, trying to emulate her rhythm and pace, keeping my moves as small as possible to ensure I didn’t lose control and shoot off over the edge of the run.

It had stopped snowing, but visibility was still almost zero as we continued our slow progress down the mountain. My breathing was shallow and my heart thumping practically out of my Tweedledum salopettes, but I remained vertical, and this alone gave me the beginnings of jubilation. Rachel kept glancing back to make sure I was still following, and yelling encouragement through the thick silent air at me. I felt like a five-year-old.

No, that wasn’t true, I thought, chastened, as a small group of preschoolers shot past me and out of sight, with their ski instructor bringing up the rear like a mother goose accompanying a very expeditious brood of goslings. I
wished
I felt like a five-year-old. Then I’d be able to ski without fear.

The piste steepened then, but became mercifully wider. I felt myself involuntarily accelerate, and tried to snowplough. Nothing happened. I tried harder, forcing my heels out till my knees knocked. It didn’t seem to be having any impact on my speed at all. From behind me, I heard the heavy thwack and rumble of an approaching snowboarder, and I panicked slightly as I realized I couldn’t stop. The boarder was getting closer, but hadn’t yet passed me.

Then I made the fatal mistake of turning my head to try and see him. My balance, already shaky, was lost entirely, and my skis slid away from underneath me, as if the snow were a tablecloth someone had yanked off a fully lain table.

I heard myself shriek as top seemed to become bottom – although it was hard to tell, in that monochrome world – and I fell. But the thing which frightened me most was the panicked roar of the snowboarder, who was almost literally on top of me by then. I waited for the crash, the pain, the tangling and then untangling of limbs and equipment – I
heard
it, but I didn’t feel a thing except the skid of freezing snow into my mouth and up my nose. How could I have heard it but not felt it?

When I sat up and shakily rubbed the snow off my goggles, I saw why. The snowboarder hadn’t crashed into me. He’d swerved to avoid me, and had run straight into Rachel instead, who had stopped when she heard my cry. At first I couldn’t even make out which person was which, as both went rolling and tumbling down the slope and out of sight in the fog.

‘Rach?’ I called in a quavery, thin voice which didn’t sound at all like my own. ‘Rachel? Are you OK?’

Silence. I staggered to my feet, my ski-less boots sinking into the soft snow, and looked all around me, but all I saw was whiteness.

‘Hello?’ I shouted, as loudly as I could. ‘Rachel!’ I waited for a minute, thinking that she would be gathering up her skis and reorienting herself. One of my own skis was lying nearby, but the other one had slid away down the slope and out of sight. There was nobody around. I felt that I was the only person in the world; that Rachel and the snowboarder had simply dropped off the face of the earth. Panic rose in me, a kind of damp warmth in the cold air. ‘
RACHEL
!’

I heard a grunt, downhill a way and to my right. I headed towards it, not stopping to collect my one visible ski, or thinking how on earth I would manage to get the rest of the way down the mountain ski-less, alternately wading and skidding through the deep snow. ‘Hello, hello, do you need help? Rach, is that you?’

About ten feet in front of me, a figure finally hovered into sight. But it wasn’t Rachel, it was the snowboarder. He was tall and broad, but young, a dazed, spotty teenager. His fringe was in his eyes, and his board was attached to one foot.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked at the same moment I spotted blood oozing from a wound on his temple, splashing scarlet into the snow.

‘Only this, I think,’ he replied, in a heavily-accented Italian voice, touching his head lightly and getting blood on his glove. He looked pale and shocked. I delved into my jacket pocket and found a pack of tissues, which I handed to him.

‘Did you see where my daughter went?’