the walls, the floor, light streaking past the mirror, and blew on it when she turned it off as though blowing out a candle.
Downstairs, she took the washing from the tumble dryer and folded it, picking out clotted dust and peeling away the occasional long single hair. She carried the clothes up the stairs in the latticed plastic basket and distributed T-shirts and knickers and jeans where they belonged. Outside, the snow closed in. The automated service said the chairlifts would stop running at noon. The family might have to stay at a hotel in the village, but in case they made it back Evelyn prepared lasagne. She took her diary out from the bottom drawer in the bedroom and wrote in it.
At noon the lifts creaked to a halt. Eve poured a large neat whisky, the taste abrasive and leathery. The ski-school phone number went straight to the answer service. She called Daniel’s mobile, and heard it ringing down the hall and in the bedroom. ‘Well that was stupid,’ she said.
As soon as she hung up the chalet phone it rang, and she answered expecting a dial tone or the bleeping of a fault, but it was the family’s father, his voice warm and close. ‘We’re stuck down the mountain,’ he said.
Through the whiteout the blurry shape of a chair swung high on its cable. ‘Do you have somewhere to stay?’
‘Yes, we’ve found a hotel with a hot pool, the children are happy.’
‘Good.’ Evelyn tightened the screw cap of the whisky bottle and wiped it all over with the apron for stray drops. ‘Nice treat.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She opened the door of the wood burner onto the smell of cooled embers, the inside shardy with charcoal. Using the poker she jabbed around in the squeaking ash, but the frog had gone.
‘Sorry we won’t be back tonight,’ he said.
‘That’s fine. I hope it’s good for skiing tomorrow. The fresh fall.’ Evelyn found that she was holding her breath to try and hear his breathing. ‘Keep in touch,’ she said after a moment. ‘Let me know when you’re going to be back.’
‘OK. For sure. Are you going to be all right up there?’
‘Oh yes. Fine.’
‘Daniel is with you.’
‘. . . yes.’
In the living room she swept out the wood burner and took the ashes to the bin in the kitchen. Soot dropped on the floor; she spread it around with a foot so that some disappeared into the sole of her slipper and some dispersed into particles too small to see. She crumpled newspaper and laid kindling on top and lit the fire, crouching before it, watching the pale sticks catch along the edges. The whiteout was complete. Evelyn added a chafed, cylindrical log to the fire. In the kitchen she tore a bread roll in half and stuffed it into her mouth.
Nobody picked up at mountain patrol. She left a message about Daniel, disconnected, then pressed redial and got the answer phone again. Looking out at the wall of white she pressed redial. She opened the door onto the snowstorm and pressed redial again. She shut the door and hung up the phone and went to the bedroom to check Daniel’s phone, which registered two missed calls, one from the number here at the hut and an earlier call from a withheld number. The messages inbox stored 340 messages. The hut shook in the wind. Evelyn covered the unbaked lasagne with cling film and put it in the fridge, then washed her hands. She ate another hunk of bread. The oven fan whirred.
The phone rang; the mountain patrol. They asked what time Daniel had left that morning and where he had been going.
‘I’m not sure. I was in the kitchen, I guess about seven thirty, eight?’
‘Did he say where he was headed?’
‘No, I thought he had a class, ski school. Did he show up?’
‘We’ll check and get back to you. Have you got everything you need?’
The DVDs were kids’ cartoons, their covers yellow, orange and purple. The wind howled. Evelyn stood in front of the whisky bottle and looked at it. From the mantelpiece she took Daniel’s soft blue bag of tobacco, the slice of apple in the bottom tinged orangey brown, and rolled an amateur cigarette.
Overnight, the storm calmed. Morning came with the sound of graders, a pale blue sky over the curving dunes of snow. Cloud wisps hung below the peaks across the valley, as though the mountains were steaming. The patrol leader stood by his snowmobile and shouted