his elbow. They’d looked at each other conspiratorially, as they so often did, the pair of them as thick as thieves.
‘We’ve got something for you,’ she said.
‘O-kay,’ I said, looking between them, panicking that I’d not marked our temporary separation with anything in return.
Sophia reached down onto the floor. ‘Ta-dah,’ she said, bringing up a homemade card and placing it in my hand. Jewels and gems had been stuck haphazardly onto the front, the white glue still visible and tacky – the glitter sprinkles not yet having had a chance to stick. I tried to hide the fact that there was more falling on the carpet than there was on the card.
‘Ooh, what’s this then?’ I asked.
‘Open it, open it,’ she’d said, bouncing up and down on her chair. I glanced across at Tom, his eyes ablaze with love, for her, for me. He’d give us the world if we asked for it.
Inside was a photo of us at our wedding, looking at each other at the altar. The words underneath read:
It hurts to be apart,
but believe me when I say
I’ll love you all the more,
until my dying day.
‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ I said, reaching across the table to kiss him. ‘Is this your guilty conscience kicking in?’
‘Oh, that’s charming,’ he’d laughed. ‘We’ve gone to all this trouble and you think it’s some kind of conspiracy.’
‘So, there aren’t three other wives and mothers down the road getting the very same treatment this morning then?’ I said, knowing that Chris, Ryan and Leo would no doubt be offering the same sentiment to smooth the way towards their departure, on what had become something of an annual jolly.
‘Absolutely not,’ he’d said in mock protest. ‘Jules’s card has got green jewels on it. Yours has got blue.’
‘Go on, get out of here,’ I had said.
He’d kissed me. ‘I’ll see you in five days. You sure you’re okay to hold down the fort until then?’
I thought of the meetings lined up for the week and felt the usual rush of excitement. I couldn’t remember ever being as happy or fulfilled.
‘I suppose I’ll have to be,’ I’d said teasingly as his lips grazed mine. ‘I’m the talent after all. Remind me why the company needs you again?’
‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone,’ he’d laughed. And then, all of a sudden, he was.
When Jules’s husband Leo had called me the following night, to say that Tom was missing, I thought he was joking.
‘He’s probably still in the bar at the top of the mountain where you left him,’ I’d said, unconcerned.
‘No, I’m serious Al,’ he’d replied. ‘Tom went out on his own after lunch and he’s not come back.’
A chill had run through me, though I still wasn’t unduly worried. He was a good skier and it wasn’t unusual for him to go off and explore. I looked at my watch and at the darkening skies outside the living room window, choosing not to acknowledge that Switzerland was an hour ahead.
‘Okay, so it’s gone six there?’ I’d asked, my logical brain trying to overrule the feeling of panic that was building within me. ‘He’s very likely to be sitting in the warm somewhere, trying to remember the time you were supposed to be meeting tonight.’
A heavy breath crept down the line. ‘We were supposed to be meeting two hours ago,’ said Leo quietly.
‘Have you called anyone?’ I asked. ‘Have you checked his room, the hotel, the restaurant?’ I’d tried so desperately to keep my voice steady. ‘Is there a gym or a sauna he might be in?’
‘He hasn’t checked his skis back in,’ Leo had said, and my whole world had begun to close in around me.
‘Well, you need to find him,’ I said, a slight hysterical lilt to my voice. ‘Leo, you have to find him.’
‘We’ve been everywhere we can think of,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll give it another hour and then we’ll report him missing.’
‘No, you can’t wait another hour,’ I wailed. ‘Anything could happen in that time. He might be lying somewhere, unable to get up. He could have fallen down a crevasse and if it snows . . . Leo, another hour could be the difference between life and death.’
‘I’ll talk to reception now,’ he’d said sombrely. ‘But if he calls you in the meantime, tell him to stop pissing about.’
If Tom is trying to scare them, I’d thought, I’ll kill him myself.
I had sat by my phone, willing it to ring, for the next hour. Watching every