Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered - Rosie Thomas - Страница 31

There was the cottage, in the angle of the wood. Julia stood with the frosty grass crackling under her feet and looked at the lights in the windows. It had taken her almost a month to decide to come. In the end she had left the square on impulse, caught a train to the country station, and walked from there along the icy lanes. It was almost dark, and she had fixed all her attention on finding the way. Only when she saw the lights did she wonder what she would have done if there had been no one there.

She wrapped her coat tighter around her and ran the last few yards. She knocked so hard on the door that her knuckles stung.

Josh opened it. Yellow light spilled out from behind him and lit up her face.

‘I’m here,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘Can I come in?’

Josh laughed, and his breath sent up a smoky plume between them.

‘Julia, Julia. Yes, you’d better come in.’

Across the room behind him Julia saw two pairs of skis propped against the wall, ski poles and heavy laced boots, a scatter of other equipment she didn’t recognise. Josh was busy. Now that she was here, she was suddenly furiously angry.

‘Why haven’t you been to see me? Do you think I don’t matter? That you can appear and disappear, just as you like?’ The words hurt her throat as they came out.

He stared at her then. Julia’s eyes glittered and her cheeks were reddened by the cold.

Slowly, he said, ‘No, I don’t think you don’t matter.’

Julia stared at the long, sharp blades of the skis and her taut shoulders suddenly dropped. In a different voice she said, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have come here. Girls don’t do things like that, do they? But I wanted to see you so much, and I didn’t think you’d ever come, so what else could I do? I know you think I’m too young. I came to tell you I’m not. I’m old enough to know my own mind.’

Her face was turned away from him, her eyes still fixed on his skis. Gently, Josh held out his hand. She ignored it, and he fitted his fingers around her wrist. ‘I think you do know your own mind,’ he whispered. ‘The question is, whether I know mine.’

She turned to look at him then. They watched each other, wary.

Josh was thinking that ten minutes ago, with his Long Lanyard ski bindings and his new Subito boots, everything had been simple. It wasn’t simple now, and it would grow steadily more complicated. All the risks that he had sensed and shied away from in Julia Smith were intensified now, and Josh was elated to realise that he didn’t care. He looked at Julia’s rosy cheeks and burning eyes. It was right that she was here. Better than right, much, much better. It was perfect.

‘You know I love you,’ Julia said.

Josh took her other hand. ‘I think I must love you too. Just a bit. A little, tiny bit.’

She jerked her chin up. ‘That’s enough. To begin with, of course.’

He pulled her closer and kissed her. She smelt of cold air, clean and delicious. He wanted to go on smelling and tasting her, but Julia drew away from him.

‘Are you going away?’ She pointed at the ski gear and an open canvas grip on the floor.

He nodded. ‘Into the Inferno.’

Julia rounded on him. ‘Don’t talk in riddles. I was plain and honest with you, wasn’t I?’

Josh laughed, still holding her hands in his. Julia was completely and beguilingly unlike any of the other women he knew. He admired her sharpness. He really did love her, he thought. Perhaps even more than a little bit.

‘It wasn’t a riddle. The Inferno is a ski race. In Mürren, Switzerland. Next Sunday.’

Switzerland. Saw-toothed mountains against the blue sky, and Josh. Julia remembered the square, and her fear of the silence that would choke it as soon as Felix left. And her typewriter, crouching under its black hood, waiting to recapture her on Monday morning.

She didn’t hesitate any longer. ‘Take me with you,’ she begged him.

With anyone else, Josh would have snorted with laughter. No one took any diversions to the Inferno, he would have said. But simple responses like that had slipped out of his reach now. He sighed.

‘Yes, you can come with me,’ Josh said. ‘We leave on Wednesday morning.’

He saw the delight and disbelief leap together in her face, and he thought how lovely she was. It would be his pleasure to show her the mountains.

‘I’ll be ready,’ she promised him.

‘What about your work?’

‘There are thousands of jobs,’ Julia answered. ‘But only one chance to do this.’

At last, she thought. She was in motion too. You have to make a life for yourself.

‘I haven’t got very much money,’ she said awkwardly. Just a bit, that I’ve saved. How much will I need?’

‘Oh Jesus, I’m not a millionaire,’ Josh groaned, ‘but I guess you can come along at my expense.’

She smiled at him, a brilliant smile. ‘Thank you.’

They went to the timbered pub for a celebratory drink, and afterwards Julia insisted on being driven to the station in the black MG. Josh protested, but she was adamant that she wouldn’t stay. Julia was intrigued to discover that suddenly she wielded power too.

‘Wednesday morning,’ she beamed at him, and reluctantly he let her go.

On Thursday morning they were in Switzerland.

At the little station at Lauterbrunnen Julia gazed upwards. The peaks of the Bernese Oberland reared massively into the sky. In the course of the long train journey the world had lost its familiar shades of earth and mud and winter grass and had turned monochrome. Everything here was spidery black, or grey, or glittering white, and the air tasted thin and sharp.

She waited quietly, breathing it in.

Josh was across the platform beside the mountain train. He was tenderly stowing his ski bag into a little open wagon already bristling with skis. If he could have slept with them beside him in the couchette berth last night, Julia thought with amusement, he would gladly have done so. Since yesterday morning she had discovered that she was as bad a traveller as Josh was a good one. As the boat train rumbled across the river from Victoria Station and into the shadow of Battersea Power Station Julia had delightedly told Josh, ‘This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.’

He had grinned back and drawled, ‘Wait till you see the Inferno.’

But in the long progress over the Channel and across France impatience had replaced the first exhilaration. She paced up and down the corridor, anxious for the new experience to begin now, at once, while Josh dozed in his corner seat. She stared at him, baffled. The train slowed and stopped in the middle of a wide, empty field. Josh opened one eye to look at her. ‘Relax,’ he murmured.

But Julia lay awake for most of the night in her couchette berth, listening to Josh and the other passengers breathing through the unhypnotic rattle of the wheels. And now they were almost there.

Josh turned and hoisted the rest of their bags into the train. ‘Let’s go,’ he called to her.

They climbed in and skiers in knitted caps and nylon anoraks crowded in after them. The train jerked forward, nosing the ski wagon ahead of it. It reared upwards, climbing at a sharp angle.

Julia leaned forward, pressing her face against the window. Black-limbed trees poked up out of folds and curls of snow along the track. The trees slid past and fell away behind them. Julia watched mesmerised, only half hearing the babble of French and German around her. The train climbed on, higher and higher.

As it shuddered to a halt at the upper station the sun came out. Black and white changed instantly to blue and silver. Julia looked up, through air that seemed to glitter with crystalline specks, and saw the Eiger pointing over her. She stumbled down the steps of the train into the snow.

‘Wengen,’ Josh announced unnecessarily.

Julia looked at the little wooden houses, each with its three-cornered hat of snow. It was like a toy village handed to a child. She thought she had never seen anywhere so pretty, or so unreal. It was enchanting to have arrived here, of all places, with Josh.

Julia’s everlasting memory of her first days in Wengen was of being wrong, conclusively wrong in the big things and on, down to the smallest detail. Her appearance was wrong, her voice and her manners were wrong, her clothes and her opinions and her inability to ski were laughable, but most unforgivable of all was the fact that she was with Joshua Flood.

Frau Uberl was a square, motherly Swiss widow who ran her chalet as an informal guesthouse for English girls race-training with the British-run Downhill Only Club. Frau Uberl and a flinty Scots matron inappropriately named Joy chaperoned the girls between them. On that first morning Frau Uberl showed Julia to her bed in a wooden-floored four-bedded room under the sloping eaves. The window looked over its balcony to the Eiger. Julia wanted to rush across and fling it open to gulp in the air and the view, but her room-mates were eyeing her suspiciously. They had names like Belinda and Sophia, and they wore thick patterned jumpers that clung to their bosoms, and tight Helanca ski-pants. Julia noticed that they all had enormous bottoms and she told herself in an effort at superiority that she wouldn’t wear pants like that if she was half their size.

Belinda perched on the end of Julia’s bed to watch her unpack. Out came the silk blouses and tweed jackets from Brick Lane, home-made evening dresses and Jessie’s scarlet kimono, her adored jet jewellery. Julia picked up the long earrings and fixed them in her ears, tossing her head to make them swing.

There was nudging and muffled giggling behind her back. If only Mattie was here, she thought grimly.

She turned round sharply and caught them at it. The youngest pinched her nose to stop the laughter exploding.

‘I don’t ski, you know,’ Julia said loftily, to forestall them. ‘I’ve only come out here to see Josh win the Inferno.’

That silenced them for a moment, but Sophia announced, ‘He won’t win, of course. He’s only an amateur, even though he’s pretty good. Really good, actually, for an American. He might scrape in tenth or twelfth, if he skis brilliantly. What was his place last year, Bel? Twentieth?’

Julia shrugged, and went back to unpacking. She knew they wouldn’t be able to resist asking, and sure enough Belinda was the one who came out with it. ‘How long have you known Josh?’ ‘Oh, months now. Let’s see. He took me flying for the first time in the autumn … yes, it’s ages. It’s getting quite serious, I’m afraid.’ She laughed apologetically. They stared at her enviously.

‘How funny that you don’t ski,’ Sophia murmured. ‘When it’s so important to him.’

‘Is it?’ Julia shook out the last blouse and hung it up in the communal wardrobe. It was full of large, sensible tweed skirts and three almost identical taffeta dance dresses. ‘Do you all ski?’ It was as if she had asked, Do you all breathe?

‘You don’t need taffeta dresses to ski in.’

‘Oh no. Those are for the Swann Ball. Everyone goes.’

Julia didn’t enquire any further.

Julia went slowly downstairs to the kitchen, where she found Frau Uberl. The Swiss woman beamed at her, and Julia, with relief, recognised foreign impartiality to class and probably ski-competence as well.

‘You will be wanting something to eat, no?’

‘Yes please.’

The plate that was put in front of her was piled up with meatballs and sauce and potatoes smothered in cheese. Julia stared at it in amazement. ‘Frau Uberl? Thank you, but I can’t possibly eat all this.’

‘Ach, you will. You are as thin as a pin. You will need it if you ski this afternoon.’

I doubt it, Julia thought, but she struggled with it as best she could. The Frau clucked over her left-overs, but then Josh arrived to rescue her.

He was wearing navy ski pants and a light blue padded jacket with a knitted collar and cuffs. He had laced ski-boots and a navy knitted cap with a tiny US flag stitched to it. He held his skis over his shoulder with one arm curled lightly round them, and he looked absurdly handsome. Julia followed him down the path.

‘Let’s go and rent you some skis.’ He looked her up and down. She had changed into the nearest approximation of ski-wear that her wardrobe would yield, and Josh nodded briskly. ‘That’ll do for the nursery slopes. Are you going to ski in those earrings?’ ‘Bloody nursery slopes,’ Julia snarled under her breath. ‘Yes, I’m going to ski in these earrings. I’m probably going to die in them as well.’

Josh grinned. ‘You won’t die. You’ll enjoy it.’

He set off with Julia panting along beside him. She felt possessive and greedy and afraid and inadequate all together, and it was galling that she could hardly even keep pace with him through the slippery snow.

‘Josh! Why have I got to stay with these girls? I can’t bear them. I want to be with you.’

He looked faintly surprised. ‘I told you why. It’s important to appear to behave, at least. Look, when I first came out here I thought the English and their little clubs were so goddam snooty that I skied alone for a month. But once you get to know them, they’re okay. Obey their rules, that’s all, and they’ll be your friends.’

As if to prove his point they came down to the railway track where another fussy little train was waiting to climb on upwards. People leaned out of its windows and shouted, ‘Coo-eee! Josh, we heard you’d arrived. We’re going up to Black Rock, are you coming?’

He waved back, grinning. ‘No, I’m going to the nursery slopes.’

‘Ha ha ha. What’s the secret? Hiding yourself until Sunday?’

‘Wait and see.’

Julia plodded on, thoroughly disheartened. ‘I’m cramping your style,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

He put his free arm round her shoulders. Julia managed to stop herself burying her head against his anorak. ‘I’m glad you’re here. We’ll have a good time, you’ll see. Sophia Bliss and the others are nice girls. Just not very much like you.’

‘Not much,’ Julia agreed, thinking Swann Ball indeed. Taffeta dress and all.

‘Why don’t you give them a chance? Watch them. You might even learn something.’

‘I might,’ she conceded, doubting whether it was anything she would want to know. Then she thought of Felix. They had been gentle with each other since the night of the funeral. Jessie’s death and their failure in bed had drawn them close. Felix had made her critical of her own clothes, taught her the difference between good food and bad food, made her aware of the existence of style. Felix was always telling her to use her eyes and ears. Perhaps Josh was right. Perhaps the Belindas could teach her something, even if it was only never to wear tight pants over thirty-eight-inch hips. And some breathless upper-class argot. Might come in useful some day, Julia thought philosophically.

They reached the ski-hire shop and Julia submitted herself to having boots strapped to her feet and poles thrust into her hands.

After that, everything was awful.

Josh came to the beginners’ slope but Julia soon begged him to go away and leave her to her humiliation. He went, bestowing her on the Swiss ski-school instructor and a gaggle of tiny Dutch and German children. For the first time in her adult life Julia discovered that her rangy height was a disadvantage. She had further to fall than the little children, and every puff of wind seemed enough to blow her over. She fell so often that it began to seem simpler just to lie in the snow, only Heini the instructor came and hauled her to her feet again.

Snow filled her mouth and ears and slid down her neck. Her hands froze to her poles and her legs ached so that she could hardly lift her skis. She wobbled and slithered and Heini yelled, ‘Bend your knees!’ and the children sliced cheekily past her.

At the end of the afternoon, when the snow had turned blue in the fading light, half a dozen skiers appeared at the top of the slope. They swooped down together, their immaculate pure christies carving a sinuous line down to the village. They were whooping and calling to each other, and Julia recognised Belinda and her friends. They were as graceful as swans on their skis. She ducked her head and shrank behind Heini and the children, impressed in spite of herself.

Julia didn’t see anything of Josh while there was enough light to ski by. She knew that he went across to Mürren and climbed the Schilthorn to ski the Inferno route, but when she asked him about it he shook his head and didn’t answer.

In the evenings they went out together, but never alone. They ate in candlelit restaurants and drank glühwein in tiny, cosy bars crowded round tables with the other skiers. As well as Joy and her girls and the other DHO regulars there were Inferno competitors who eyed Josh surreptitiously and tried to make him talk about his practice. Amongst them were the members of the military teams competing for the Montgomery Cup. Sophia and her friends found the British and American soldiers particularly fascinating, although Julia was secretly gratified to notice that they looked at her far oftener than they did at the other girls in their reindeer-patterned jumpers.

Josh saw it too. He winked and squeezed her hand.

The only other skier who Julia liked was a sandy-haired tough-looking Scot called Alex. She mentioned him to Sophia as they scrambled home through the silent, biting dark before Frau Uberl’s midnight curfew.

‘Oh no, not him. You can’t,’ Sophia shrieked. ‘He’s utterly non-sku. He wears his socks outside his ski-pants.’

Julia smiled in the blue dark. Felix would like that.

By Sunday morning, the day of the race, Julia was so stiff and bruised that she could hardly walk. She lowered herself out of bed and groaned on all fours on the shiny floorboards.

Belinda was infuriatingly doing kneebends by the window. She came round the end of Julia’s bed and peered down at her. Then she held out her hand. Julia glared at it, but she needed help. She took the hand and Belinda pulled her upright.

‘Ouch. Oh, God. I can’t walk. I’m crippled.’

Belinda giggled. ‘It’ll get better after today. Promise. You’ll start to loosen up. You know, I saw you with Heini yesterday.’ ‘How embarrassing.’

‘Not a bit. You’re doing really well. Isn’t she, Felicity?’

‘Brilliantly.’

To her surprise, Julia felt herself turning crimson with pleasure. Their praise was unexpected and welcome, but it was also a gesture of friendship. She had turned into enough of a skier for a truce to be called.

She smiled at them. ‘Thanks.’

‘Are you going to watch the race?’ Belinda asked.

‘I don’t know where to go,’ Julia admitted. Josh had told her airily to go with the girls. She did know how desperately she wanted to see him compete.

‘Come with us. We’re going up the Alibubble.’

‘I will, then. Thanks again.’

Josh had set out while it was still dark.

He reached the top of the Allmendhubel funicular at eight thirty, and with his skis over his shoulder he started to climb. He set himself a careful, steady pace. There were almost four hours of climbing ahead of him. The race would begin at midday, and the thirty-two competitors would be started at thirty-second intervals. Josh knew from experience that it required perfect timing not to arrive hurried and winded, and not to have to wait for too long on the summit of the freezing mountain.

He frowned at the snow as he climbed steadily beside the downhill route. It had been unseasonably warm and wet at the beginning of February, but fresh heavy snow had fallen on the slippery base in the last week. He prodded his long pole into the glistening powder as he tramped upwards. When he glanced towards the heights above he could pick out the figures of other competitors, black and grey specks against the snow.

Julia and the others clambered out of the funicular just before midday. A handful of spectators was already clustered in the lee of the station hut, cheerfully passing flasks amongst them. Belinda produced the provisions Frau Uberl had sent and they gulped thankfully at hot chocolate laced with plum brandy.

Sophia looked at her watch. ‘Exactly twelve.’

Josh was number fifteen. In seven minutes, he would be on his way down. Julia felt her heart knocking painfully in her chest.

Josh was waiting in a silent line of skiers. He knew most of them, although they were barely recognisable beneath their caps and yellow-lensed goggles. No one spoke. The Swiss official at the head of the line raised his arm and then dropped it. The first competitor plunged away. Josh heard the thrilling swish of skis through the powder, but he didn’t look. He was breathing slowly and evenly. His fingers flexed in the loops of his poles. He was following the course in his head, every twist and dive of the endless, treacherous fourteen kilometres.

Swish. Swish. Starter after starter.

Josh moved forward in the line. Swish. Two people ahead of him. He eased his goggles over his eyes. In a little more than thirty minutes, with luck, he would be at Lauterbrunnen, nearly three thousand feet below.

Next but one. The Scot, Alex Mackintosh, was just ahead at number fourteen. The raised arm fell again and Josh was at the head of the line. He had taught himself never to feel nerves, Fear was one thing, it was a safeguard, but nerves were simply destructive. The seconds ticked off. In the last two or three, as he crouched ready for the arm signal, he wondered where Julia would be watching.

Swish.

Josh didn’t hear the rasp of his own skis. He was off, traversing the opening slope that was as steep as a roof. Down, and down, with the powder spurting up behind him. So fast that it was gone while the starter’s arm still flickered in his head. At the bottom, a sweeping left turn and into the Engetal, the Happy Valley. Ahead lay a great schuss, a huge S-shaped sweep that dropped more than a thousand feet.

Josh was travelling like a bullet. The speed pinned the flesh of his face to the bones, carving a white smile beneath the blank goggles. But behind the yellow shields his eyes were like an eagle’s. They saw every bump and turn and carved out a path for him before his skis sliced over it. He had become a machine, as he always did when he skied at his best. His blood froze and his body fused to the skis.

Down. The wind and the snow plumes and the sweet slicing turns.

On down. Like flying, but rawer. Like diving, but faster and fiercer. Like sex. Like death itself.

Almost the bottom of the Happy Valley. A right-hand turn and ahead a flat traverse, then a rise to the Mürren ski hut, and the control point.

Josh’s head jerked up.

He heard the roll of thunder before he saw anything. But he knew that it wasn’t thunder. It was a crack and a spreading roar that came from the Schwarzgrat, high overhead. The noise rose up to choke him, indistinguishable from his own fear. Then he saw the snow falling off the cliffs. Only it wasn’t snow any more. It was vast white monuments that dropped and sent up billowing clouds and brought rocks and trees and churning debris racing towards him.

Josh turned with such violence that spraying snow lashed his face. He shot away at an angle with the avalanche clawing at him like a nightmare. And out of the corner of his eye, in one split second, Josh saw Alex Mackintosh. The ragged white wall swept him up and threw him over and over like a twig, and then he was gone.

The leading edge of the avalanche caught Josh at the same instant. It smashed him down and punched the breath out of his body. He folded his arms helplessly around his head as the snow gagged him, blinded him and sucked him down. His skis were torn off and he was pitched into blackness, uselessly clawing and fighting against its brutal strength.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of suffocating terror, it was suddenly quiet. Josh opened his eyes, very slowly, as if his eyelids were weighted. There was blue sky above him.

He was gasping for breath and whimpering like an animal, but even as he lay there he knew that he had never seen anything so beautiful as that pure, ice-blue sky.

He stared at it, fighting for his breath, with the euphoric realisation Pm not buried singing in his head. For a long moment he couldn’t move, and he looked up into the wonderful space above him as content as a baby. And then he remembered Mackintosh. He sucked more air into his burning lungs and tried to struggle on to all fours. Pain throbbed down his left side and Josh swung his head from side to side, trying to clear the mist of it. He saw then that the snow had engulfed him up to his thighs. He kicked and writhed, hauling at the debris with his hands to pull himself free. At last he lurched to his feet and saw his skis sticking out of the snow behind him. Josh lunged towards them, one hand pressed to his side, jerking like a clumsy marionette over the snow blocks.

It seemed to take hours.

With each step Josh was trying to work out where in the hideously changed landscape he had last seen Mackintosh.

At last the skis were within his grasp. He wrenched them out of the snow and jammed his boots into the bindings. The way ahead looked almost impassable but he pushed forward, staring into the hollows for any sign of the other skier.

He fell and fell again as he plunged down the slope, and then as he scrambled up again he saw the aluminium basket of a Tonkin pole identical to his own sticking up out of the tumbled mass. Josh hurled himself down next to it, kicking off his skis. He scrabbled at the snow, cursing his hands that seemed so ineffectual against the avalanche debris. He began to gasp with the effort as he worked and sweat ran down behind his goggles, almost blinding him. He glanced up once in desperation and saw black figures bouncing and sprawling over the snow. Help was on the way from the control point at the Mürren hut. He bent down again, working faster, and the ice tore through his knitted gloves.

Then, suddenly, his hand broke through into space. His bare, frozen fingers felt the smooth canvas of a ski-jacket. Josh hauled at the snow, dragging it in chunks away from the man’s body. He was shouting, without knowing what he said, ‘It’s all right. You’re clear. You’re okay.’

And then, like’ a miracle, the body was moving too. It shuddered convulsively and one shoulder appeared. Mackintosh was lying curled on his side, his arms raised in front of his face to make an air pocket, and his Tonkin pole thrust vertically over him.

Josh stuck his hands under the man’s armpits and hauled at him. The Scotsman’s head broke out of the snow and ice as the first of the rescuers reached them. His face was grey and ridges of snow and ice clung to his hair and eyebrows. His blue lips hung open, and he was breathing.

‘He’s alive,’ Josh yelled. His shout rolled over their heads, echoing briefly and then swallowed up by the heights. The rescuers flung themselves forward. There were shovels and ropes now, in place of Josh’s hands. He stood back, shivering a little, looking at Mackintosh’s face.

One of the Swiss officials was shouting something at Josh. He waved, and pointed on down the slope. Josh gaped at him, understanding at last that the man was telling him to go on. He had forgotten all about the Inferno. He shook his head impatiently. Mackintosh was all but free now. They were reaching gently, to lift him on to a canvas stretcher. Somehow, on their backs or on a sledge, they would carry him up to the hut. They had done it often enough before.

‘He is gut,’ one of the officials said. Josh lifted his head then. Racing away, out of his control, his imagination swept to the route down, beyond the avalanche. Mackintosh’s face had been hidden by the backs of the rescuers, but as they moved him Josh saw it again. His eyes were open, incongruously as blue as the sky. He was looking at Josh, and his lips moved.

Go on.

‘Ja, ja.’ They were shouting and pointing again. They were telling Josh that he was to climb back up and walk along the flat to the control point, in order to restart his race from there.

Suddenly, Josh was moving. He snatched up his poles and hoisted his skis over his shoulder. He glanced at Mackintosh for the last time, and saw the flicker of a painful smile.

‘I’ll have to finish for us both, Alex,’ he shouted. ‘You do the same for me some other time.’

He was already on his way when one of the rescuers grabbed his arm. He was holding out his own gloves. Josh tore off his ruined pair and waved the good ones in a salute. Then he was off, up over the debris, his legs pumping like pistons.

At the control hut a DHO regular, Tuffy Brockway, had materialised. He clapped Josh on the back and Josh staggered.

‘They’ll credit you with the time you’ve lost,’ Tuffy roared. ‘It’s happened before. Esme Mackinnon stopped down at Grütsch to let a funeral go by. Took off his cap and stood to attention, of course. They gave him the time back.’

Josh barely heard him. He leaned on his poles for a second, gulping air and trying to steady his shaking legs. He looked down and was amazed to see other skiers skirting the worst of the avalanche. They were sliding and falling, but the race was still in progress.

A stopwatch clicked decisively beside him. Josh’s grip tightened on his poles and he flashed away. Ahead lay a steep drop, a rise up to Castle ridge, and then the hideous Inferno slope itself. Josh tried to shut off the pain that wrenched at his side, the memory of the thundering snow and Mackintosh’s deathly grey face. Alex was alive, and he wanted to stay alive himself. That was all there was room to know now. He was skiing again. A second later there was nothing in Josh’s mind but the way down, unfurling like a treacherous ribbon ahead of him.

At the Allmendhubel, Sophia looked at her wristwatch again. She was frowning. ‘He should have come through by now. And the man before him. If he’s going to stand any chance, he should be here by now.’

They stared up at the route until their eyes stung, searching for another of the black specks that would fly down to them and grow, faster and closer, until it became a man who swooped past them in a glittering plume of speed and ice.

The mountain was empty.

They stood in a huddle, not speaking. Julia’s hands and feet were numb, but she was watching too intently to stamp and clap to try to warm them.

Another minute went by, and stretched into five. No one came, and the other spectators began to mutter at one another, eyebrows raised.

Sophia murmured, ‘Something has happened.’

Looking up, Julia suddenly saw that the mountains were hostile. Josh was somewhere up in that high, white space. She was afraid, and she shivered. Without taking her eyes off the route Belinda put her arm around her. Gratefully, Julia huddled closer. The four girls drew together, waiting.

Then Felicity shouted, ‘Look!’

At last, a black speck appeared on the lip of a col high above them. The skier seemed to hang there motionless for a second, and then he came twisting down the huge slope.

No one spoke. ‘Is it him?’ Julia almost screamed.

Sophia shook her head. ‘Josh doesn’t ski like that.’

Another skier appeared over the col, and then another. The leader came closer, and Julia heard that he was shouting something at them. They crowded forward and she saw his mouth open, a black shape under his blank goggles.

‘Av—a—lanche!’

He was French and the syllables of the word sounded too soft for the images that exploded with it. He lifted his pole and waved it backwards at the white walls. And then he hurtled past them, on and down towards Winteregg below.

Julia did scream now. ‘What does he mean? Where is the avalanche?’

The other skiers passed, unrecognisable, but not Josh. Sophia’s ruddy face had turned grey-white. Julia understood that avalanche was something terrible. She shrank back against the wooden wall of the funicular station, feeling the splintery planks give a little at her back. They waited, still in silence, their faces all turned upwards.

And then, again, Felicity shouted, ‘Look!’

Julia knew at once that this one was Josh. He came, seemingly, straight as an arrow down the dizzying slope. Crouching low over his skis he didn’t swoop, bird-like, as the others had done, Josh had power, not grace. A wordless cry burst out of the girls and before the echo of it had gone Josh was whirling down to them. Julia glimpsed the red silk scarf wound round his neck, the white flash of his smile, and his pole lifted in a brief salute. An instant later he was past and they swung round to watch him carving a straight path down the fall of the slope.

Julia realised that they were all cheering and whooping. The icy air tore at her throat and there were tears of relief and excitement pouring down her face. She clasped Belinda in a bear-hug and they capered in a circle, laughing and gasping.

‘He’s not there yet,’ Felicity warned.

‘But skiing like that,’ Belinda answered, ‘he’ll not only get there, he’ll bloody well win.’

Down again, after the Allmendhubel. Josh had glimpsed Julia at the funicular station, but the thought of her had vanished from his head just as quickly. He was tiring rapidly and he was skiing through open country, over and down treacherous humps, and every atom of concentration and muscle power was needed to find the right route, the fast route. But he had come this far, and determination was like a tight wire inside him.

At Winteregg, he came to the railway line. A bigger knot of spectators waited beside a little tea hut and as he reached them a storm of questions in three languages broke around him. ‘Happy Valley,’ he panted. ‘Alex Mackintosh was hurt, but they’ve got him away now.’

Someone tried to pat him on the back but he ducked away and pushed on again. Beyond Winteregg was a kilometre and a half of flat country. His body felt like lead, but he clenched his teeth and poled on. He thought of Alex Mackintosh’s faint encouraging smile.

And then, at Grütsch station, the route dived downwards again. Josh took one gasping breath and pointed his skis down the slope. Beneath him, beyond the dense fir forests, was Lauterbrunnen.

Down.

The pain had spread to his chest now, and there was burning from his armpits to the top of his thigh. But still, there was the kiss of fresh powder under his skis too, and the clearings between the black trees opening like soft, white mouths.

If he was going to make time, he must do it now. Josh flexed his knees, lower, crouched into an egg-shape. The trees and the snow and the clearings flickered by, but suddenly they were no threat. Miraculously, forgetting everything that had happened, he was part of them. He was inviolable, spawned by the snow itself. The wind of his speed sliced into his cheeks. Josh could hear his own breath rasping in his chest. He was skiing faster and better than he had ever done in his life, and he was drunk on it. In that moment he was all-powerful.

The arches of the funicular loomed and flashed overhead. Still down, crossing and recrossing under the pylons. Then he was out of the trees and open grazing fields lay below him. Swooping across them, the seconds began to beat in his head. How long? How much further? He caught the warm, lowland smell of animal dung. He saw Lauterbrunnen, a frozen sea of snowy roofs. There was the station to one side, and a little road leading to it. The finishing line. Josh’s poles bit into the snow and he flung himself forward for the last time. He knew that he was exhausted now.

A dark knot of people spread across the snowy track ahead of him. He heard them cheering and half turned his head to look for the reason. As he swished over the finishing line he understood that they were cheering for him. The Swiss timekeeper clicked his stopwatch and Josh collapsed against a wooden fence. It sagged beneath his weight but it held him. It was just as well, because Josh couldn’t stand up.

The prize-giving for the 1956 Inferno was held at the Palace Hotel, Mürren. The room was packed with competitors, finishers and non-finishers, organisers and supporters. When Julia saw Josh she felt almost shy of him. She couldn’t manage to struggle across the room to him before silence was called for the results.

Twelve skiers had finished the course.

Julia clenched her fists, struggling to hear. She couldn’t understand any German, and barely a word of the rapid French. There was a lot of cheering and laughing. The Swiss race chairman peered at a sheet of paper. As he read out a name and a number there was a burst of clapping. The winner was the Frenchman, Gacon.

Beside Julia Sophia whistled. ‘Twenty-seven minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Bloody fast. But then he was through before the avalanche.’

Everyone knew about the avalanche. On their way up, the girls had heard that someone had stopped to dig someone else out.

Amidst calls for silence, the second and third placings were read out. Neither of them was Josh. Julia stared with dull disappointment at the back of the head in front of her. She had been sure that Josh would win, whatever Belinda and the others said. She didn’t see Tuffy Brockway stand up, but as soon as he started speaking her skin prickled.

‘In announcing the fourth, and incidentally the highest amateur, placing we have a special commendation to make. This competitor was caught by the avalanche in Happy Valley. Nevertheless he freed himself and went to the rescue of Alex Mackintosh. Alex is now in the hospital in Berne. He has a broken leg, some concussion, other uncomfortable but fortunately minor damages. His fellow-competitor reached him very quickly, and there is no doubt that he was instrumental in saving his life.’

Julia’s heart began to thump in her chest. ‘Once he was assured that Mr Mackintosh was safe, he continued the race. And finished the course in the remarkable time, once credited with the minutes he had lost in helping another man, of thirty-one minutes and seventeen seconds. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to applaud the courage and spirit of Mr Joshua Flood.’

Sophia and Belinda and Felicity cheered wildly with everyone else. Julia sat silent, stock-still, hardly able to see for pride.

Josh was presented with a commemorative Inferno medal. Tuffy Brockway pinned it to his dark-blue jumper for him. In the hubbub afterwards, it was Josh who elbowed his way through the crowd to Julia. Belinda clung to his arm and Sophia and Felicity kissed a cheek each. Julia just looked up at him.

‘Well done,’ she said quietly.

Josh held out his hand and she stood up. The room might have been empty as they looked at each other.

‘Will you do me the honour, ma’am,’ Josh drawled, ‘of accompanying me to the Swann Ball tonight?’

Julia pretended to consider.

‘I might,’ she said at last. ‘I just might, at that.’

He nodded gravely, and offered her his arm. They swept out together.

There was a string orchestra that played Strauss waltzes, and polkas, and foxtrots, and a wide, shining dance-floor. Julia had giggled as Josh led her out on to it. There was no bebop and certainly no rock and roll, but Josh had been properly brought up and he knew the right steps to the right dances. Julia only had to let him whirl her in grandiose circles.

She felt that she had stepped, satisfyingly, into one of her own dreams.

There had been a wonderful banquet at the hotel. They had sat down at long white tables glowing with candles in branched candelabra. After the food and wine there had been speeches, speeches that had seemed funny even to Julia. There had been a toast to the race winners, a special toast to Josh that had made her glow with pride all over again. Julia was wearing Mattie’s greeny-black party dress, far too big for her around the hips and bosom, but Belinda and Sophia had pinned and stitched her into it in the latest demonstration of their new-found friendship. Julia had received enough flattering glances and invitations to dance to make her feel that even if she didn’t belong she could at least cope on her own terms. The champagne was flowing, but Julia was used to drinking at Jessie’s and Mattie’s pace, and the wine simply made her feel that she was floating on a warm tide of happiness.

And there was Josh. Josh with his black bow tie and his white starched shirt, his blond hair watered so that it lay smooth and dark, as correct as any of the Englishmen. Yet somehow wicked as well. The hero and the villain, infinitely more intriguing, all at once.

Julia laid her head against his black shoulder and sighed.

She knew that it was the most perfect evening of her life.

Josh lifted her chin with one finger so that he could look at her. ‘Are you tired?’

‘No. I want to go on dancing for ever.’

‘Mmm. Not quite for ever, perhaps. D’you remember that place that Harry took us to? The night we met?’

Julia remembered it, and she remembered how they had danced then, fused together, making a promise that was still unfulfilled.

The thought struck a white-hot bolt of longing straight through her.

Her feet tangled with Josh’s and they stood still in the swirling sea of dancers.

‘I think we should go upstairs now,’ Josh whispered.

Julia bent her head, unable to say, yes please, and he kissed the thin, warm skin over her temple before they slipped out of the crowded room and left the music soaring behind them.

They ran up the stairs and along the shadowy corridor to Josh’s room, laughing and whispering like children playing truant. But when he had unlocked his door and locked it again behind them the stillness and quiet stifled their laughter. There was a bright white moon in the star-prickled sky, and pale silver-grey squares lay over the floor in front of them. With Josh’s fingers wound in hers Julia went to the window and looked down. She saw the shallow roofs of the little wooden houses under their thick folds of snow. The streets were empty and the village lay in its silver cup with the mountains raising their heads against the stars.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Julia said. And then, reaching awkwardly for the words, ‘I’m so happy tonight. It feels strange.’

‘It shouldn’t be so strange,’ Josh told her.

They turned away from the window and faced each other. They kissed, tasting each other out of hunger, suddenly greedy. It seemed a long time, infinitely too long, since the nightclub in London with Mattie and Harry Gilbert.

Josh’s hand touched the bodice of her dress.

‘May I?’ he asked, and she nodded. He couldn’t find how to undo it and she told him, ‘I’m stitched into it.’

Josh groaned and they were laughing all over again as they pulled at the dress. In the end they tore it off her. Julia stood in her stockings and suspenders while Josh looked at her. They had forgotten the cottage in the woods, and everything else except the grey and silver room, and this moment. Josh unhooked her stockings and rolled them down, and kissed the exposed white skin of her thighs. He kissed her belly, slowly tracing downwards with his tongue, and then he turned her around and touched his mouth to her shoulders and the long furrow of her spine.

Julia’s back arched. ‘Josh.’

He picked her up and put her on his bed. She sank down into the feathery Swiss mattress and the feather coverlet billowed luxuriously around her. She lay in her white nest, watching as Josh undid the ribbon of his black tie. He took the studs out of his shirtfront and the starched wings crackled. As he turned, barechested, Julia saw the vicious dark bruises down one side of his body. She jerked upright, her hair falling around her face, and he looked back at her. His face changed at the sight of her and she was suddenly almost frightened.

‘You’re hurt,’ she whispered.

He was beside her, leaning over her, and she felt the heat of him.

‘The snow fell on me,’ he told her. His mouth closed on her breast. Julia’s head dropped back and she shuddered. Josh struggled out of the rest of his clothes.

‘Isn’t it painful?’ Julia asked innocently. He leaned over her now, and she glimpsed the old, mocking Josh.

‘Tomorrow, I won’t be able to move. But tonight, who gives a goddam?’

He lay down beside her and they reached out for each other, smiling. It seemed very simple to Julia. There was only Josh, and Josh was all she wanted. Her arms locked triumphantly around his neck.

‘Are you sure you want to?’ Josh whispered. ‘The first time …’

‘It isn’t the first time. I went to bed with Felix. The day of Jessie’s funeral.’

He lifted his head to look at her. ‘Is that so? That surprises me, a little.’

‘We were both so sad. It was very sad too. It didn’t work very well.’ She thought of Felix, left alone in the flat waiting for his call-up. He seemed close, important. ‘But it made us better friends.’

‘I’m glad,’ Josh said.

She knew that he meant he was glad she was friends with Felix, that he didn’t have to take the responsibility for the first time, that she was here with him now. If there was anything missing, Julia willed herself not to notice it.

‘I think it will be better for you and me,’ Josh murmured.

His hands stroked her, teasing her, and there was no need to say any more. Julia closed her eyes and this time there was no interruption, nothing except the muffled, unheard music of the little string orchestra and the unseen silver light.

Josh was as thorough and as expert at love-making as at everything else. He was generous, too, and he found that his gentleness drew from Julia’s narrow body an intensity that he had never dreamed of.

Julia hardly knew her own body. Betty’s influence had been strong enough to make sure of that. But what Josh did seemed so natural, surprising at first and then essential. She was amazed to discover that he did it without embarrassment, only humour and tenderness, and she responded to him as he guided her. Their bodies wound together, shiny and supple, and the squares of moonlight crept over the floor.

In the Swann Hotel ballroom the violins played the last waltz and the English skiers joined hands for ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Julia and Josh didn’t hear the singing or the cheering.

At last, when he could lead her no further, Julia’s head fell back and she cried out, one long, silent cry. The discovery was made. The enormous simplicity of it, the depth of satisfaction, left her peacefully rocking like a boat on a wide, spangled sea. She turned and looked into Josh’s eyes. Her mouth curved and he touched it with the tips of his fingers.

Beneath their window the dancers were streaming out of the hotel and lights glimmered on the snow. Julia and Josh lay quite still in one another’s arms, almost shy now, faintly awed by what they had created between them.

‘Thank you,’ Josh said gravely.

Julia was so happy that she wanted to laugh. The feathers from the white coverlet tickled her throat and suddenly she was shaking with it. Josh laughed too, rolling her over and over in the mounds of the mattress and kissing her face and her neck and her breasts. They clung together and Julia rested her head on his chest.

‘I didn’t think it would be like that,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t think it would be so … important. I love you, Josh.’ Her eyes shone and her face was suddenly wet with tears. Josh stroked her hair. He was looking at the navy-blue square of the window, and he didn’t see her face.

There was snow outside the window, and he remembered the race. The Inferno medal was still pinned to his ski-jumper. Josh grinned in the darkness. Julia was in his bed, with her long legs wound round him and the fresh apple-scent of her skin caught in the feather folds. He had enjoyed making love to Julia more than anyone else he could remember. Her pleasure, the surprising strength of it, had made his own much keener. Josh felt himself harden again at the thought of it.

He turned and buried his face in her hair.

‘I love you too,’ Josh said.

Later, Julia asked him, ‘No Frau Uberl’s?’

Drowsily Josh said, ‘Nope. No Frau Uberl’s. I guess I’m popular enough tonight for even Tuffy Brockway to turn a blind eye to immorality. So you see, honey, ski-racing does have its uses after all.’

In the morning, Julia woke up first. She lay looking at the duck-egg-blue sky and thinking, this is being happy. Here and now. If I could take hold of this moment, and keep it …

Josh stirred beside her, and groaned. He opened his eyes and saw Julia leaning over him. Her dark hair brushed his face.

‘I told you I wouldn’t be able to move.’

Julia lifted the covers and inspected his bruises.

‘Hmm. Looks nasty. But you don’t seem to be too badly damaged elsewhere.’

‘That’s luck.’

Julia grinned. Then she lifted her hips and gently slid her body over his.

‘Would you like me to move for you?’

‘Yes, please,’ Josh said.

It was long past breakfast-time at Frau Uberl’s when Julia skidded back through the snow to the chalet. The hem of Mattie’s dress was bunched up under her coat, but Julia felt that her evening slippers were painfully conspicuous to the ski-booted crowds. She reached the gate of the chalet and slipped in through the front door and up the stairs. In her room all four beds looked identically slept in, and Frau Uberl’s maid was polishing the floor under Felicity’s. Julia shot her a dazzling smile, grabbed her ski-clothes, and fled to the bathroom to change. Sophia was hovering there, white-faced after her evening of champagne and army officers. They eyed each other, and then Julia held out her hand.

None of them was like Mattie, but Josh was right. They were nice, friendly girls.

‘Thanks,’ Julia said.

Sophia nodded and weakly shook hands. ‘We guessed you wouldn’t be in. We rolled in your bed and told the Frau you’d gone out early to the slopes. She looked so pleased that you were getting keen at last, it was quite touching.’ Sophia peered at her, but she was clearly feeling too ill to be envious. ‘What about you? Are you all right?’

‘Never better.’

Sophia shuddered and gripped the edge of the basin. ‘Wish I could say the same.’

Julia patted her back. ‘What you need is Mattie Banner’s patent hangover cure. I’ll get you a glass.’

Innocent in her ski-clothes, Julia ran downstairs to the girls’ sitting room. A tray of drinks was kept on the sideboard for them to offer to their visitors, and Julia had seen a bottle of vodka lurking behind the sherry. She sloshed tomato juice on top of a generous slug of it and bore the glass into the kitchen. Assuring Frau Uberl that the English often resorted to it when they required a really nourishing snack after violent exercise, she added a beaten egg. Under Felix’s tutelage, Mattie insisted on celery salt for her own concoction. There was nothing of the kind in Frau Uberl’s cupboard so Julia put in a liberal dash of Tabasco sauce and carried the result up to Sophia.

She put the glass into her shaking hand.

‘Here you are. It’s kill or cure, actually.’

Sophia gulped it down. ‘Oh, God.’

In Sophia’s case it was cure. Fifteen minutes later the girls were in a café, facing each other over mugs of hot chocolate.

‘So you stayed the night with Josh?’ Sophia narrowed her eyes against her cigarette smoke, a woman of the world.

Julia nodded. It was snug in the café, and missing Mattie to confide in, she blurted out, ‘It was the first time.’

Sophia stared at her, unable to keep hold of her veneer of knowingness. ‘What was it like?’

Julia remembered asking Mattie, in the same words, on top of the bus from Euston Station. It was all right, Mattie had said. Only that. Because of the dreadful-sounding man she had chosen? Oh, Mattie, Julia thought. And then she looked over the rim of her cup into Sophia’s prominent pale-blue eyes.

‘It was wonderful,’ she said, with perfect honesty.

After that, Julia found that she enjoyed Wengen as much as Josh had promised her she would. With the Inferno safely behind him he was free to ski with her, and under Josh’s instruction Julia blossomed. It was as if something profound had happened to her body. Her knees flexed of their own accord, and her rigid spine melted. Her skis were no longer flat, heavy boards that tangled and crossed and wilfully tripped her up. They grew sharp edges that hissed delightfully through the snow and even, one magical afternoon, carried her all the way down the hated nursery slope in a series of elegant arcs.

‘Hey.’ Josh caught her cheeks between his gloved hands. ‘You can do it.’

Julia beamed back at him. ‘You’re right. I can do it.’

In that successful instant she had caught a glimpse, at last, of what they were all so mad about.

Josh took her on the little train, on upwards from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg, right under the blue and grey pyramid of the Eiger. With Josh’s broad, blue shoulders reassuringly just ahead of her, she skied all the way down again.

‘You can ski,’ he told her. ‘You may not make a flier, but you can damn well ski.’

Julia was so glowingly proud of herself, and so pretty, that he wanted to undo her ridiculous parka and make love to her there and then on the icy piste that led down into Inner Wengen.

There were no more nights in the Swann Hotel, but there were afternoons as the skiers crossed through the snow under their window, calling to one another, and the white light faded gently to blue and then to grey as soft as the duck feathers that escaped from their covers.

Their evenings were noisy with music and skiing jokes and the giggly company of Belinda and the others.

‘We didn’t like you much, to start with,’ Sophia confided as they downed another glühwein. ‘We thought you were, you know …

‘Non-sku? Like Sandy Mackintosh?’ Julia asked innocently.

Sophia blushed and giggled. ‘But you’re good fun. And you’ve got guts, as well. That’s what counts.’

Julia widened her eyes. ‘Guts? Is that really it?’ But there was no point in teasing Sophia, because she was never aware of it. ‘I thought you were all stupid and snobbish. But you’re okay, really, all of you. And you can ski.’

They raised their glasses and toasted each other.

Julia had been in Switzerland for almost two weeks when she looked out of the window of the Swann Hotel and sighed at the sight of a fresh fall of snow.

‘Grass,’ she said softly. ‘Leaves and bare earth. Flowers. They’re there, underneath it all, aren’t they?’

Josh came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. ‘Restless? It’ll be time to move on, pretty soon.’

Julia had known that the sentence must be pronounced, but she was angry with herself for being the instigator of it.

‘I’m not restless. I’d like to stay here for ever.’

Josh laughed. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back and rake together some dollars to pay for our pleasures. But what would you say to going south just for a few days first?’

She looked at him, knowing that she would follow him anywhere. ‘South of what?’

‘Italy. I’ve never seen much of it.’

‘I’d say yes.’

Josh’s energy was impressive. Once anything was decided, arrangements were made at whirlwind speed. Maps were consulted and tickets were bought, a farewell party was held in the Swann Bar, and they were on their way, all in the space of twenty-four hours. Belinda and Sophia and Felicity came down to Lauterbrunnen to wave them off.

‘Bye—ee! See you next year? Promise? Really and truly?’ They meant Julia as well as Josh. Josh only grinned at them, but Julia murmured, ‘I’ll try.’ A year with Josh was unimaginable, but it was unthinkable without him.

She felt cold as she sat down opposite him.

The train journey took them from Berne to Turin, from Turin to Rome, and from Rome to Naples. The landscapes sliding past the smeared windows of the hard-seated Italian railway carriages conquered even Julia’s impatience with long journeys. She watched entranced as the world changed from white to brown, and from brown to rich, succulent green. South of Rome there were silvery olive groves and vines that had put out fresh leaves, men working in the fields and wild flowers scrambling over the banks beside the track. After the hard white Alps the fecundity made Julia feel drunk. The train slowed beside a country road, and there was an old woman in a black dress trudging beside a donkey, its wicker panniers full of yellow flowers.

‘Look.’ Julia pointed, her eyes shining.

Josh took her hand. ‘I like travelling with you. Everything hits you square in the face.’

‘It’s because I’ve never seen anything before,’ Julia told him. She wanted to fix everything inside her head, so that she could remember it when it was all gone. They reached Naples, and found a crumbling hotel to stay in. Julia made Josh buy a guidebook, and led him through tiny, teeming streets into musty churches, down rancid alleyways into food markets, up steps and round corners into blind turnings. The smells and the crowds and the colour and sudden violence of street-life fascinated her. She was alternately shocked by the poverty and charged by the pure vitality of the people. Josh was less drawn to it all. He had an American distaste for their insanitary hotel, and a positive mania about the Neapolitan ingenuity at relieving him of his money.

‘Damn cities,’ he grumbled. ‘I didn’t come to see places like this, and one old church is pretty much the same as the next one. Let’s get out of here and find a country place.’

They went on southwards to Salerno, and from Salerno they rode on country buses through wide green fields dotted with herds of slow-moving buffalo. The sea glittered at the end of empty roads, bluer than the postcard cliché that Julia had envisaged. In the end it was Julia who saw the perfect stopping place. A steep hill reared out of the coastal plain, and thick stone walls and a skirt of houses clung to the top of it, looking down over a blanket of scrubby trees and bare outcrops of rock to the Gulf of Policastro at its foot.

She only knew three words of Italian, but somehow she made the bus driver understand what she wanted. ‘Questo è Montebellate,’ he told her.

Obligingly, he stopped to let them off. They climbed down with their heavy suitcases and stood blinking in the sunshine, much too hot in their thick clothes. The bus trundled away and left Julia and Josh staring at the tortuously steep road that led up to Montebellate.

They were lucky. A dusty pick-up truck driven by a nut-faced man stopped, and they climbed into the back. They wound upwards, the ancient engine labouring, and slowly the Campania countryside and the shimmering sea spread out beneath them. Julia saw that the rough grass between the rocks was starred with wild flowers, flowers that looked like English harebells and ladies’ smock, but bigger and brighter. The pungent scent of herbs was everywhere, reminding her sharply of Felix, cooking at home.

‘Italy,’ Julia murmured voluptuously.

If only Felix could see this. In the square, in London, it was mid-March and the bare plane trees would be shiny-black with rain.

When they reached the little houses clinging under the shelter of the stone walls, their driver shouted a torrent of Italian and stopped with a jerk outside a little pink-washed house. The door was painted the same blue as the harebells, and above it was a hand-painted sign, Pensione Flora.

‘Can we stay here?’ Julia breathed.

Josh hauled cheerfully at the luggage. ‘Why not?’

A woman in an apron came out of the pensione and stared at them. Josh opened the phrase-book they had bought in Naples and began to ask.

Julia couldn’t bear to listen in case the woman said no. She crossed the road and folded her arms on the top of the warm stone wall. The hill rolled precipitously from its foot. Below her was the sea, fringed with white and gold, and the ochre and spring-green and amber squares of the land.