Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher

Author:Rosamunde Pilcher [Pilcher, Rosamunde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250032225
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2013-03-23T07:00:00+00:00

A GIRL I USED TO KNOW

The cable-car, at ten o’clock in the morning, was as crammed with humanity as a London bus at rush-hour. Grinding, swaying slightly, it mounted, with hideous steadiness, up into the clear, blindingly bright air, high over the snowfields and scattered chalets of the valley. Behind them, the village sank away—houses, shops, hotels clustered around the main street. Far below lay great tracts of glittering snow, blue-shadowed beneath random stands of fir. Ahead and above it climbed—it gave Jeannie vertigo just to think about it—towards the distant peak piercing the dark-blue sky like a needle of ice …

The peak. The Kreisler. Just below it stood the sturdy wooden buildings of the upper cable station, the complex of the restaurant. The face of this edifice was one enormous window, flashing signals of reflected sunshine, and overhead fluttered the flags of many nations. Both the cable-car station and the restaurant had seemed, from the village, as distant as the moon, but now, with every moment, they drew closer.

Jeannie swallowed. Her mouth felt dry, her stomach tight with apprehension. Pressed into a corner of the cable-car, she turned her head to look for Alistair, but he and Anne and Colin had become separated from her in the rush to get on board, and he was away over on the other side. Easy to spot, because he was so tall, his profile blunt and handsome. She willed him to turn and catch her eye, to give her a smile of reassurance, but all his concentration was for the mountain, for the morning’s run down the Kreisler and back into the village.

Last night, as the four of them had sat in the bar of the hotel, she had said, “I won’t come.” There was dancing going on and a jolly band in lederhosen.

“But of course you must. That was the whole point of your coming on holiday, so that we could all ski together. It’s no fun if you spend the whole time rabbiting around on the nursery slopes.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“It’s not difficult. Just long. We’ll take it at your speed.”

That was even worse. “I’ll hold you back.”

“Don’t be so self-abasing.”

“I don’t want to come.”

“You’re not frightened, are you?”

She was, but she said, “Not really. Just frightened of spoiling it for you.”

“You won’t spoil it.” He sounded marvellously certain of this, just as he was marvellously certain of himself. He seemed not to know the meaning of physical fear, and so was unable to recognize it in another person.

“But…”

“Don’t argue any more. Don’t talk about it. Come and dance.”

* * *

Now, crammed into a corner of the cable-car, she decided that he had forgotten her existence. She sighed, and turned back to the window to view the void, the impossible, dizzying height. Far, far below, the skiers were already moving down the pistes, tiny antlike creatures drawing trails in the virgin snow, flying down the slopes back to the village. It looked so easy. That was the horrible thing, it looked so easy.

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