‘I’ve been skiing since I was ten, more interested in cross-country than downhill. When I was fifteen I started climbing. At university I met Ben and we climbed together during the holidays.’
‘What did you take at university?’
‘A science degree.’
‘Is that how you got a job in Antarctica?’
‘Uh-huh. I studied ice movement, and did a fair bit of climbing there. Later Ben and I did Everest together, and then turned professional.’
‘You make a living climbing mountains?’
‘As mountain guides, nursemaiding recreational climbers to the best climbs around the world. In between, we tackled the real stuff, the places and routes no one had successfully climbed before.’
‘Surely it’s very expensive fitting out an expedition.’
‘I’ve had grants from various institutions to carry out scientific studies on the mountains—the qualities of ice and snow, geological information, environmental studies. And several clothing and equipment firms helped finance our climbs. Ben was good at rustling up sponsors, and he was very photogenic.’ Zachary grinned, half sadly. ‘He even did a bit of modelling work. I teased him about that. You never bumped into him?’
Katrien shook her head. ‘Your family must worry about you.’
‘My mother was killed in a car accident when I was fourteen, and my father died a few years ago of a brain tumour. I have a brother who lives in England with his wife and family. We keep in touch, but his life is too busy to spend it worrying about me.’
‘That was awfully young to lose your mother.’ She still felt grief for her father’s death over a year ago. How much worse it must have been for a fourteen-year-old.
‘Death is the inevitable consequence of life.’ He paused. ‘I learned that a bit earlier than most people, I guess.’
Too early, surely. ‘Is that why you took up climbing?’ she asked, wondering if having his mother taken from him at a vulnerable age was what drove him to risk his life over and over—a need to defy the cruel fate that had taken her from him, to shake his fist in the face of death.
‘It took my mind off things, certainly. When you’re climbing you need to concentrate on your next step all the time. If you don’t, it could be your last.’
‘That’s what I meant.’
He looked surprised, then searching. ‘What you meant?’
She shouldn’t have started this, but he was waiting for her to explain. ‘I just thought…maybe you wanted to show that you could…beat death at his own game, because of your mother.’
Perhaps she had offended him. He seemed disconcerted. ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘you could be right. I’ve never thought of it in those terms.’
She smiled apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to psychoanalyse you.’
‘That’s okay.’ He was staring at her as if seeing her in an entirely new light. She looked down and fiddled with her coffee cup, until he pushed back his chair and said, ‘Right, shall we go back to the run?’
On her fifth day when she arrived at the café he wasn’t there. She unstrapped her skis and drank two cups of coffee she didn’t want before she saw a figure in the distinctive ski suit riding up on the chairlift.
When she came to the door he smiled at her and said, ‘I’m glad you waited.’
She didn’t deny it. Of course she’d waited. The thought intruded that she’d waited a long time for him. Years.
Nonsense. He was just a man, met casually and probably never to be seen again. A very attractive man, but not the first one she’d found sexually appealing. She was bound to meet attractive men even after her marriage to Callum, and she would have to deal with that.
Her dreams had been empty lately; no dark, mysterious figure held her close and murmured in her ear, carried her against his heart.
She was too tired to dream. But it was the kind of healthful tiredness that left her looking forward to the next day and the white, beckoning snow. And each day her skiing had improved, her skills growing as she exerted herself, pushing herself to the limit of her ability in an effort to match Zachary.
The run was clear for once of other skiers, except near the bottom.
They took off side by side, and then Zachary swooped off to the left.
Katrien swerved right, glancing at Zachary to see when he changed direction, and in the same instant she followed, gliding back to meet him.
She saw him laugh, and knew he’d read her mind. They passed in the middle of the run, missed each other narrowly and started new opposing curves.
With any other partner this would have been crazy—she wasn’t nearly good enough to successfully negotiate the hairsbreadth manoeuvres—but she knew he would compensate for her, that she could trust him to get them safely down.
When they made it, to a spattering of applause from a group of people waiting to be transported to the top, she laughed up at him and they slapped gloved hands together in triumph.
She looked back up the slope at the almost perfect series of figure eights in the snow, some cut across by following skiers, and gasped. ‘I don’t believe we did that.’
As an experience it was unrepeatable. Almost superstitiously she knew that trying again would be an anti-climax.
As if he knew it too, Zachary said, ‘Nothing beats the first time.’
Katrien supposed that was why he kept looking for more mountains to climb, peaks that hadn’t been scaled before. She said, ‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’
He looked up the mountain, past the skiers zooming down the slopes, to the high, untouched snow beyond them. Then he looked back at her and said almost urgently, ‘Come climbing with me.’
‘Climbing?’
‘You’ve never tried it, have you?’
Dumbly, Katrien shook her head.
‘Nothing difficult. An easy, beginners’ climb. Today I can teach you some of the basic techniques, and what to do in a fall so you don’t just go on sliding out of control. We’ll find a nice gentle slope to practise on. But we’ll need to get you kitted up before starting an actual climb.’
‘You’ll be bored.’
A strange expression flitted across his face. He looked back up again at the mountain, his profile grim and shuttered. ‘I promise you I won’t be bored.’
He had some gear in the back of his four-wheel-drive, and he found an easy slope not far from the ski run and showed her how to hold an ice axe when climbing, and use it as a brake, as an aid to help herself up a slope, and to probe the snow and discover if it was really firm or just a crust on top of loose powder. He taught her techniques for controlling a fall, and how to work with a partner on a rope.
He asked for her boot size, and next morning called for her at the hotel when it was barely dawn, bringing climbing gear, including boots and crampons and a helmet for her. ‘Borrowed them,’ he told her briefly.
He made her go over what she’d learned, and demonstrated how to remove snow from the spikes of her crampons with an ice axe. ‘You have to keep them free because if your crampons are balled up they can’t grip the slope.’
They had something to eat first, then signed a book for the park rangers stating their intended route and estimated return time, and set out to climb the mountain.
He roped her to him, even