‘Go on!’ she shouted at him. ‘Go on, we don’t want you. Get out of here. Go to her, if that’s what you want.’
Her face was burning. He had never seen such anger in her.
Still only half comprehending what was happening, Gordon ran outside to see what she had done with his things.
The front door slammed behind him.
He turned round and heard her sliding the bolts, and the rattle of the chain as she secured that. Then there was the faint, bland beep that signalled the switching on of the burglar alarm.
It was a bitterly cold night, and he was in his shirtsleeves.
Over his head, in the room that looked out over the driveway, one of the girls had woken up. He heard her, Mary or Alice, whichever it was, beginning to cry.
The chalet rented by three of the Grafton families for their February skiing holiday was in the upper, quieter part of Méribel, near the Rond Point and the ski school. It was a modern building, but the exterior was pleasantly faced with wood and it had a first-floor balcony in rustic Alpine style. Inside, most of the walls and ceilings were lined with tongue-and-groove pine boarding.
Darcy lay on the bed in the best bedroom in the chalet, the only one with its own adjoining bathroom. His hands were folded behind his head and he was staring up at the wooden ceiling. The window opposite him was partly masked with snow and snow was still falling in thick, aimless flakes.
‘This is like living inside some damned great sauna. It even smells the same. I keep wondering why I’m not sweating,’ Darcy remarked.
Hannah was unpacking, taking her silk shirts out of wreaths of tissue paper and hanging them in the tiny wardrobe.
‘Don’t start complaining already,’ she said sharply, without turning.
Darcy did not answer. Hannah was not usually tart, but recently she had become increasingly so. He continued to stare at the ceiling, counting the knotholes in the wood, irritated at the margin of his consciousness by being unable to arrange them into a satisfactory pattern.
He was thinking about money, about the shifting and massaging and redeployment of figures, and making flurried computations in his head. Darcy’s business was money. In all the years he had worked in the City, looking after money for other people and earning it for himself, he had dealt in it with confidence, certain of his own expertise. Then, when he had semi-retired to Wilton with Hannah, he had retained responsibility for half a dozen of his previous clients. He managed their assets from his office in the manor house, making the journey to London as often as it was necessary.
But in the last few months it had begun to seem to Darcy that money was not the abstract, docile commodity he had once imagined. It had started to assume characteristics that he did not understand, slyness and capriciousness, like an irresistible but unreliable woman that he was obliged to court and propitiate.
As he lay on his bed in the chalet Darcy’s heart began to thump uncomfortably. The knotholes in the pine boards jumped and then blurred as he gazed at them too intently.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe evenly to suppress the anxiety that heaved inside him. There was a telephone here in the chalet, but no fax machine. He was glad of that; he needed the respite and the altered perspective of this week in the snow. He was away, legitimately away, on holiday. There was nothing to be done now.
When he looked again, Hannah was finishing unpacking clothes. She placed the last folded pile in a drawer and then zipped up the empty suitcase with a vicious rasp. The door opened and Freddie appeared, already dressed in his brand new ski suit. Laura had been left at home with the au pair because Hannah had judged that she was too young to learn to ski, but this was Freddie’s initiation and he was boiling with excitement.
‘Can we go out in the snow? Jon and William are having a snowball fight, and I want to as well. Mummy, can we?’
Hannah turned to Darcy. ‘Why don’t you take him out?’
It had been a long drive from the airport up to Méribel. Outside it was almost dark. The snowflakes spun out of the darkness to bat themselves briefly against the wet glass.
‘For Christ’s sake, not now,’ Darcy said. ‘There’s plenty of time for that tomorrow. I’m going downstairs for a drink.’
He rolled sideways off the bed, feeling weighty and sluggish, as if his body was too heavy for him to carry.
‘Thanks,’ Hannah called after him.
The chalet telephone was in the first-floor living room, sitting on an orange linen table mat on top of a pine cabinet. In Darcy’s mind the personification of money as a tantalizing woman had become entangled with thoughts of Vicky. As he came into the room he glanced at the phone, but he knew he couldn’t call her. Perhaps there would be a chance later in the week, when everyone was out on the slopes.
Michael Wickham was the only person in the room. He was drinking whisky and reading a Sunday newspaper that he had brought out on the plane from England. Darcy had not bought any liquor on the journey, because he could not be bothered to stand in a line in a duty-free shop in order to get a few pounds off a bottle of Scotch, but he was pleased to see Michael with his large bottle of Johnny Walker uncapped at his elbow.
Michael glanced up, then pointed out an empty glass to Darcy. Darcy poured himself a measure, drank it at a gulp, and then refilled the glass.
‘Thanks.’ He stood at the window, gazing through a patch of condensation at the falling snow. ‘Should be a good week, when it stops.’
Michael folded his newspaper. ‘Yeah. For those of you who can ski.’
Darcy had momentarily forgotten that Michael had not yet progressed beyond shaky blue runs.
‘Hannah will keep you company.’
Hannah was the same standard as Michael; it was one of the reasons why the Cleggs had agreed to accompany the Frosts and Wickhams this year. Darcy himself was an excellent skier.
Michael smiled only rarely, but when he did his face was entirely lit up by it. The illumination came now, surprising Darcy.
‘There is that to look forward to,’ Michael agreed. ‘What’s your room like?’
‘Like the sauna in a council-run sports centre.’
‘Lucky. Ours is like a locker outside the sauna in a council-run sports centre.’
The two men laughed.
In the next room the chalet girl was banging the cutlery as she laid the table for the children’s supper. The Grafton couples had already annoyed her by asking for the children’s meal to be served early, before their own. The back door of the chalet blew open to admit a blast of cold air and a swirl of snow, together with the Frost boys and Jonathan Wickham who had been pushing snowballs down each other’s backs. The boys fell into the room, a tangle of arms and legs and crimson faces.
‘Close the bloody door!’ Michael shouted at them.
Hannah came downstairs, dressed in black velvet jeans and suede ankle boots, with Freddie trailing sulkily behind her.
‘Why couldn’t I play in the snow like the others?’ he was demanding.
‘Any chance of a drink?’ Hannah sighed, not looking at Darcy. Michael stood up and poured her one.
‘Happy holiday,’ she said, firmly clinking her glass against his.
Later in the evening, after the children had dispersed to their bunk beds and the dinner had been eaten, the parents gathered in the pine living room with