“One would be enough for me,” I said. You couldn’t even phone to another country with my cell phone. Which meant I hadn’t heard Henry’s voice for ten days. At least, not on the phone.
The last time Mia and I had been on skis was eight years ago. So it was exciting when Papa took us to the top of the slope on our very first day. He thought skiing was like riding a bicycle: you never forgot how to do it. We could now refute that theory. I guess I was the first person ever to come down the entire World Cup slalom course at Adelboden on my behind. Papa had laughed like crazy and kept on asking solicitously about my poor bruised bum. That reawakened my ambition, so on the second day I spent only half as long lying in the snow. By the end of the vacation, I could ski faster than Papa, but I’d paid a high price for it.
At least I wasn’t still limping as we came through the arrivals gate with our baggage. My stiffness was beginning to wear off.
We heard Mom’s cries of “Yoo-hoo! Here we are!” before we saw her, and funnily enough it didn’t bother me at all to see that Ernest was with her. By this time, I’d obviously not only gotten used to the idea that he was part of our lives now—at some point in the last four months I must have begun to like him. I was only a tiny bit disappointed that Henry wasn’t there, when he’d said that he would meet me at the airport.
“You two look as if you’ve had a good time,” said Mom after she’d hugged us. “As fresh and rosy-cheeked as two Swiss girls straight from the Alpine pastures.”
“That’s frostbite,” said Mia. “With luck, we’ll never need to use blush again.”
Mom laughed. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!” she said. She looked fantastic, even though she’d been back to the hairdresser who gave her a style like Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s. I hoped I’d look as good as Mom did at her age—aside from the hairstyle, of course.
But however hard I looked for Henry, there was no sign of his untidy shock of dark-blond hair anywhere. I was now more than just a tiny bit disappointed. Maybe he was waiting at the wrong airport.
Ernest, very much the English gentleman, took charge of our suitcases. “Haven’t you brought any Swiss cheese back this time?” he inquired with a twinkle in his eye.
“We did get some Toblerone for you and Mom, but Mia ate it while we were waiting for our flight.”
“Tattletale!”
“Better a tattletale than a greedy pig!”
“Watch out or I’ll kick your poor bruised bum,” said Mia.
Mom sighed. “Now that I come to think of it, it’s been really peaceful without you girls. Come along! Lottie was going to bake sweet rolls filled with jam, her granny’s recipe; they’re called Buchteln, and she says they’re best eaten warm.”
We’d missed Lottie’s food, so we hurried to the car. Eating cheese fondue every evening can be boring. While we’d been in Switzerland, Lottie had gone to visit her family and friends in Bavaria, and whenever she came back from there, she always had lots of wonderful new recipes and couldn’t wait to try them out. We were happy to taste them for her.
On the way home, Mom and Ernest told us all the news (there wasn’t actually any of that, but they talked thirteen to the dozen all the same), and Mia told them all the adventures we’d had skiing. She exaggerated a bit—we hadn’t been stuck in the ski lift for half a day, only fifteen minutes, and it hadn’t been dark by the time the mountain rescue outfit got it going again with a winch; the lift had started moving again in the normal way of its own accord. And there hadn’t really been any avalanche dog coming to our rescue. But, hey, it was more interesting than what Mom and Ernest were saying, so I let her talk away while I switched on my cell phone and looked for any texts from Henry. I found a message from my network provider telling me that I was now back in the United Kingdom, and eleven texts from Persephone wittering on about Jasper, not yet her boyfriend but maybe he would be someday, and calling down curses on all the French schoolgirls he’d be meeting. But nothing from Henry.
Hmm. Did that mean I ought to worry?
We hadn’t met in our dreams as often as we’d agreed to over the last ten days. That had been my fault, or at least the fault of my unaccustomed mixture of exercise, fresh mountain air, and Swiss cheese, all of them taken in large doses. I’d usually slept so soundly that in the morning I couldn’t even remember seeing my own dream door. Henry might well be mad about that. On the other hand, I’d also waited outside his door and never seen anything of him. You couldn’t agree precisely when you’d meet in a dream—I mean, who dreams a detailed timetable?