A Place of Hiding

“Ah.” Deborah upbraided herself for being so careless as to give herself away, even more for proving her husband right. But she damn well wasn’t out of her depth, as Simon would doubtless declare her, and she determined to prove it. “I saw what happened at the grave site,” she admitted.

“When you were given the shovel? You seemed...Well, as I’ve lost someone as well—years ago, I admit—I thought you might want to...terribly arrogant, I realise. But losing someone is difficult. Sometimes it helps to talk.”

He grabbed up the plastic container and dumped half of it directly into the water, which burst into a frenzy of activity. He said, “I don’t need to talk about anything. And especially not about him.”

Deborah’s ears pricked up at this. “Was Mr. Brouard...? He would have been rather old to be your dad, but as you were with the family...?

Your granddad perhaps?” She waited for more. If she was patient enough, she believed it would come: whatever it was that was eating him up inside. She said helpfully, “I’m Deborah St. James, by the way. I’ve come over from London.”

“For the funeral?”

“Yes. As I said, I don’t much like funerals as a rule. But then, who does?”

He snorted. “My mum. She’s good at funerals. She’s had the practice.”

Deborah was wise enough to say nothing to this. She waited for the boy to explain himself, which he did, although obliquely.

He told her his name was Stephen Abbott and he said, “I was seven as well. He got lost in a whiteout. You know what that is?”

Deborah shook her head.

“It’s when a cloud comes down. Or the fog. Or whatever. But it’s really bad and you can’t tell which way the hill is going and you can’t see the ski runs so you don’t know how to get out. All you see is white everywhere: the snow and the air. So you get lost. And sometimes—” He turned his face away. “Sometimes you die.”

“Your dad?” she said. “I’m sorry, Stephen. What a horrible way to lose someone you love.”

“She said he’d find his way down. He’s an expert, she said. He knows what to do. Expert skiers always find their way. But it lasted too long and then the snow started, a real blizzard, and he was miles from where he ought to have been. When they finally found him it’d been two days and he’d been trying to hike out and he’d broken his leg. And then they said...they said if they’d only got there six hours sooner—” He drove his fist into what remained of the pellets. They sprayed out of the container and onto the rock. “He might’ve lived. But she wouldn’t’ve liked that much.”

“Why not?”

“It would’ve kept her from collecting her boyfriends.”

“Ah.” Deborah saw how it fitted together. A child loses his beloved father and then watches his mother move from one man to the next, perhaps out of a grief she cannot bear to face, perhaps in a frantic effort to replace what she’s lost. But Deborah also saw how it might appear to that child: as if the mother hadn’t loved the father in the first place. She said, “Mr. Brouard was one of those boyfriends, then? Is that why your mother was with the family this morning? That was your mother, wasn’t it, then? The woman who wanted you to have the shovel?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That was her, all right.” He brushed at the pellets that he’d spilled round them. They flipped into the water one by one, like the discarded beliefs of a disillusioned child. “Stupid cow,” he muttered.

“Bloody stupid cow.”

“To want you to be part of the—”

“She thinks she’s so clever,” he cut in. “She thinks she’s such a bloody good lay...Just spread ’em, Mum, and they’ll be your puppets. Hasn’t worked so far, but if you do it long enough, it bloody well might.” Stephen surged to his feet, grabbing up the container. He strode back to the teahouse and went inside. Again, Deborah followed him. From the doorway she said, “Sometimes people do things when they miss someone terribly, Stephen. On the surface what they do looks irrational. Unfeeling, you know. Or even sly. But if we can get past what it looks like to us, if we can try to understand the reason behind it—”

“She started right after he died, all right?” Stephen shoved the bag of fish food back into the cupboard. He slammed its door. “One of the ski patrol instructors, only I didn’t know what was going on right then. I didn’t figure it out till we were in Palm Beach and by then we’d lived in Milan already and Paris and there was always a man, do you see, there was always... That’s why we’re here now, d’you get it? Because the last was in London and she couldn’t get him to marry her and she’s getting desperate because if she runs out of money and there’s no one, then what the hell is she going to do?”

The poor boy cried at that, wrenching, humiliating sobs. Deborah’s heart went out to him and she crossed the teahouse to his side. She said,