“I’m not sure about this. I only did it once before, on a school trip to the indoor one in Milton Keynes. Do you think she’ll mind if I bail?”
There’d been a fierce argument between Polly and Dr. Max over whether or not she could ski. It was too cold, he said, and her bones were so weak a fall could finish her off. But she was adamant. She wasn’t going to die without going skiing one last time. She’d never fallen in her life, and she would stick to gentle slopes and take lots of hot chocolate breaks. Of course she had won. Polly was already swooping elegantly down the nursery slope, rosy-cheeked in a pink ski suit, her remaining blond hair held back by a cute bobble hat. She looked like the popular girls at school, the rich ones who went to the Alps at half-term while Annie and her mum sat watching Doris Day films. The ones who’d never have spoken to Annie in a million years, who laughed at her frumpy vests and home-sewn clothes. And yet here she was, twenty years on, part of Polly’s inner circle.
George slammed past, churning up powder. “Might try that black run next. Up for it, Max?” Costas, who came from sunnier climes, had refused to even try, and was drinking Baileys-laced hot chocolate in the café with Buster.
Dr. Max looked at Annie, still struggling toward the lift like a newborn foal. “I’ll stay here for now. Not for Polly, either! A broken leg won’t give her too many happy days.” Polly stuck out her tongue as she glided past on another run. Annie still hadn’t gone up. She was frozen at the bottom of the lift, holding up the queue.
“Excuse me.”
She moved aside to let the next person on. “Oh, God. That kid can’t be more than four.”
“Aye, they start them young.” How good might Annie have been at it if she’d had parents who took her skiing, instead of starting now, like a clumsy adult baby? It wasn’t fair. “You don’t have to do it,” Dr. Max said, looking longingly at the high slopes, smooth and white as hotel sheets. “Polly will understand.”
“It’s just it isn’t making me very happy right now. More utterly terrified.”
He shifted his skis. They were tangled in hers, like feet entwined in bed in the morning. “The thing about happiness, Annie—sometimes it’s in the contrasts. Hot bath on a cold day. Cool drink in the sun. That feeling when your car almost skids on the ice for a second and then you’re fine—it’s hard to really appreciate things unless you know what it’s like without them.”
Annie looked up the slope. It seemed very high to her, and yet toddlers were zooming down it, little legs set wide and sturdy. She pushed hair from her face, her goggles steamed up in the cold. “Don’t you want to try the harder slopes?” she said hopefully. If he left, then she could sneak off to the bar.
“Och, no, I can go anytime.”
But Polly couldn’t. This would likely be her very last chance to glide down, feeling the air rush cold and clear into her lungs, hearing the crisp schwwoop of the snow as she slid over it. And Annie could do it for the rest of her life and here she was, too afraid to go on the nursery slope. “Will you help me get on the lift?” she asked.
*
She was clinging to him for dear life. His hands, his precious surgical hands, must be in danger of dropping off. He kept up a soothing monologue as she lurched off the lift, walking like a drunk giraffe. “That’s it. Good girl. On you come.”
Annie felt the surface beneath her slip and slide as she ground her skis in so hard she left grooves in the snow. “Oh, God. Oh, God!”
“Annie?” he panted. “Can I give you some advice? Don’t dig in so hard you never actually go anywhere. Okay?”
For a moment she thought he meant in life—that he was giving her a Polly-style inspirational quote. Then she understood. She slackened off her snowplow and felt the ground slide under her. “Don’t let go. Don’t let go!”
He let go. She was moving—she was flying. Gravity had her and she was sliding away from him down the slope. He yelled, “Snowplow. Snowplowwww!”
Annie tried to push her legs out, V-shaped as he’d shown her. But she didn’t have the strength. She realized a second before that she was absolutely, 100 percent going to fall, arms waving, legs wobbling. Then he was beside her, shooting down in a blur of black. “Snowplow! Turn to the left! The left!”
Annie leaned hard on her right leg, and she turned. But she turned straight into him, and for a second his face went into a comical O of shock, and she fell in a heap on top of him. “Oof!”
Winded, they lay there on the snow, as toddlers shot past them. “God, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Your hands!”
He was under her, struggling for breath. “I’ll be...okay.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“Och, Annie. Everyone falls over. It’s how you learn. Can you get up again?”
Polly zoomed past, seeing them still entangled. “Jeez, get a ski lodge, you two.” Annie blushed, filled with some kind of strange guilt on top of her existing feelings of shame, fear and embarrassment. Dr. Max hauled her up, with difficulty.
“There you go,” he said. “You skied!”
“Er, I fell.”
“Don’t worry. That’s all skiing is—the bits between falling. You just have to get up again.”
“Like life,” Annie said shakily. “Except I can’t get up by myself.”
“Well, in skiing, like in life, you sometimes need another person to help you up. Come here.” He brushed snow off her back. “Ready to go on?”
She looked down the slope. She’d already fallen, so what else could go wrong? After all, people fell over all the time, and it didn’t mean she was clumsy or stupid or useless. It just meant she was...learning. “Show me what I did wrong that time,” she said, sticking her ski poles firmly into the snow.
DAY 56
See the wonders of nature
“I saw it! I saw it! That was definitely a tail!” Everyone ran over to the side of the small boat, making it rock alarmingly. Annie braced herself against the side.
Dr. Max was wearing a blue North Face jacket speckled with rain. Drops of it were caught in his beanie hat and the beard he was letting himself grow away from the hospital. It was already impressive; he didn’t have a five-o’clock shadow so much as a 10:00 a.m. one. “Did you see it?”
She shook her head. “Just trying not to fall in.”
“Here.” He held out his binoculars, which were heavy and cold.
She peered in but the sea was just a gray blur. “I can’t see anything.”
“Let me show you.” He leaned over her, and she held her breath. His voice was in her ear. “There. Over to the left. See the wee tail flick up? That’s a pilot whale.”
Annie looked. She couldn’t see it. Nothing but gray, gray, gray, then... “I saw something!” So quick you’d miss it, like a flicker of desire coming and going in your stomach. “And there’s...oh, my God!” As she watched, three dolphins flipped out of the water and back in again, kicking up water. It was so fast.
He laughed at her astonished face. “They play with the whales, naughty wee buggers.”
“Why do they do that, jump out like that?”