Page 26 of The Boathouse By the Loch

‘And look what happened.’

‘I’m sorry, Jake.’

‘It’s Marcus who ought to be sorry,’ Jake blurted.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Tell me,’ said Faye. ‘Tell me what happened up there to make you hate Marcus.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘He said you’ll never stop blaming him, that you’ll always believe it was his fault.’

‘I don’t hate him, Faye. I hate what he did. I wish it had been me and not her. I wish she had walked away unscathed.’

‘But you can’t blame Marcus for the avalanche.’

‘You want to bet?’ Jake knew he sounded heartless, but he had every right to blame Marcus. ‘He chose me, Faye, over his own sister.’

He had wanted to believe Marcus when he’d said there had been someone else up there on that mountain with them; someoneelse who had chosen to leave Eleanor trapped in the snow after the avalanche and dig Jake out first. Jake hadn’t seen anyone else skiing off-piste with them. Part of him still thought it more likely that it was Marcus’s way of coping with what he’d done; to block it out and convince himself someone else had made that decision.

‘Up there on the ski slopes …’ Jake got up off the bed and stood by the window, staring at the snow-capped mountains beyond the house. ‘Up there, he made the wrong choice.’

Chapter 10

Jake closed his eyes, trying to blank out the memory, trying to control his already shallow breathing. He wasn’t winning; the memory was coming straight at him, bringing fear and panic in its wake. ‘We were having a good time. Eleanor was skiing with a confidence I’d never seen before, and I was doing all I could just to keep up. Marcus was following close behind.’ The words tumbled out; he couldn’t hold back. ‘I looked over my shoulder to see a massive grin on his face and remember thinking that he’d noticed the improvement in her skiing too. Then it began to snow – hard.’

Jake opened his eyes. ‘This only added to the enjoyment, the exhilaration, the sheer thrill that the three of us were experiencing skiing in formation down that mountainside. I tell you, it was like something out of a bloody James Bond movie.’ Jake shook his head in amazement.

‘Then the weather closed in. More snow, less visibility.’ Still standing by the window, Jake couldn’t take his eyes off the snow-covered peak of the Cairngorm Mountain beyond The Lake House. ‘Eleanor, she was skiing like the wind.’ At first, it had been exhilarating, but Jake recalled that the faster she skied, the moreconcerned Jake became for her safety. ‘I was struggling to keep up with her. So was Marcus. I could hear Marcus behind me yelling at her to slow down. Of course, she couldn’t hear him. Then I had a terrible thought, Faye. I started to think she was doing it on purpose, scaring me for making her go there and share our news with the family. Then it got worse, then my thoughts turned really bad; was she trying to kill our baby?’

‘No, surely not!’ Faye cut in.

‘That’s when she disappeared straight over a precipice.’

Jake heard Faye take a sharp intake of breath.

‘Marcus was beside me, grabbing at me, trying to stop me following her. We’d both stopped at the edge. There was no way I was going to let her go first. It had never been my plan. I couldn’t face being a widower. So I punched him, Faye, with such force that I must have knocked him out. Then I went after her, launching myself over that precipice like I was on some sort of suicide mission.’ Jake stopped.

‘Jake?’ There was concern in Faye’s voice.

‘There she was,’ Jake said, his voice distant, ‘quite still, just a few feet away. She was standing under a snowy ledge, out of the driving wind and snow, sideways on, looking my way. And under those goggles and scarf, I could imagine that knowing smile, those dancing eyes. She’d done it again, Faye; she’d tricked me one last time. I’d dropped just two or three feet over what turned out to be a shallow incline. She must have known. God knows how, but she must have known what she was doing all along. But that’s when it happened.’

Jake left the window and sat on the bed. ‘It was on my approach. I must have … it must have been …’

He knew that this would be hard to tell; that it would be hardto admit to being the cause of the accident.

Faye’s soft voice filtered down the phone, encouraging him to continue.

‘I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know what I did, Faye, but as I skied under that ledge to meet her – maybe it was the sound of my skis, maybe I was going too fast – it collapsed.’

‘Oh no.’

‘I found out afterwards there had been an avalanche. All I knew then was that one minute I was skiing towards her, feeling a mixture of blessed relief and complete outrage, wondering which emotion was going to win out, and the next I …’ Jake couldn’t go on. He couldn’t speak of it. The panic, the breathlessness was setting in now.

‘You were buried alive.’

‘Yes,’ Jake croaked. His throat felt dry. He felt cold, yet his skin felt clammy and hot. He closed his eyes.

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