The Man She Loves To Hate

‘That’s my father you’re talking about.’

‘So it is.’ Jolie clamped her mouth shut and let her anger take her further up the slope. Anger was useful. But it left too fast, ripped out by the wind and the cold, and in its place stood a wall of snow and the first faint stirrings of defeat. ‘It can’t be much farther. It just can’t,’ she murmured.

But it was.

They kept moving, with the gondola cable as their guide.

Jolie kept the lead until she’d exhausted herself, and then Cole drew level with her and shot her a glance.

‘And then there’s the daughter,’ he said hoarsely as he trudged past her to take point.

‘What about the daughter?’ Perhaps if he fell over again she could kick him up the slope.

‘She’s exquisite,’ he muttered. ‘And cunning.

She had my father wrapped around her little finger. He got her job after job.’

‘He what?’

‘She never kept any of them.’

‘Maybe she didn’t like any of them,’ said Jolie through gritted teeth. What jobs had James Rees got her? Dishwasher at the Holiday Inn? Or the Thursday night/Saturday morning slots at the comic-book store? The front-desk job at the tattoo parlour had definitely been her own achievement—that much she did know. All of them had been temporary because they’d had to fit in around her coursework. That was what students did when working their way through university hand to mouth.

‘Apparently she fancies herself as an artist.’

‘Maybe she is an artist.’

‘It gets better. He bought her a house in Christ-church.’

‘He what?’

‘Now do you believe me?’

As a matter of fact she did not. Jolie glared at Cole’s broad back and his fancy coat and his stupid, ill-fitting hat. She didn’t care that he was hurt and grieving and soaked to the bone. He was wrong.

Jolie stood still, breathing hard, and stared past the idiot in the hat. Past his lies and his hatred as she tried to make out the shape of the slope ahead. Getting to safety was her focus for now. Getting even would have to wait. The cable still ran true and taut, still running upslope towards top station. Was that …?

‘Cole,’ she said, and when he didn’t turn round. ‘Cole, look up.’

But he hadn’t heard her. She scrambled up beside him and caught at his arm with one hand and pointed with the other. ‘Look! It’s the station roof.’

He wrenched himself away from her touch and with that motion came the memory of the last time Jolie had touched him, and talked to him. God, it had been years.

She remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday.

‘Don’t touch me,’ he said hoarsely.

He’d said the same thing back then too. He’d made her feel like dirt and she hadn’t known why. Not then. Not until she’d got home from school that afternoon and Rachel had sat a distraught Jolie down and tried to explain to a twelve-year-old that she’d fallen in love with another woman’s husband had Jolie known why Cole had recoiled from her touch.

Still recoiled from her touch.

‘It’s the station roof,’ she said wearily, and pointed towards it, no touching, none at all, and no fight left in her either.

Cole stopped. He looked up to where she pointed, his eyelashes white with frost and his eyes muddy with pain. Maybe he could see the shape of the roof through the snow, maybe he couldn’t. He’d just have to take her word for it.

‘Left or right?’ she said next, for they couldn’t climb straight up because of the steepness of the slope and probably didn’t want to anyway. Angling right would take them to the control tower. Left would get them to the kiosk for which they didn’t have keys. Spare keys would be in the control tower, which Hare should be manning. Except given the silence of the two-way, Hare wasn’t in right now so chances were the control tower would be locked up too. ‘Cole, left or right? Control tower or kiosk?’

Jolie didn’t know if Cole had the energy for both.

She wasn’t sure she did.

‘Cole, which way?’

‘Kiosk,’ he said hoarsely, and they set off again through the heavy drift. It was up past her knees now and starting to settle and Jolie prayed for no more avalanches on this steep ground. Hare’s boys kept the top station free of such dangers, as free of them as they could. Shovelling and raking and occasionally detonating so that the snow would pack down stable and stay stable throughout the season.

The transverse across and up to the kiosk took time. If it wasn’t Cole falling, it was Jolie. Their co-ordination was shot. Cold and fatigue had taken hold.

‘Hot chocolate,’ she said at one point, when they were both down, and snow was melting down her neck and her fingers were too numb to get it out.

‘Something you hate?’ said Cole, struggling up right.

‘Something I want,’ she muttered. ‘And I want it thick and creamy and coating my mouth and I want my hands wrapped around the cup and I’d hold the cup to my cheek and my to lips if I’ve got any left. I can’t even feel my lips any more.’