Once I’m out of the van, I lean against the door and bend my knee a few times, mapping the walk to the gym in my head – the stairs, the corridors, the encounters I might face along the way. Samantha from the concierge team waves to me before I’ve even crossed the carpark. She’s carrying a folder with forms in it and is clearly on her way somewhere, but she circles over towards me.

‘Mike, how’s it going?’ she says. A gust of wind flips hair across her face and she pushes it back into place. She shifts the folder to the front so that she can secure it with both arms. ‘More rehab, huh?’

‘Yep. Still reinventing the knee.’ My hand pats low down on my thigh, as if she doesn’t know where knees are. ‘It’s getting there, bit by bit.’

‘Think you’ll be ready for the season? Ten weeks now. We’re counting down.’ She turns so that her back is to the wind. The concierge uniform is for inside, navy jacket and skirt, bare calves. She’s intending her time outside to be short, or she would have worn her coat. ‘Maybe just cubs and supercubs?’

‘I think they’ll have to find someone else this year.’ I have the urge to bend my knee again, but it can wait.

‘Oh, okay,’ she nods. ‘Next year then.’

‘Yeah. We’ll see. I’d better take this knee to the gym.’

‘And I’d better . . .’ She points in the direction of the Ascending Path yurt, where guides are packing mountaineering boots into canvas sacks. ‘Good to see you, Mike.’

Her heels click on the bitumen as she walks quickly away. One of the Ascending Path crew sees her coming and gives her a wave.

I was already just cubs and supercubs anyway, had been for years. Four-and five-year-old never-evers turn up lost in their outsized ski gear, but with next to no fear and little distance to fall when it goes wrong. We mark out how to stand and how to move, we take it step by step, we keep it fun all the way and soon enough they’ve mastered French-fry skis over pizza skis and they’re zipping down their first green runs, Christmas and Perseverance. Racing each other, racing their parents, drinking too much hot chocolate afterwards and talking over one another, telling war stories before crashing into bed, dreaming with the soundtrack of skis on well-worn snow. I’ve seen them grow up – some of the first kids I taught, anyway. I’ve seen them as teenagers, sending up cold smoke on double black diamonds as competently as I ever have.

But the wind is picking up, and I have a lot of nowhere to pedal to and some weights to lift.

When I get back home, Lacy is finishing a lesson. I think it’s viola. The student is playing a line from one of the regular viola pieces. Lacy teaches classical strings – violin, viola, cello, bass. If pressed to take the side of one instrument, she would always call herself a cellist. Half her students are learning cello.