Mikey grimaced. ‘Yuki Watanabe,’ he murmured. ‘Tends to over-rotate.’ They watched as the guy lay dazed for a moment, before getting up again. People clapped him off, shouting his name. Clover remembered they’d got a soundbite from him before lunch.

Mikey’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Hmm. It’s looking sharp up there today.’

‘Feeling tempted?’ she asked, watching him closely. He’d been a good kisser, lots of fun to be around. St Moritz could be a date to look forward to. God knows she needed some of those at the moment.

‘I thought I was done for the day, but I think maybe one last run . . .’ He looked back at her. ‘Especially if you’re gonna be cheering me on.’ He shuffled the board towards her. ‘Especially if I get a kiss for luck . . .?’

‘If you think you need it,’ she smiled.

‘The luck? No . . . But the kiss . . .?’ He leaned in and kissed her, sending memories of last night – the lights, the heat, the noise – pulsing through her mind.

He winked at her, pulling his goggles back down. ‘I’d better get up there then and start lining up.’ He bent down and unstrapped his boot. ‘Promise you’ll cheer?’

‘I promise. You go ahead. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

He kissed her again, pulling her in tight with an arm looped around her waist. ‘I’ll see you up there, then,’ he said, pushing himself off with his free foot and merging into the queue for the lift. She watched him go.

‘Ja?’ the man behind the counter asked.

‘Oh. Sorry . . . Milchkaffee,’ she said, turning away and pulling off her gloves with her teeth, to reach into her jacket for her card. She watched as the filters were tapped clean and reattached, levers pulled, steam billowing and roiling in the freezing air. Looking around, she saw a couple of riders take off into aerial tumbles, silhouetted against the sky.

The thick cream was poured . . .

‘Hey! What are you fighting me for, man?’

Her head jerked up, along with everyone else’s. The voice was fairly distant but the accent carried. It had come from the lift area; she saw Mikey’s hands up in the air in a gesture of non-complicity as another boarder chest-bumped him aggressively. There were maybe a dozen people in the queue, not enough to warrant any sort of elbows-out, me-first queue-barging.

‘What’s your fucking problem?’ Mikey demanded.

The other boarder didn’t reply or look back. He just got on the chair with a couple of skiers and sat on the opposite end, like nothing had happened.

Mikey looked at some other boarders in the queue, who raised their gloved hands quizzically. ‘Who was that?’

‘A freaking asshole,’ one of them said, with a baffled shrug.

‘What was he even fighting me for?’ Mikey asked again, to no one in particular, as the next chair swung round to scoop him up the mountain – leaving Clover staring on in silence.