She went to get up but he heard the rustle of her clothes and turned back. ‘Don’t move. I’ll come up to you.’

His voice sounded strange, as if hollow. Everything was happening in slow motion. She watched as he crawled towards her, going up to her feet first and pushing down on the bindings of her remaining ski with his body weight. The ski released and he pushed it over to the side, out of the way. ‘Sit up.’

He held her arm by the elbow as she scrabbled onto her knees and sat back on her heels. All she could see now was the drop over his shoulder. She had been heading straight for it. She would have skied straight off it. In the flat light, against the white backdrop, she wouldn’t have seen it till . . .

He pushed her goggles – now scratched beyond repair – up onto her helmet and unbuckled her chinstrap. He laid her helmet in the snow. ‘You okay?’ he asked, seeing the tears that had pooled on her cheeks.

She nodded, even as the tears fell. Suddenly faster as it all caught up with her – fright, shock . . .

‘I know,’ he said quietly.

‘Mikey’s not . . .?’ she whispered, pleading with him with her eyes.

He looked down. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. ‘. . . Yeah. He is.’

A cry left her and the view was blocked out as his arms wrapped around her. She felt the tension in his muscles, not releasing, as she wept. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t . . .

Mikey Schultz was dead? Twenty-five years young – and a salute, a kiss and a smile was all she had to remember him by.

Chapter Twenty-Three

They waited for the helicopter. Kit’s jacket had been fitted with an emergency transponder, pinpointing his position to within three feet. All they had to do was sit tight.

Which was easier said than done. Clover had never sat tighter as she stared into the abyss. She was shivering, in spite of her ski jacket and thermals and gloves. She wasn’t sure there was any technical clothing that could counteract sitting still, unable to move off a rock, on a north-facing slope in the Austrian Alps, in the growing dark, in December. They couldn’t even dig a snow shelter, the wind whipping around them in menacing gusts. Climbing back up wasn’t an option; she’d realized that without having to ask. It was too steep and, below the fresh layer of powder, the snow here was hard-packed and icy. In their boots they could slip. They were safer waiting for help to get to them.

‘I don’t understand how I didn’t see,’ she said.

‘You were in shock.’

‘But how could I not notice the pitch?’