There’s woodsmoke in the air, mixed with onion and garlic. They can’t all live here, surely. Socks, gloves, and goggles fight for space on top of the radiator; wet clothing hangs from everything it can be hung from. There are enough snowboards lying around to stock a rental shop, but there are only three pairs of boots by the fire. Curtis’s, Brent’s, and Dale’s, I think. It was awkward enough facing Curtis up on the glacier at breakfast; I don’t relish the idea of a repeat.

“Want a beer?” Curtis calls from the kitchen.

“No, just water,” I say, going in. “But I’ll get it.”

He’s muttering and cursing at the stove. I search the cupboard for a glass. As I fill it, he barks at me for a wooden spoon, then berates me for getting the wrong one.

Dale laughs when I emerge. “Keep out of there when he’s cooking. I do.”

“Yeah, Dale, you’re washing up,” Curtis shouts.

Heather wrinkles her nose. “It smells like something died in here.” She lifts an inside-out snowboard sock from the back of a nearby chair. “This yours, Dale?”

He grins. “Yep.”

“So gross.” She throws it at him.

Dale catches it easily and tosses it into a corner. I like how Heather’s not intimidated by him. He’s this strapping, imposing-looking guy but she keeps him firmly in his place.

“Hey, Mills,” Brent calls. “This Spanish guy’s done a sixty-seven-meter rail slide. New world record.”

I head over to him. The jacketed figure on the laptop screen jumps onto a metal rail set in the snow and slides smoothly along it.

“Makes it look so easy,” Brent says.

“That’s the problem with rail slides,” I say. “They look so bloody easy until you try them. I still have the dent on my shin from the last one I did.”

Saskia joins us and I stiffen. I’m still furious about the Le Rocher Open, but now that time has passed, I’m feeling a strange kind of respect for what she did. Here, finally, is a girl who plays as hard as I do. And from the way I catch her looking at me sometimes, the respect might just be mutual.

We’re watching rail slide fails now, wincing and groaning as the riders fold themselves around an assortment of metal rails.

Curtis comes out of the kitchen, arms laden with plates.

“Curtis spent a whole day doing rail slides once,” Saskia says. “Paced out the distance and had me telling him how far he went. Didn’t get more than about twenty meters.”

It’s an impressive distance, but Curtis flashes a warning look at her.

She sidles up to him and slides an arm around his waist. “What? Am I giving away your secrets?”

Seeing them side by side like that, I can’t decide which of them is better looking.