Sean misread the next bump and it threw his weight back. His thighs screamed with the effort of recovery but it gave Barney the time he needed and put him ahead. They were half-way down the trail now, the Beaver Lodge and chairlift in sight in the narrow gap between the pines. Barney sliced on ahead and then Sean caught an edge. It was all over. He flew over the top of his skis, arms out like a genuine priest giving benediction, landing on his chin with a dull wet thud, and carried on tumbling sideways into the trees. Sean’s world went white, sharp and ice-cold; he gasped for breath as the fall winded him, punching the air from his lungs with a frozen fist.

The fall was short but violent, and Barney was gone as Sean finally came to a gasping, groaning stop between two tall pines well off the trail.

‘Jesus Christ!’ He groaned and slowly and methodically checked that his limbs were all pointing the right way. Nothing broken. No harm done. He wiped his snow-covered face and started to laugh, lying where he came to rest, in a huge drift beneath the tree. Sean was thankful he was right in amongst the trees, but not wrapped round one with his skull smashed in. Lucky, lucky, lucky. No one would see him here. Not even if they were skiing past. The humiliation of one of those guys popping their heads over him and asking if he was all right would be more than he could bear. He was safe here. He pushed himself up on one elbow and started to brush the snow from his chest.

Around him were all the sights and sounds of normality, the melancholy creaking and banging of the Beaver-chair twenty yards away on the other side of these trees and the low voices of people talking on that chair. The pines above him swayed in a light wind and far away shrieks of laughter accompanied someone wiping out and enjoying it. Everything as it should be.

He laughed at his plight, and shook his head, thinking of the tale he would have for the guys.

And then behind him, in the trees, a dry rustling sound.

He swung round to locate it and the feathers of his broken head-dress turned with him, like the plumage of a wounded and frightened bird. His eyes widened, and the metallic taste of adrenalin coated the inside of his mouth as he distended it to make a sound that it had never made before.

The Beaver-chair was noisy, all right. So noisy that the people swinging up the hill on the gunmetal-grey seats didn’t hear Sean Bradford.

Even though when Sean’s screaming started, he screamed for at least half a minute until the biological machinery enabling his scream was silenced forever.