The Little Swiss Ski Chalet Read online

  With the help of G and James, she tied the piñata to the curtain pole.

  ‘Just don’t break the window,’ she said, her heart starting to thump with excitement.

  To a chorus of ‘give it some welly,’ and ‘go on,’ Simon took a few tentative swipes at the tissue and papier-mâché donkey. A couple of people held up their phones to film the scene as Simon rather ineptly swiped at the piñata. At one point Mina despaired of him ever breaking open the darned thing and itched to take over his half-hearted attempt. Then with one final crack, it was torn clean in two and a giftwrapped box dropped to the floor.

  With a triumphant yell, Simon snatched it up, and Mina, her pulse now roaring like an express train around her body, steered him back to the table and sat on his lap.

  ‘I didn’t know I was getting presents,’ he said, fighting his way through the paper. Of course, Mina hadn’t made it too easy for him, because inside the box was another box, and then another box. At last he came to the final one and she held her breath as he opened it to find a blue suedette pouch.

  He wrinkled his eyebrows and gave her a puzzled look, a broad smile on his face. She smiled tremulously back at him, realising her hands were shaking a little. Everyone around the table craned forward with interest.

  Simon opened the pouch and pulled out the gold wedding band, holding it up between thumb and finger. With a dazzling smile, she looked up into his face.

  ‘Will you marry me? It is a leap year after all.’

  Around the table there were a few gasps and a couple of ‘ahs’.

  She felt Simon’s body stiffen and as she watched his face, she saw his eyes slide across the table, widening as they connected with someone else’s shocked gaze. Her own gaze followed, and in a single second her world crumbled. Belinda?

  In the next second, Simon stood up with horrified speed, as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her, and she slipped off his lap onto the floor.

  He dropped the ring on the table as if it were hot lava and stared horrorstruck at her.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper. ‘What are you doing?’

  Mortified, Mina’s throat closed up and her skin crawled as she realised everyone was watching, with avid fascination, as the car crash unfolded. What had she been thinking? It had seemed such a brilliant idea at the time. Only last month they’d been talking about moving in together and about the future. They’d even talked about how many children they’d have one day. How had she got this so wrong? She’d been so sure of him. They’d made plans. Admittedly, Simon had been distracted for the last month, but she’d assumed it was the long hours he was working and the pressure he was under in his department, which had seen several redundancies. Now it was painfully obvious that something else – or rather, someone else – had been on his mind.

  ‘But…’ She looked from Simon to Belinda, whose face was now stained with a fierce red blush and contorted by an odd, constipated sort of expression. Simon’s face mirrored Belinda’s. They looked remarkably similar: two compatriots, two people in sync – a couple.

  As the trainwreck finally slowed to a comprehensive halt, she remembered all her earlier hopes. This was one night she wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon.

  Chapter Two

  Mina hurried out of the front door and down the steps clutching her laptop bag, huddling into her scarf, trying to hide from the biting January wind. Despite the icy conditions predicted by the weather forecast, she wore high, kick-ass, black patent leather boots under slim-fitting black trousers with a matching jacket over a scarlet silk blouse. If there was ever a down-but-not-defeated outfit then this was it. This morning she had to face all her work colleagues after Saturday night’s disastrous proposal, including Simon himself.

  While the rest of the guests had hastily beaten a path to her door, she and Simon had retreated to her bedroom for a hideous, no-coming-back-from, stand-up row.

  ‘What did you think you were doing?’ hissed Simon, shaking his head in rare fury.

  ‘I thought I was proposing to someone who said, less than a month ago, that he loved me. Someone who had agreed to find an estate agent to have our flats valued, and had selected the name Victor for our first male child – which, I’d just like to say now, I thought was an awful name, and I fully intended talking you out of it – and I seem to recall you even suggested getting married in St Mary’s near your mum’s. So forgive for me being a little confused. I thought I was doing what we’d already agreed we would do?’

  ‘Typical. So it’s my fault, is it? I might have known. Not that you had to jump the gun or anything, like you always do. You’re in such a hurry all the time.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have done if I’d realised you were shagging – I’m assuming you are, by the colour of her face – one of my oldest friends.’ Belinda had been excommunicated – she no longer deserved the title ‘best’ friend.

  At that point Simon’s mouth firmed to a mutinous line rather reminiscent of a toothless turtle.

  ‘How long has that been going on?’ Mina thrust her chin up into his face.

  ‘She’s much calmer. You want to do everything at breakneck speed. You’re too much. Even your ridiculous wedding proposal is so true to character. Belinda’s much… more balanced. I feel on an even keel with her.’

  ‘So, you spineless git, you’re saying this is my fault, because of my personality?’ Her eyes bored into him with fury.

  ‘We’re not right for each other.’ Simon’s words were stiff as he refused to look at her.

  ‘Funny it took you until tonight to say anything. You never questioned things before. You sucked it all up… must have been terrible for you. Having to go on with all those awful things I organised for us – a weekend in Cornwall, dinner at Le Manoir, ski lessons at the indoor ski slope. My memory is terrible but I could have sworn that after I booked the indoor sky diving, you said that being with me was always so much fun.’

  ‘Fun, yes.’ Simon finally looked at her before saying coldly, ‘But not for keeps.’

  ‘What?’ Her heart pinched in sudden pain. Not for keeps.

  ‘You can’t base a marriage, or even a serious relationship, on fun.’ He peered at her like a headmaster delivering a lecture, which he then proceeded to do.

  Now, even with the cold wind biting at her face, Mina paused for a moment, the words from Saturday night still ringing with hurtful shrillness in her ears:

  ‘You can’t spend your life being spontaneous and going off on adventures all the time. Marriage is about being grown-up, settling down, knowing you’re on an even keel. With you it’s like being on a constant rollercoaster, or in a plane and I’m never sure when you’re going to throw me out of the door. You’re too crazy, too mile-a minute, too wanting the next thing all the time. I never know where I am, and I don’t want to live like that. It’s probably from your genes, and I’m not sure I want those in my children.’

  ‘Genes?’ she spat.

  ‘Your real mum and dad. It sounds as if they were always chasing adventure. It sounds as if they were reckless and irresponsible. They didn’t take the important things in life seriously. That’s not what I want in my life.’

  Her eyes almost popped out of her head with sheer rage at him bringing up her long dead parents and it robbed her of the ability to say anything. Simon was oblivious and on he ploughed, ‘It’s a shame you don’t take after your adopted parents, Miriam and Derek. I can’t believe that Miriam was your mother’s sister, she’s so normal.’

  Mina had never, ever been as close to strangling anyone as she was at that moment. Her fingers actually cramped into claws, ready to do the deed. Luckily Simon stepped out of range with one more parting salvo.

  ‘We’ve had fun, but… you can’t have fun all the time. At some point you need to focus on what’s important. And I can’t see you ever doing that. You’re like a butterfly, constantly flitting about, looking for the next great thing. It’s too exhausting being with you.’

 
With that parting shot, he’d walked out of the flat, leaving her with the debris of the dinner party, which she attacked with furious energy, imaging hitting him over the head with the frying pan as she scrubbed at it. She refused to cry, although she might have suffered a slight leakage at points as she wiped down the surfaces. At last when the kitchen and dining table were almost clean and tidy, she picked up the pan of chocolate sauce and sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the kitchen floor with it between her knees. Dipping a finger into the chocolate, she carefully licked it clean and closed her eyes. Life might be crap, but there was always chocolate. In the world of food, as far as she was concerned, it had serious super powers. She took another mouthful. Sod Simon, he didn’t deserve her.

  Of course, after the event, when the chocolate had soothed her and she’d eaten the lot, she could think of a dozen witty brilliant comebacks. Chief among them: what had changed? At the time Mina had felt as if she’d been punched. The words had spun around and around her head for the remainder of the weekend like a manic merry-go-round. He hadn’t even said he was sorry once. The way he’d talked, it was as if she’d deserved his cheating on her. Talking of whom, the big, fat coward (of course, she wasn’t fat at all; if anything she was thin, with perfect double Ds and one of those 1950s waists, but she was very cowardly) Belinda, had slipped out with all the other guests and hadn’t so much as texted an apology or an explanation during the rest of the weekend.

  Hannah had talked Mina out of marching round to Belinda’s parents’ house to challenge her, quite rightly pointing out that Mina would probably slap her. The last thing she needed was an assault charge on top of looking a complete and utter dick in front of her friends. Although George and G were about to be wiped from that list, because one of them had shared the video of Simon with the piñata and the disastrous proposal on Facebook. Even if, apparently, it had been inadvertent because one of them had forgotten to change their privacy settings.

  As she left the communal front garden, a man stopped her. ‘Excuse me, are you Mina Campbell?’

  ‘Yes?’ she answered, with a question in her voice.

  ‘I wonder if you would mind answering a few questions.’

  ‘Sure.’ Funny time for market research, she decided – but as a lot of her work was directed by such research, she always felt she ought to stop and do her bit.

  ‘How did you feel when your boyfriend turned you down?’

  ‘What?’ Her head snapped up.

  ‘You are the girl whose proposal went wrong? The piñata girl.’

  She stepped away from him as he gave her an encouraging smile.

  ‘Who are you? How do you know about that?’

  ‘Jamie Jenkins, I work for the Mirror. It’s all over Facebook. This is your chance to put your side of the story out there.’

  ‘I don’t want my story out there, full stop.’

  ‘Bit late for that, love. The genie’s out of the bottle. Come on, give us a couple of quotes. How did you feel when he turned you down? How long have you been together? Are you still together?’

  ‘No, we are not,’ she spat before she could stop herself. ‘And I wasn’t being presumptuous or precipitous, we’ve been talking marriage for months. Turns out, he has a new lady friend he forgot to mention… or that she was my best friend. Note the past tense. Was.’ Even as she was talking she knew she should stop, but it all came spilling out, the indignation of the weekend, the feeling of injustice. Yes, she was impulsive and jumped in feet-first, but this time she really had done her due diligence. She could give a date and a time to the exact conversation they’d had about St Mary’s church, tell anyone where she was when Simon had talked about having children one day. What she hadn’t factored in was that Simon had started an affair, and his feet had cooled to arctic blocks since then.

  Suddenly she noticed the photographer with the long black lens taking photos from the other side of the street and realised she’d told the reporter far too much.

  ‘That’s all off the record,’ she said, now feeling shaky and barely able to remember what had just spewed out.

  ‘You sound pretty pissed off with him,’ said the reporter who, as she looked more closely, reminded her of a weasel, with his sharp-eyed intensity and long neck. ‘What did you say to him? I’d have kneed him in the balls. What was your reaction?’

  ‘No comment,’ she said, although she wished she had kneed Simon in the balls. ‘Look, I don’t want this in the paper. It was all a mistake. There is no story. You’re not taking photos, are you?’

  He shrugged with nonchalant indifference, deliberately not looking towards the photographer.

  No! Mina realised he had a tiny voice recorder in his left hand. She tried to snatch at it but he moved it out of reach very smartly, as if it wasn’t the first time someone had tried to do just that.

  Realising that the photographer was now taking an interest, she stopped and glared at the reporter. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Fuming, Mina hitched her bag over her shoulder, side-stepped around the reporter, and darted across the road to her car. The photographer, mistaking her action, took a few more pictures and then, thinking she was coming after him, took off, running down the street in shoes designed with considerably more athleticism in mind than her black boots. Although it had crossed her mind to confront him, she headed for her little navy Beetle, sending a vindictive glare towards the reporter now hovering between two parked cars. He took one look at her face, waved, and speed-walked away.

  She got into her car and bashed her head against the steering wheel. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody, effing hell.’ Bad enough that everyone at work would know; now it seemed the whole nation was about to be treated to the story of Mina, the dumb blonde, getting it very wrong with her man. It didn’t take a genius to come up with the headlines.

  ‘Who’s the donkey now?’

  ‘Hit me with your proposal stick.’

  With a sigh she started up the engine. Time to face the music at work.

  ‘I think you need to warn Miriam and Derek,’ said Hanna three hours later, when Mina phoned her during her lunch hour.

  ‘Warn them about what?’ That Simon – who they thought was the bee’s knees, on account that he’d always brought them a bottle of the same wine on every single occasion he came to the house for Sunday lunch – was actually a two-timing bastard who had been shagging her former best friend for the last four weeks, one of which coincided with Sunday lunch and the provision of aforementioned, Casillero del Diablo, red wine.

  ‘Warn them that one of their adopted daughters might be appearing in a national newspaper. They’re going to be horrified.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  ‘I meant they’ll be horrified if you don’t tell them first. Look, why don’t we both go round together tonight after work. I can give you moral support.’

  ‘Thanks, Han. I think you might need to provide medical support. There could be heart attacks all round when they find out that Simon is not the golden boy they thought he was. I reckon Aunty M might have been knitting bootees on the quiet.’

  Hannah was locking her car across the street when Mina pulled into a handy parking space after a very difficult day at work. Switching off the engine, she watched her sister approach in the wing mirror as she slumped wearily in her seat. What a day. Bloody bastard Simon had told his side of the story very convincingly to just about everyone before Mina even walked through the front door. He’d managed to make her look extremely manipulative by intimating that her proposal had been a misguided attempt to force his hand in front of everyone.

  With a sigh, she grabbed her handbag and hauled herself out of the car.

  Hannah wrinkled her face as she studied Mina. ‘Oh dear. Rotten day.’

  ‘The worst. Simon got in first and made out I got my just desserts.’

  ‘Ouch, I’m sorry. I did consult a friend who works for a law firm that deals with the media to try and find out if you could get an injunction
or anything. Sorry, the cost would be prohibitive and the grounds – to protect against damage to reputation – are based on very stringent principles, which she didn’t think applied in this instance.’

  Mina threw her arms around her sister. ‘Han, I love you, and that you even tried for me. You’re the best.’

  ‘Not really, I stopped you going round and slapping Belinda. In hindsight, she deserves it.’

  ‘You stopped me getting an assault charge, as you pointed out at the time, and just imagine what the news reporter would have made of that if I’d been arrested.’

  ‘It’s so unfair, Mina.’

  ‘Don’t worry… I’ll get my own back. Just give me time to think of something.’

  Hannah grinned. ‘That’s my girl. What are you thinking?’

  ‘He’s very worried about his receding hairline.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Hair removal cream in his shampoo?’

  ‘What if he gets it in his eyes or something? It’s pretty strong stuff. You could get sued.’

  Mina screwed up her nose. That was the sort of thing Hannah would worry about.

  ‘OK, maybe I’ll just fill it with lots of dead flies or something horrible.’

  ‘Where will you get—’

  Mina nudged her sister. ‘Shut up. I’ll think of something while I’ve still got the keys to his flat. I’m not speaking to him at work and I’m going to completely ignore him.’ There was a leave-in hair mask he was rather partial to. Perhaps she could add to it – a leave-in hair dye. Blue, she’d heard, was very difficult to remove. The more she thought about it, the perkier her steps towards her adopted parents’ drive became.