Bright and Deadly Things

by Lexie Elliott

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Horror

Synopsis

A remote back-to-basics mountaintop retreat in the French Alps turns deadly as an Oxford fellow finds herself in the crosshairs of her late husband's dangerous secrets.
The Chalet des Anglais should be the ideal locale for recently-widowed Oxford don Emily to begin cutting through the fog of her grief. With no electricity, running water, or access by car, the rustic chalet nestled at the foot of the verdant, snow-topped Alps should afford Emily both time and space to heal. Joining her will be a collection of friends from the university, as well as other fellows, graduates, and undergraduates.
Something feels off, though--heightening Emily's existing grief-induced anxiety. Before even making it to the airport, she's unnerved by a break-in at her home. Once at the chalet, tension amongst the guests is palpable. Her friends and colleagues are behaving oddly, and competition for a newly opened position has introduced a streak of meanness into the otherwise relaxing getaway. As hostilities grow, Emily begins to wonder if the chalet's dark history has cast a shadow over the retreat. In the salon, a curious grandfather clock looms, the only piece of furniture to survive a deadly blaze a century ago. As its discordant bell begins to invade everyone's dreams, someone very real has been searching through Emily's things and attempting to hack into her computer.
When a student disappears, Emily realizes that she'd better separate friend from foe, and real from imagined--or the next disappearance may be her own.

Release date: February 14, 2023

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

There’s someone in the house.

I know it as soon as I’m inside, though I couldn’t say how. Some indescribable change in the air, perhaps, or a sound I hadn’t consciously registered. A wave of adrenaline sweeps over my skin, prickling all hair follicles on end. I stand frozen, just inside the still-open front door, a layer of warm air and sunshine pressing at my back and the shadowy cool of the terraced house silently waiting for me. But it’s the wrong type of silence. I stand motionless, staring, my ears straining to catch any sound above my own racing heartbeat, which is thumping in my ears, thumping in my throat; waiting for a moving shadow or the thud of a footfall or even just the tiniest of creaks—but nothing comes. The house, the intruder, me: we are all holding our breath.

I squint down the corridor that leads to the open-plan kitchen/living area at the back. Beyond the rectangle of the doorframe, I can see the bright saturated green of the back garden’s lawn through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the house, verdant in the sunshine after the rain we’ve been having. Call the police, I think. Call the police, call the neighbors and scream until somebody—anybody—comes . . . But even if I scream, no one will come: the residential street outside is quiet, drowsy with the heat; and anyway, most of my neighbors will be either at work or away for their summer vacation. And what can I tell the police? Come quickly because I have an absolute conviction that there’s an intruder in my house, even though I haven’t actually looked?

But I know it’s true: there’s someone in the house. I can sense it with a pressing urgency, as if there’s music playing at a pitch that’s below my range of hearing, but nonetheless felt.

Do something. Find something, some kind of weapon. Wait—I know . . .

I check that my phone is easily accessible in my pocket, then slide my rucksack off my shoulder, easing it to the floor as quietly as possible—though surely whoever is here must have heard me come in—before reaching out slowly, silently, to the coat cupboard that is just beside me. My heartbeat is a hammering thud that must be audible streets away. I know the cupboard door will squeak, regardless of whether I open it slowly or fast. Fast, I decide. Fast, and use the noise.

I take a deep breath. Go. “Get out of my house; I’m calling the police right now!” I yell, and keep yelling as I yank the screeching cupboard door open with one hand and reach in with the other to grab a club—any club—from the golf bag that languishes beneath the coats. Words keep tumbling out of my mouth, though I have no real idea of what I’m shouting as I yank the club out, briefly entangling it with a navy rain jacket that slips off its hanger and falls to the floor as I charge with my improvised weapon toward the back of the house. Surely the intruder will head straight for the open front door? I don’t want to be in the way when they do. I reach the living room, with the afternoon sun streaming in through the French doors, and whirl around so my back is to the sunlight, holding the club diagonally in front of me with both hands on the shaft, no longer yelling and poised to spring. Where is the intruder? Upstairs? I strain to listen. The house is silent, but I’m not fooled. Something is coming, something is coming, something is . . .

A dark shape explodes out of the small study to my left, running straight for me. For a moment I’m frozen, staring blankly at the man—for it seems to be a man, though his head is covered by a black balaclava—who is heading directly toward me. Why is he not heading for the open front door? Belatedly, in blind panic, I swing the club viciously, but too late; he’s almost upon me. Only at the last minute, he veers, planting a foot on the seat of one of the armchairs and leaping over the back, and my clumsy swing connects only in a glancing blow on his lower back, the club continuing in an arcing path. I hear, rather than see, it smash through the crystal vase that was on the sideboard, because I’m whirling round to keep the intruder in my vision; he’s at the sliding doors, yanking one open to run out into the garden, where, without any hesitation whatsoever, he sprints across the small lawn to scale the cedar-planked back fence and disappear into the lane behind.

I’m left staring at the red-brown horizontal planks of the cedar fence, the club still gripped tightly in my hands. A small breeze slips in through the now open sliding door, carrying with it the shouts of children playing, a car starting somewhere, a bee buzzing round the lavender in the garden—the lazy sounds and smells of summer. I’m alone now; the insistent press of danger has receded. I am very much alone.

---

—

The police—an officer and a forensics specialist—come quickly. Perhaps there’s less for them to do in Oxford in summer, when the bulk of the student body has melted away. The tourists more than make up the numbers, but I imagine they’re less troublesome: nobody comes to visit the city of dreaming spires for the nightlife.

The forensics specialist takes out some sort of kit and starts to look around while the officer and I sit on the sofa. He’s a spare man with a no-nonsense attitude, but his eyes are kind when they meet mine. I sip from a cup of tea while I answer his questions, though what I really want is something much stronger. The golf club is on the floor now. It feels like a talisman, like I shouldn’t ever be without it; I keep one foot pressed on it as I try to describe the intruder. I assume male, given build; somewhere between five foot ten and six foot; lean and obviously quite athletic; Caucasian, judging by the small patches of skin visible around the balaclava. Wearing dark clothing of the sporting variety: black joggers and a long-sleeved top. Gloves? I’m not sure on that. I find myself saying It all happened so fast. The cliché doesn’t do the experience justice. That moment when he exploded toward me, when I was frozen in his path . . .

“He must have accessed from the rear,” says the colleague, stepping carefully over the navy rain jacket that’s still strewn on the floor. Nick’s jacket: a good one, but too big for me. I ought to do something with it; it shouldn’t go to waste. She crosses to inspect the sliding doors. “There’s no sign of forced entry at the front door— Ah, here we go. There are marks here on the doorframe, and the lock is damaged. We won’t get a print, though.” She looks across at me, mild disapproval edging into her tone. “You really should think about an alarm system and additional locks on these sliding doors.” I nod, though I’m thinking that it’s a little late to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Though I suppose horses can always bolt again.

“And you’re sure nothing is missing, Mrs. Rivers?” asks the officer.

“Doctor,” I say reflexively. “Dr. Rivers.”

“Dr. Rivers,” he repeats. “Do you work up at the JR, then?”

He means the John Radcliffe Hospital. I shake my head. “I’m not a medical doctor. I’m an academic.” My eyes move inadvertently toward the shadowy entrance to the study—only an alcove, really—as if the intruder might burst from there again.

“Ah. But you’re sure nothing is missing? Bikes, electronics, money, jewelry, passports, other valuables?”

“Nothing that I can see. I had my passport with me, and I’m wearing most of my jewelry.” I see them both eyeing my minimalistic adornments. “As I said, Oxford academic.” I make an attempt at a wry smile. “We’re not known for our disposable cash.”

“Well, I would think it was an opportunist thief and they couldn’t have been here long,” says the officer in a tone that suggests he’s bringing his questions to a close. “Probably just got here when you disturbed him. Or her.” They are not convinced, given the balaclava and genderless clothing, that the thief is necessarily male; in their eyes, that may be an assumption of mine that has stuck in my head, tainting what I really saw and remember. Unconscious bias. I suppose it could be; they’re right to keep an open mind. But nevertheless I can’t shake the feeling that the intruder was male.

“He—or she—must be local,” I muse. “Not everyone would know about the access to the garden from the lane at the back.” Nor about the study either, in fact, though I suppose he simply looked for a place to hide when he heard me come in.

“Did the intruder pick up and smash the vase?” asks the specialist. “If we’re lucky I might get a print off one of the larger pieces.”

“No, I did it. With the, um”—I lean down to pick up the golf club and look at the head of it properly—“seven iron.” I see Nick deep in conversation with someone—who? Does it matter? And where were we anyway?—his beanpole figure hunched over like a shepherd’s crook so that his words could be safely delivered to the ear of a smaller man as he said earnestly, If in doubt, use a seven iron. Nick, who had only taken up golfing six months before, giving golfing advice; I teased him about it mercilessly all the way home. None so fanatical as a convert. Even in those first moments, in the grip of that sweep of adrenaline, like a hand stroking an electric shock across me, I didn’t consider that it could have been Nick in the house. I’ve moved beyond denial, I suppose. I know it will never again be Nick.

“I’m sorry?” asks the officer.

I don’t know what I’ve said to prompt that. “It’s nothing. Just something my husband said.”

He looks up from his pad. “Is he at work?”

“No. No, he died a few months ago. A traffic accident.” I’ve learned how to say it: the right amount of information to impart, and the right pace at which to do it. Not so rushed that the listener might miss what you’ve said, but not so drawn out that they become terrified you might dissolve on the spot.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, though this time it’s not a question and his expression is appropriately grave. I expect that in his profession, he’s learned a few things too. I incline my head briefly; the social contract has been completed. He eyes the rucksack in the hallway. “Just back from a holiday?”

I shake my head. “About to go, actually. Well, not a holiday exactly; a reading retreat at a chalet in the Alps. I wouldn’t have been here, except I missed my flight. I’m booked on tomorrow’s instead now.” I look around the room, somehow surprised afresh to find myself here. I was never the sort of person who missed flights. But then, I was never the sort of person who couldn’t get out of bed in the morning or found themselves in tears at the supermarket cash register either.

The police wrap up shortly after that, promising emails with victim-of-crime information, but nothing more; we all know they won’t catch him. And why should they expend resources and time on a thief who ultimately appears to have stolen nothing and done no harm to anybody or anything except an inexcusably flimsy door lock? I turn the key in the front door after they leave, and use the sliding chain for good measure, all of which seems rather pointless, given the unfettered access at the rear of the house on account of the damaged lock. Then I lean my back against the secure front door, the club still in one hand, and slide down to a seated position, wondering what I should be doing. Calling a locksmith, probably. I also have nothing in the fridge, given I hadn’t expected to be here; I should call for takeout too. I look at the head of the club, at the grooves across the face of it. If in doubt, use a seven iron. It’s a long time before I move.

SOFI

August 10th

Dear Mimi,

I’ve been at the chalet for a day now. Mike is here too; I hadn’t expected that he would be. He’s not in the slightest bit interested in me, which is fine—except, no, to be honest, it rankles; it’s like he’s been warned off or something. Maybe he has, come to think of it. Maybe James has been mouthing off about that stupid bet again.

Anyway, Mike’s here; and a postgrad called Olive, who I’d guess is a bit younger than Mike, probably late twenties. There are two other undergrads besides Julie, James and me (although technically I suppose I’m not an undergraduate anymore), and Julie was right: the other two—Caleb and Akash—are nice enough, if deeply in the geeky camp. Everyone is very gung ho about the no-electricity, no-running-

water malarkey, so naturally I’m very gung ho too, whilst secretly thanking the powers that be for the invention of dry shampoo. I don’t think I have the right clothing either; it’s only been twenty-four hours, but it’s apparent already that it’s absolutely de rigueur to wear battered hiking shorts or trousers in a gruesome shade of khaki or blue or dusty brown—anything the color of a bruise. My Daisy Dukes are raising eyebrows; I can feel myself stiffening in that half-defiant, half-awkward way when I spot the sidelong glances. But so what if I don’t have the right clothes: I’m here. Just like you always said: turn nothing down. Julie has all the right stuff, of course. I guess you acquire it without even trying if you grow up spending all summer in Cornwall and three weeks every winter in Verbier.

Will is coming later today—with his girlfriend, apparently. That was something of a surprise. Ha! I like my understatement there: something of a surprise. (Oxford has taught me that: the power of understatement. See: I’m learning!) He’d certainly failed to mention her. I wouldn’t have approached him if I’d known. Wait; a qualifier might be appropriate: I probably wouldn’t have. Screw it, at least I can be honest here: even the probably isn’t quite right. The best that can be said is that I might not have. It’s not like they’re married or anything.

Nick Rivers’ widow was supposed to be here already, but she hasn’t arrived. Prof. Herringway said she’ll be coming today too, now. I liked the prof in Oxford but I like him even more now; he’s so very kind to absolutely everyone. Anyway, Nick Rivers’ widow—poor thing. I can’t imagine wearing that label at her age. She must have thought her life was sorted: supersmart, great position at a top university, equally clever husband. And she’s kind of beautiful too: tall and willowy, with all that glorious hair, though the last time I saw her around college, she looked awful, like she’d subsisted on air since he died. They’d been married a while apparently; I wonder why they didn’t have kids—I mean, why get married at all except to crack on with that?

I don’t think kids are going to be part of my future. Julie will have them. She says not, but I can see what’s ahead of her, even if she can’t. She’ll walk into a good, solid career—accountancy or something—and make good, solid career progression, and then she’ll meet and marry someone from a good, solid background who probably also spent their childhood summering in Cornwall and wintering in Verbier—oh, to be someone who casually uses a season as a verb!—and then they’ll have kids and a dog and she’ll regretfully give up work and find herself making lunches and packing gym bags, taxiing the kids to ballet and music lessons and running the PTA. I mean, I love her to bits but she’s not exactly going to break out from her mold. And it’s such a waste: she’s so very, very smart and articulate and she’s had every opportunity in life, all handed to her on a plate with a cherry on top, thank you very much, and yet all she’ll end up doing is reinforcing the cycle.

Somehow I don’t think that’s what’s ahead of me. There’s a feeling that I get when I think about this stuff; it’s like the swell of the music in a movie for that crucial moment—you know, when the epiphany hits the main character—and you feel such a longing, so piercing that it hurts, to be that person, to be living in that instant, and to know you’re living it, to know how important it is. I want to be out there, living it, breathing it, saying yes to everything. I won’t turn anything down.

Love you. Miss you.

Sofi

2

Emily! I thought you were flying out yesterday.”

I’m at the departure gate at Stansted Airport, where I’ve been for hours, anxious to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s fiasco; I look up from my book to find Peter in front of me, his overly long sandy hair unkempt as ever and the smile on his long face a little wary, as if he’s uncertain that it’s safe to approach. I can just imagine his thoughts: Grieving widows are dangerous beasts. Best handled with care and, if possible, at a distance.

“Hi, Peter.” I smile and gesture to the empty seat beside me, trying not to let his caution nettle me or, at least, trying not to let it show. “I missed the flight yesterday, so here I am.”

He shrugs off his rucksack and sits down, his pale eyebrows rising as his body lowers. “Missed the flight? What happened?”

What did happen? I couldn’t honestly say. There was plenty of time, and then suddenly time lurched and there wasn’t, and I couldn’t say what happened or how I lost my grip on things. I reach for a believable excuse. “Oh, it was silly of me: I misjudged the traffic.” And then, rushing past the lie, “But it’s just as well I did. When I got home, someone was trying to break in.”

“No!” An announcement starts, and we both pause to listen, cocking our heads. “Yep, this is us,” says Peter, unfolding to his feet again. “But tell me: the break-in? Did you actually see the intruder?”

My account of the events of yesterday takes us all the way through the boarding process and onto the plane itself, neatly plastering over the oddness of being in Peter’s company without Nick. I’ve known Peter for years—he’d always been a close collaborator of Nick’s in the Oxford University engineering department, and I’d absolutely consider him one of our closest friends, but it occurs to me that I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve spoken to him without Nick at least being somewhere in the room. And it’s odd, too, to see him in such casual attire. Not that we academics necessarily dress formally; it’s just that Peter, like Nick, usually prefers to wear a shirt, not a T-shirt, with his jeans; both of them joked that it was the only thing that differentiated them from the students. Mid-thirties is a difficult age for faculty staff: not enough gray hair; far too easy to be mistaken for a graduate or even, God forbid, an undergraduate.

We’re not seated together on the plane, but we’re only a row apart, and when the kindly man seated next to me sees us talking, he offers to swap with Peter so that we can sit together. He probably thinks we’re a couple, I realize, and then feel even more awkward when Peter settles himself in the middle seat beside me, in the cramped economy quarters that are so space constrained that our elbows can’t help but brush. He busies himself adjusting his seat belt as he says, “You haven’t been to the chalet before, have you?” The chalet: Chalet des Anglais.

“No. You?”

“I went two summers ago. It’s really something.” He’s finished with the seat belt now and is bent forward instead, pulling something out of the battered messenger bag under the seat in front of him. “One of those Oxford experiences that has you feeling like you’re actually living in a slice of history.”

“On account of the lack of electricity and running water?”

“Well, there is that.” He straightens back up, a sheaf of research papers in his hand and a quick grin on his mobile face. Perhaps it’s his animation, rather than the lack of gray hair, that makes him seem younger than his years. Puckish, I think. As if there are electrical currents of thoughts and ideas crackling beneath his surface, just waiting for an opportunity to reveal themselves. “But it’s the whole thing: the seclusion, the academic aspect to it, everybody mixing in from undergraduate through to Robert himself. When you look through the chalet diaries, it really does seem like the experience is untouched by the hand of time.”

“How does Robert decide who to invite?” Robert is Professor Robert Herringway, one of the trustees of the chalet. The chalet itself is jointly owned by three Oxford colleges, which take turns week by week to use it during the summer; invitations are extended, by whoever is leading the party, to staff and students of their own college. It’s considered a privilege to be invited—it’s an introduction to a very traditional part of Oxonian history, something that not everyone gets a chance to experience.

“Alchemy and witchcraft, I think. Somehow it always seems to work and everybody gets on—or at least, nobody has killed anyone yet. It’s a rather science-heavy group this time, though, which is unusual.” His eyebrows knit in a quick frown, gone almost as soon as I register it. “Robert is usually more careful to balance it: he always says it’s a strength of Oxford that is underutilized, that each college has members spanning all academic departments; we ought to have more interdepartmental cross-pollination of ideas. Anyway, do you know when Jana and Will are getting there?”

“Today at some point.” That’s one benefit of having missed the flight—I won’t have to spend any time out there without Peter or Jana and Will. It feels like a weakness to admit, even to myself, that I had been anxious about arriving twenty-four hours before my friends. “They’re coming by train from Vienna.” I smile as I think of the text conversation I had with Will.

Hey you. Missed my flight. Arriving today instead x

Hey yourself. Us too. Race you there . . .

You’re on.

Then later, from Will:

I should have known better than to mention a competition to Jana. She’s relentless now. If we miss our connection she may actually combust.

But I won’t tell Peter about that. He’d become just as unbearable to travel with as Jana must be right now.

“Vienna?” Peter says. “Holiday? Will didn’t mention that.”

“Not holiday; a conference. Will was the key speaker.” Alongside his work at the university, Will—disarmingly enthusiastic on his subject, and blessed with a decent head of hair and a beautiful speaking voice—has somehow managed to recently become a household name, presenting a popular science-for-laymen television program called How the World Works and publishing books that actually sell. I’ve known Will far longer than I’ve known Jana or Peter: he and I were in the same undergraduate year at the same college, and quickly became part of the same friendship circle. In our last year, we had adjacent rooms and nursed each other through the pain of finals; nothing cements a friendship quite like surviving panic, despair, caffeine overload and sleep deprivation together. But now it’s Jana that I see more—often daily—as she works in my department.

“Ah, yes, the poor man’s Stephen Hawking. And all this time I thought research papers were the key to career advancement.” Peter shakes his head with a grimace that turns quickly into a grin: a theatrical display of mock enviousness meant to amuse. Though I rather suspect there’s a streak of genuine envy there too: Peter is nothing if not ambitious, and he absolutely keeps score.

“Jana messaged me to say that the gala dinner last night was a ton of fun. I expect they’re traveling with hangovers.” Jana loves the attention and the perks. It wouldn’t occur to her to pretend otherwise, though given the pair are deep in IVF struggles, perhaps only Will is likely to be suffering from overindulgence.

“Well, that’s some consolation, I suppose,” Peter says, tongue deliberately in cheek.

“The next leg of the journey is a train to Saint Gervais, right?”

“Yep, with a change at Annemasse; we should reach Saint Gervais midafternoon. Then we have a choice: short taxi, then long hike up, or longer taxi, then télécabine, and then a very short hike down.”

If I were Jana, I would ask which is quicker, but I really don’t care enough. “How long is long and how steep is up?”

“At least two hours, and decently steep in places.”

Two hours uphill, carrying my rucksack all the way. It doesn’t appeal. “Short hike down, please.”

“Oh, thank God.” That quick, mischievous grin again. “If you’d said the other, I’d have had to do it without complaining to preserve my male ego, but really I’d much rather take the easier route.” He cocks his head, attempting to inspect my footwear—Converse All Stars—in the confined space. “Those should be fine for the walk down since it’s dry.” He sounds a mite doubtful. “Do you have anything sturdier with you?”

“I’ve proper hiking boots in my rucksack.”

“Ah, good.” Then he pauses; I can see he’s steeling himself. I’ve gotten used to this too: the fear people have of even mentioning my husband’s name. “Was, um, was Nick supposed to be coming too?”

“Yes, but only for a couple of days. It was kind of Robert to invite him, given he was at a different college. I was going to stay on whilst he went to visit his mum.”

Peter’s mouth twitches. “I bet you were quite happy to leave him to do that on his own.”

I adopt an angelic expression. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

The twitch explodes into a laugh now; Nick’s mother is legendarily difficult. I’d had plenty of material for mother-in-law jokes, though secretly I’d wondered if we might have forged a bond if kids ever came along. I should call her, I think, though I can’t imagine anything I could say that could be of any help. She had surely been looking forward for months to the visit from her cherished only child; she was expecting a whole week of him to herself, and now she has exactly what I have: a hole where he ought to be. Words can’t fill that. But still, I should call her from France.

“Emily?” says Peter, so hesitantly that I wonder what expression is on my face to warrant it. But when I glance at him, it’s not concern I see, but something else. Anxiety, perhaps. “I, erm, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What?” We are taxiing along the runway now, picking up speed and noise.

He blows out a breath. “It’s nothing, really, except . . .”

I stare at him, bemused. It’s clearly not nothing to him. “What?” I ask again against the backdrop of the high-pitched whine of the engines.

“The last time I saw Nick, the last time we spoke—well, we argued. Properly argued, not just academic discussion: raised voices and everything. And I feel so wretched about it.” Indeed, his expression is the very definition of wretched. “It was silly, really, just something about work, but it’s so hard to think that our last words were in anger.” He’s staring down at the papers held in both his hands. I don’t know what to say. Nick never argued with anyone, ever. He was simply far too logical for that. Peter risks a glance at me. “Did he . . . did he tell you about it?”

I shake my head. “No.” His face clears a little, as if that’s some small kind of absolution, as if it couldn’t have mattered so much if Nick hadn’t bothered to tell me. I don’t have the heart to tell him that Nick would have had to take the time to process the conflict internally, to turn it over and analyze and classify it, before he felt capable of presenting it to me. We’re in the air now; I feel that extraordinary moment when the aircraft suddenly becomes light, as if shrugging off all tethers to earth, including gravity. Peter, though, still has the weight of the world in the lines of his face. “Peter,” I say gently, “you and he were friends for years. He wouldn’t have let a minor disagreement color what he thought of you.”

“You really think so?” He looks as if he daren’t quite accept the secondhand forgiveness I’m offering, as if I might snatch it away at any moment.

“I do,” I say firmly. I have no idea of what this skirmish was about or what Nick thought about it, but Peter shouldn’t have to carry this through life. He looks at me for a second, then closes his eyes briefly with a nod. His face is visibly lighter. After a beat, I can’t help but ask, “Nick really raised his voice with you?”

Peter makes a sound that sits precisely halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Well, the balance of the raised voices may have been entirely on my side,” he concedes. The laughter that escapes me dances along a knife-edge; if it treads too heavily, it will rent and tear. After a moment, he says, “He really didn’t say anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh.” He stares at the papers in his hand for a moment, then visibly shakes himself. “Well, back to keeping up with the competition,” he quips, picking up the top one to read. I catch a glimpse of the first few words in the title: Van der Waals Heterostructure Polaritons with . . . The book that’s in my lap, a thriller that has had everybody abuzz but somehow can’t hold my interest, looks rather lightweight by comparison. I pick it up anyway, but my attention is on the window—not the view through it, but on the three thin panes themselves. Such a thin, seemingly fragile boundary between life and death. I can’t imagine why we allow planes to have windows.

---

—

By four p.m., we’ve successfully navigated the train journey and reached the télécabine Peter mentioned. There’s not a cloud in the vaulting blue sky and the snowcapped mountains that rise from the valley floor are astonishingly close and extend much farther toward the clear blue heavens than seems possible. It’s a vista that stretches one’s field of vision, that forces a reassessment. The world seems bigger here. Bigger and wider and startlingly open.

The Prarion lift building is a brown wooden structure that appears to be suspended over the whirring mechanics of the lift itself, as if the Perspex bubbles shuffling in their semicircle beneath it were holding it up rather than the other way round. Given the time of day, most people are descending, either under their own steam or via the télécabine, and they’re all dressed for hiking; it’s an extraordinarily wholesome picture. If I’d closed my eyes in Geneva, I could have convinced myself I was in an English summer—hazily, drowsily warm such that even the image of it in one’s mind blurs at the edges—but it’s different here. Everything is cleaner, clearer, sharper. I can’t feel an edge in the air, but I know it’s there, just waiting for the sun to abate.

We pay at the desk and climb into one of the télécabines, which Peter assures me is meant for eight people, though I imagine that must be a squash. And then we’re skimming up over the mountainside, rising steeply over a carpet of dark green pine forests, rent in places by raking scars of pale green open meadows that are clearly ski runs and the occasional gray-brown gash of a gravel track, as if some mythical beast had gashed at the mountainside with its talons.

“Can we see it from here?”

“What? Oh—the chalet.” Peter has been oblivious to the landscape we’re speeding over, instead checking his emails on his mobile and typing replies at a comically rapid pace. He looks up briefly. “No, it’s the other side of the mountain. You should check your messages; the chalet has virtually no reception. Last chance and all that.”

I nod, but he’s already focusing on his mobile again. I don’t bother fishing out my own; there’s nobody waiting to hear from me. It occurs to me that all my threads have loosened, the ones that keep me in place. It’s a terrifying realization, how easily I’ve become untethered. I’d had ambition too, hadn’t I? My own intentions and goals? What has been the point of the life I’ve built up to now if I can shrug it off so effortlessly, like an unwanted jacket? I’m suddenly unnervingly aware of my own pulse beating away beneath my skin, hammering in my very core. It’s trying to take over, to bully me, hurry me, to race my breathing and ravage my heart—

Stop it, I tell myself. Breathe. You’ve been spending too much time alone. You’re overthinking everything, and it needs to stop.When I glance at Peter, ...