Miss You by Kate Eberlen Page A

afternoon and was looking rather pink and shiny; he’d called it a day after the snow came in and had already
showered and changed for dinner.
    ‘Where’s Ross?’
    ‘He wanted to ski down. I’d had enough.’
    I didn’t tell them about Ross going off-piste. Didn’t see the point in worrying them unnecessarily.
    After about an hour, Mum started getting fidgety and looking at her watch every few minutes.
    ‘He’s probably bumped into someone and gone for a drink,’ I suggested.
    ‘He’s probably gone back to the room to dry off,’ said Dad.
    ‘It seems to be clearing up now,’ said Mum. ‘Perhaps he took shelter and waited for it to pass over?’
    We were all keen to imagine possible scenarios that would explain the unnatural delay.
    I think perhaps all of us were frightened of Ross. My mother didn’t dare to be thought of as a worrier; my dad revelled in his older son’s courage and prowess and didn’t want
to be seen to be questioning that; my own growing anxiety was compounded by not having told them the full facts.
    ‘Do you think we should alert someone?’ I finally asked. ‘It’s just that I think he was planning to ski off-piste . . .’
    ‘What? Why the hell didn’t you say before?’
    My father had already decided to blame me.
    By the time we’d ascertained what we were supposed to do in the circumstances and the rescue team had set off, three hours had passed since I’d last seen my brother. They found him
at nine o’clock that night, still alive but hypothermic, with a shattered arm and catastrophic head injuries. It appeared that, just a minute or so after we’d parted, Ross had skied
into a tree at speed. They were able to pinpoint the time because the watch on his broken arm had stopped. I always pictured him hurtling through the whiteness, glancing back over his shoulder to
see if I was catching him up, losing the crucial split second he needed to avoid the suddenly looming obstacle.
    ‘Why did you let him go . . . ?’ my mother screamed at me when she saw the stretcher.
    ‘. . . alone?’ added my father.
    They must have known that I couldn’t have stopped him, but they needed someone to blame and they couldn’t blame Ross, because Ross was clearly going to die. And those who die young
must always be heroes.

7
December 1997
TESS
    On Christmas morning, I woke up to the distant clatter of saucepans. Leaping out of bed, I ran downstairs in my nightie and bare feet. In the kitchen, Mum was crouching down to
look at the progress of the turkey through the glass door of the oven. She turned and smiled up at me. ‘How was Midnight Mass?’
    ‘I knew it couldn’t be true!!’ I was bursting with joy as I ran towards her, arms outstretched. Then I woke up, the cocoon of exquisite happiness shattered by crushing
disappointment.
    The room was dark, the blankets and pink candlewick bedspread heavier than my duvet at home. The warm aroma of roasting turkey and distinctive clatter of someone cooking filtered up from the
kitchen below. The O’Neills’ guest room, I remembered.
    I wondered how long my dream had lasted. Was it a few minutes, or just a second? How did the brain do that? How did the sleeping consciousness manage to construct a story to interpret the smells
and sounds around it? And why did I have to wake up so soon? I closed my eyes tight, trying to conjure Mum back, but she’d gone.
    Was this the sign? I suddenly thought.
    Mum could have said anything, but she’d mentioned Mass.
    Hope was sleeping in the twin bed an arm’s length from mine.
    ‘Happy Christmas, Tree!’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘Christmas Tree!’ she repeated, delighted.
    I don’t think I ever saw Hope being sad. Obstinate, yes, angry for no reason, yes, but she’d always been like that. Sometimes I looked at my sister and I wondered whether she missed
Mum at all. I didn’t ask, because I wasn’t going to introduce unhappiness if there was none. Sometimes I asked myself, if a