Chapter 4

      Annie got back to the school just before dark and was fortunate to find a parking space very close to the front door. She rang the bell and waited for the buzzing sound that announced that the door was unlocked. The first thing she saw when she pushed the door open and stepped into the reception area was a pile of cardboard boxes and her heart lifted. The brochures had arrived.

      She stood her skis up against the wall and dumped the heavy boots on the floor. Paolina got up from her desk and smiled. ‘You look as though you’ve had a good day. You’re glowing.’ This afternoon Paolina was wearing an amazingly hairy grey sweater that had evidently started life on the back of somebody a good few sizes bigger than her. She looked like an Old English sheepdog but, at least, the heating had been working less as a result and the temperature in the room was sub-tropical rather than tropical.

      Annie smiled back. ‘Absolutely great and quite exciting. I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve had a look at the brochures. Everything all right?’ Annie had had a recurring dream, more of a nightmare, over the past weeks that the five thousand brochures either wouldn’t arrive in time or, if they did, that there would be some terrible typo on the cover. She picked up a copy from an open box and took a deep breath, hardly daring to look.

      ‘They’re perfect, Annie, and the SEA logo looks really good.’ Paolina sounded enthusiastic.

      Annie braced herself and took a good look at the brochure. Paolina was right. It looked perfect. After flicking through it, she released her breath and gave Paolina a big smile.

      ‘Fantastic, Paolina. They look fantastic. We need to celebrate. I’ve got just the thing.’ Annie ran through to the kitchen, soon to become the teachers’ room, and pulled a bottle of Prosecco out of the fridge. She grabbed two tumblers and took them back to Paolina. She was just tearing the foil off the top when the doorbell rang. She hastily stuffed the bottle into a drawer as Paolina pressed the button to open the door. To their surprise, a man appeared, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Paolina’s eyes widened.

      ‘Can I help you?’

      ‘Flowers for you.’

      ‘For me?’ Paolina’s eyes were even wider now. The man pulled out a pair of reading glasses and studied the clipboard in his other hand, then looked up first at Paolina and then at Annie. He glanced back at Paolina.

      ‘It’s for somebody called Annie Brewer.’ He pronounced it Brevver.

      ‘That’s me.’ Annie gave the disappointed Paolina an apologetic look as she took the huge bunch of flowers from his hand.

      ‘Sign here, please.’ The man handed her a clipboard and she signed it absently. As he was about to go back out of the door a thought occurred to her.

      ‘Does it say who the flowers are from?’ He shook his head.

      ‘Not on my sheet, it doesn’t. There’s an envelope inside the cellophane. It’ll be in there. Goodbye, ladies.’

      Together, they removed the flowers from the cellophane wrapper and found a little envelope stapled to one corner. Inside was a card with the word Grazie printed on it in big letters. Below this was a short, handwritten message. Leonardo the dog thanks you for your life-saving intervention. He has a headache but he is going to be fine. It was signed Alessandro. The other thing that was strange was that it was written in English – perfect English. Paolina was craning her neck to read the card so Annie passed it over to her without a word and went off to the kitchen to look for a vase. Nothing in there was big enough, so she ended up bringing out an old glass vase inherited from the last occupant of the apartment and a big plastic jug. As they divided the flowers between the two receptacles, Annie related the story of the Labrador on the ski slope. Paolina was impressed.

      ‘So the flowers are from the man in the blue jacket. Did you get the rest of his name?’ Annie shook her head.

      ‘Just his first name: Alessandro. And that’s all I gave him. I just said my name was Annie.’

      Paolina continued. ‘And you said this Alessandro was very handsome.’

      Annie didn’t remember saying anything of the kind. ‘I just said he had nice eyes.’

      ‘Amazing bright blue eyes, you said, which means you liked them a lot and so that means you found him handsome.’

      Annie didn’t bother trying to question Paolina’s logic which, if the truth be told, was pretty much spot on. He certainly was a handsome man. Even though he had been wearing a woolly hat and heavy jacket, she had been able to see that.

      ‘So, if you just told him your first name, how did he know your surname and how to find you?’ Paolina sounded bemused.

      Annie shook her head. The only way he could have found out her name was if he knew somebody who knew her and there was, of course, somebody up at the ski resort who did indeed know her name. ‘Massimo.’ She saw the look on Paolina’s face. ‘Signor Lagrange who gave me the lift pass. They must know each other. There can’t be too many other women up here with a name like Annie and an English accent.’

      ‘You haven’t got an English accent.’ Paolina sounded scathing. ‘At least, hardly at all. When I first met you I just thought you were from down the valley; Turin probably.’

      Annie had no time to register the compliment. She was still thinking hard. So, she thought to herself, if Massimo and he are friends then I can easily find out about him. Once again she felt a sensation of surprise that she should be interested in a man again. This hadn’t happened since Steve’s death and it was a strange, but not altogether unwelcome, sensation. What was it Karen had said about life having to go on?

      ‘And seeing as the blue-eyed man was able to get to you so quickly, he must work up there. Maybe he’s something to do with the ski school or the hotel.’

      ‘He certainly skied well enough to be an instructor, but he wasn’t wearing the regulation red jacket with the white bands around the chest. Who knows what he does?’ Annie finished stuffing the last of the flowers into the plastic jug and looked up. ‘Why don’t you take this half of the bunch home to your mum, Paolina? It’s Friday today and they’ll probably be dead by Monday if we just leave them here. I’ll keep the ones in the vase in my office for now.’

      Paolina was only too happy to accept. ‘I’ll tell her they’re a present from my new boyfriend. She’ll be ever so impressed.’

      ‘You’ve got a new boyfriend?’ Only a few days earlier, Paolina had been relating the sad end to her most recent romance.

      Paolina grinned. ‘Well, yes, but this one would be more likely to send me saucy underwear than flowers, but mum doesn’t need to know that.’

      ‘That was quick.’ Annie was impressed. Clearly, Paolina hadn’t wasted time in replacing her previous boyfriend. She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s almost five o’clock. That’s when local radio said the first advert would go out. Quick, turn the radio on.’

      They