by Cat Clarke
First published in 2019 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2019
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2019 Cat Clarke
The moral right of Cat Clarke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request
ISBN: 978-1-78112-905-0
For Jonni Rhodes … I’m a superstitious girl
CONTENTS
9.36 a.m.
11.56 a.m.
2.17 p.m.
3.40 p.m.
4.14 p.m.
4.21 p.m.
4.32 p.m.
4.37 p.m.
5.04 p.m.
5.34 p.m.
5.56 p.m.
6.09 p.m.
6.25 p.m.
7.15 p.m.
8.36. p.m.
9.47 p.m.
10.45 p.m.
10.51 p.m.
11.03 p.m.
12.37 a.m.
9.36 a.m.
Never make a promise at a funeral. It’s my new motto. It’s pretty specific as mottos go, I know. But I think it will serve me well. Next time, when someone makes me promise to help them scatter the ashes of a dead person, I will do no such thing. Maybe I’ll say “Hmm” or “Maybe” or “Let’s see how we feel about each other in a year’s time. Maybe we won’t even be friends then, let alone girlfriends.” Yeah. That’s what I’ll do next time.
But this time I made the promise, and so I’m sitting in the back of an old Nissan Micra, listening to my ex‑girlfriend Ellie’s shiny new boyfriend, Steve, explain things to me. As experiences go, it falls somewhere on the unpleasantness scale between having all my teeth pulled out without anaesthetic and walking across a room full of Lego in bare feet. But this isn’t about me. So I act like everything’s fine. I’m really good at that. An expert.
Ellie keeps glancing in the rear‑view mirror, and I’m ready with a smile for her every time. It’s a constant source of amazement to me that a smile can convince anyone of anything.
I don’t want Ellie to know how I’m feeling. I want her to think I’m the best ex‑girlfriend in the entire history of ex‑girlfriends. I want her to feel so bad about breaking up with me that she’ll … God, I don’t know.
That makes it sound like I’m doing this for all the wrong reasons, but the truth is I believe you should keep your promises, if humanly possible. And this feels like it wasn’t a promise I made only to Ellie. It feels like a promise I made to her mum, Janice, too. I liked Janice, and she liked me. She always said I was good for Ellie, and Ellie always pretended to be annoyed when really she was delighted. I was good for Ellie and she was good for me. When did that stop being true?
“All right back there, Aggie?” Steve says to me as he turns down the volume on his terrible, terrible music.
“It’s Agnes,” I say for the third time. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Steve reaches across the gearbox and rests his hand on Ellie’s thigh. “We’re glad you came today, you know,” Steve says. “It means a lot – to both of us.”
I stare at his big meaty hand sitting there on Ellie’s thigh. Claiming her. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? As if he has anything to do with this. As if he would even be here if Ellie or I had a driver’s licence. Or if we knew anything whatsoever about climbing mountains. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Because surely otherwise Ellie would never want someone she’d only known for a couple of months to be here today. Steve never even met Janice. He’s nobody. He’s a stranger. A stranger Ellie just happens to be sleeping with. And the thought of that … well, it turns my stomach.
“Actually, could you turn up the air conditioning?” I ask.
“Sure thing,” Steve says. Then he turns the music back up and starts tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. At least his hand isn’t on Ellie’s thigh any more.
A few minutes later, Ellie leans forward in her seat and says, “I think that’s it … that mountain over there. I recognise it from the pictures.”
I crane my neck to see. And there it is: Ben Venachar. It looks like any other mountain. Grey, craggy … mountainy? Nothing special. But it was the first mountain Janice ever climbed. She told Ellie that it “spoke to her soul”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think it must be nice to feel that way about a place. I guess you need to leave the house to find somewhere like that.
11.56 a.m.
The car park at the foot of the mountain is empty apart from a beat‑up VW campervan with the curtains closed in the back. Steve gets out of the car and stretches. His T‑shirt rides up to reveal the trail of hair leading down from his belly button.
Ellie’s been silent since she first spotted the mountain. It makes me feel bad for making this all about me. I need to be here for her. Then I can go back to my life of skiving off college, eating all the biscuits and lying on my bed listening to my most depressing playlists.
Steve’s busy repacking his rucksack, and Ellie’s staring at Ben Venachar, her arms crossed, eyes narrowed. At some point on the journey, the morning’s blue skies must have turned grey. I didn’t even notice. That happens a lot these days: me not noticing stuff. My tea getting cold before I remember to drink it. My mum talking to me for five solid minutes before I even hear a word.
Maybe I should give Ellie the T‑shirt now, while Steve’s distracted. But I don’t want to make a thing of it, like it’s some big statement. It’s not. It’s just me returning something that doesn’t belong to me.
It’s only a bloody T‑shirt. So why can’t I bring myself to do it?
It was Ellie’s favourite. She wore it all the time, and every time she did, I would say something like, “Don’t you think it would look so much better on me?” or, “If you really loved me, you’d give it to me.” This went on for months until one day she took it off, stripping half naked in her living room, with her mum next door in the kitchen. Ellie handed it to me and I tried to give it back, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said she wanted me to have it. And then she told me she loved me. It was the best day of my life.
“You OK?” I ask Ellie.
She turns to me and tries to smile. “Yeah,” Ellie says. “I’ll be … fine. I think maybe when this is done … it’ll be better.” She looks down at her hiking boots. I think they might be her mum’s, but I don’t want to ask. My boots are three years old and at least a size too small. Dad bought them when he decided that hiking would be the perfect father–daughter activity for the two of us. This is the first time I’ve worn them.
Ellie looks over her shoulder, but Steve is too busy adjusting the height of his walking poles to pay us any attention. The guy has walking poles, for fuck’s sake. “He’s … nice … when you get to know him,” Ellie says. “He’s a decent guy.”
“OK,” I say.
That makes Ellie smile – a real smile this time. “Maybe he’s not quite your cup of tea,” she adds. “But he’s … he’s good for me. Things are … simple.”
I cough and turn away because I don’t want her to see how much that hurt. He’s good for her? Because things are simple? Steve is waving one of his poles around and making lightsaber sounds. I guess “simple” is the right word.
Ellie crouches down, and I watch as she checks and double‑checks the box containing her mum’s ashes. Then she carefully places the box in her rucksack.
We set off a few min
utes later. Steve is in the lead, closely followed by Ellie, with me trailing behind. Steve walks too fast, and Ellie has to tell him to slow down several times before he gets the message. She’s doing it for my benefit, because I can’t keep up. I’m so out of shape it’s not even funny.
I was never exactly skinny, but now I’m somewhere past plump and probably on the road to fat. I guess that’s what happens when you hardly leave the house. It’s what happens when you feel sad pretty much all the time and food is the only thing that makes you feel better. And the thing that drives my mum out of her freaking mind is that I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care that most of my clothes no longer fit. I don’t care that my grandmother keeps emailing me articles about the latest stupid diets. I don’t give a shit. And that drives people nuts. They can’t understand it, because that stuff is so important to them. They can’t get their heads around me being perfectly fine with how I look because none of it matters.
I try to distract myself from the effort of hiking by looking around. By being in the moment. Mum’s always banging on about it – meditating and shit. I try not to listen, but some of it must have seeped into my brain. The scenery is nice, if you like that sort of thing. A bit bleak for me. But I like the sheep. They’re just roaming around, free as anything. How does the farmer keep track of them? I stop to take a video of some lambs frolicking. They’re so cute I almost regret the lamb rogan josh I ate last night.
Steve stops at a fork in the trail and consults his map. Then he fiddles with the compass that hangs around his neck. “This way, ladies!” Steve says, and sets off on the left‑hand trail. It looks … steep.
He’s got all the gear. Expensive boots, a hi‑tech jacket tied around his waist. He explained that his trousers are specially designed to remove excess moisture from your skin. I guess his legs must be particularly sweaty. Ellie’s wearing special walking trousers too, but I’m just in jeans. There was no way I could afford to buy special gear just for one day, and I have zero intention of doing something like this ever again. My thigh muscles feel like they’re on fire. Mum would call it “feeling the burn”.
It’s been about half an hour since we passed the fork in the trail. Ellie slows down and says, “I thought there would be loads of other people here. Mum said it was getting a bit touristy on the mountain unless you took the ridge route.”
“Which is exactly why we’re taking the ridge route,” Steve says with a smile, and I’m almost certain he thinks it’s charming. (It’s not.)
Ellie stops dead and I bump into her. “Um … we talked about this,” she says to Steve.
I can’t see her face, but I would bet money that she’s trying to send Steve signals with her eyes. Signals that mean: There’s no way Agnes can manage the ridge route.
I clear my throat and ask, “This is the route your mum would have taken, right, Ellie?”
Ellie turns to look at me, and I manage to steady my breathing and look cheerful.
“I think it gets quite steep …” she says.
“I can do this, El,” I whisper. “I want to do this.” I don’t want Steve to hear. This is none of his business. “For Janice.”
I can tell Ellie wants to argue, but something stops her. I think she likes the idea of following in her mother’s footsteps, today of all days. And I do, too. It feels right.
2.17 p.m.
We demolish the sandwiches Ellie made in a few minutes. She handed me mine shyly. And that’s when I realised she’d made coronation chicken, which is my favourite sandwich in the world. Steve sniffed his sandwich and wrinkled his nose while Ellie was rooting around in her rucksack for her water bottle. He saw me looking at him, so of course then he said, “Mmmm, this smells amazing.”
I’m sitting on one rock, and Ellie and Steve are sitting on another. Their rock is a big flat slab. It looks more comfortable than mine. My bum is starting to get numb. A deep coldness has seeped into my body as we’ve been sitting. It must be the sweat, cooling and turning icy. Should have got some of that fancy gear after all. A pair of boots that fit at the very least. My feet are killing me. Pretty sure I’ve got blisters already.
The views are supposed to be spectacular from up here, but right now there’s nothing much to see. If I squint a bit, I can just about make out the loch far below, but otherwise it’s just … grey. Greyness all around, whichever way I look. It’s kind of depressing, but maybe it’s right for today.
“How much further to the top?” I ask, then pop the last bite of sandwich into my mouth.
Ellie opens her mouth to speak, but Steve gets there first. “An hour?” He turns to look at the trail ahead, then he shrugs and adds, “Maybe an hour and a half, if—”
“So where’s this sunshine you promised?” Ellie interrupts. “I thought it was supposed to be blue skies all the way.”
Steve shrugs again. “You know what weather forecasts are like. Don’t know why we even bother to check them.”
“You did check it, though?” Ellie asks. “It’s just I thought there would be a bunch of other climbers up here.”
A flash of annoyance crosses Steve’s face. “Of course I checked.”
I guess it’s left to me to be peacemaker, so I ask, “So, Steve, how did you get into climbing?”
“What’s with all the questions?” he snaps at me.
Ellie must look as shocked as I do, because Steve catches her eye and looks guilty. “Sorry …” Steve says. “I … um … I think we should maybe get going.”
We set off again, and it’s not fun any more. Not that it was fun before, but now it’s even worse. There’s no Steve chatter to distract me from the hiking. Or from the fact that this is bloody hard work. The ridge route is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a fucking ridge. There’s no path – just rocky, uneven ground. And on each side of that rocky, uneven ground, there’s … nothing. The slopes aren’t really steep. But you just know that if you fell, you wouldn’t stop falling till you reached the bottom. Or you might hit one of the small scrubby trees that cling to the mountainside. And that would hurt.
Every few minutes, Ellie stops and waits for me to catch up. I wish she wouldn’t. And yet I’m glad she does. See? It’s confusing as hell.
I focus on each step. Putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again. I try to ignore the sound of my laboured breathing. It gets easier to ignore as the wind picks up, but of course the wind makes everything else harder. It’s the sort of wind you wouldn’t really notice if you were walking along the street. It would just feel like a light breeze. But up here it feels vicious. Its icy fingers find their way into every gap in my clothing. They tug and claw at my jacket, trying to push me off balance.
This will be over soon, I remind myself. I’ll be home in a matter of hours, back in my room with the door locked and my headphones over my ears. I hold on to that thought. I think about being wrapped up in my duvet. Snug as a bug in a rug.
It starts to rain.
3.40 p.m.
The clouds have turned gun‑metal grey and are spewing angry, relentless rain. Merciless rain. My jeans are soaked through and sticking to my legs.
“Ellie!” I call, but the wind whips my voice away, so I have to scramble to catch up with her. “Ellie! We need to stop!”
She turns towards me and I realise she’s breathing almost as hard as I am. She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts to Steve, who trudges back towards us.
Steve’s hood is pulled tight over his head. His face is grim. All traces of annoying easy‑going Steve have gone.
“What’s up?” he asks.
I look to Ellie, but she’s not looking at me. I guess I have to be the one to say it: “I think we should turn back.”
Ellie looks horrified. “What? No!” she says. “We’re nearly there!”
I look to Steve for back‑up, but he’s busy staring at his muddy boots, so I turn back to Ellie and say, “El, come on, the weather’s not getting any better. This is getting pretty dangerous.”
Ellie sighs. “Aw, it’s just a bit of rain.”
“Maybe there’s a reason no one else is up here today,” I say. A thought occurs to me. A horrible nauseating thought. “Steve? You definitely checked the weather this morning, didn’t you?”
“Of course I …” Steve starts, then looks from me to Ellie and back again. Then he winces, and I know I’m not going to like what he says next. “My … um … my dad said the forecast looked fine.”
I laugh, but there’s no humour in it. “This is a joke, right?” I ask. “This has to be a joke. You didn’t even bother to check?”
Ellie is staring at Steve as if she’s seeing him for the first time. But she says nothing. There’s just the sound of the wind. Roaring.
Then Steve mutters something, under his breath but I still hear it: “You could have checked too, you know.” And the annoying – enraging – thing is that Steve’s right. Bastard.
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Ellie gets there first. “I’m not turning back,” she says. “I have to do this. Today.”
It would have been Janice’s forty‑fifth birthday today. I get it. Of course I do. Ellie made a promise to herself that she would do this thing on her mum’s birthday, just like I made a promise to be with her when she did it. But sometimes promises have to be broken.
“Ellie, your mum wouldn’t want you taking any risks,” I say. “You know that.”
Wrong move. Her face transforms into an angry mask in an instant. “What would you know about risk?!” Ellie barks at me. “You’re scared of your own fucking shadow.”
It feels like a slap. I’ve never been slapped, but I can imagine the shock of it. The sharp sting.
Ellie sighs an exasperated sigh and says, “Look, you do whatever you want, but I’m getting to the top of this fucking mountain and saying goodbye to my mum.” She turns to Steve. “Are you coming or not?”