by KE Payne
❖
Walking trousers suited Ash, Nat thought. As did the boots, the jacket, and the beanie. In fact, the whole ensemble looked as though it had been made just for her. And she looked stunning in it.
They had resumed their climb to the summit and, just as before, after walking together for the first ten minutes or so, Ash had gradually increased her step and moved ahead of Nat. Not that Nat minded. Her concentration alternated between making sure her boots gripped the gravel underfoot and admiring her perfect view of Ash.
Just as at Richmond Park the week before, Ash was in her element out here on the hill. Nat could feel her enthusiasm—could almost grasp it in her hands—as Ash cherished the environment around her. Her enthusiasm was infectious, Nat thought, as Ash periodically pointed out something of interest in the far distance, or a bird or plant that had caught her eye on their ascent.
And Nat realized just how much she thrived on Ash’s passion. It made her feel alive—far more alive than she ever felt in London. It was as though Ash was opening her eyes to a whole world that she never knew existed: Ash’s world.
And Nat loved it.
“My dog is trying to tell you something.”
Nat snapped her head up. Ash was standing in front of her, hands on her hips, impish look on her face. Nat peered over Ash’s shoulder to see Widgeon on his back, rubbing himself against the grass, his legs flailing in the air, his tongue hanging like a large piece of pink ribbon from the side of his mouth.
“He’s trying to tell you to hurry up.” Ash winked. Nat grabbed the hand that was offered to her, allowing herself to be pulled up the last two steps. She stood next to Ash, watching Widgeon as he continued his rolling, oblivious to his audience.
“Is that what he does?”
“Always,” Ash replied. “Usually when I’m being slow on his walks.” She frowned. “Either that or he’s found something delicious to roll in. I’m hoping it’s the former.”
Nat pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose into it, the exertion of the climb combined with the chilly hill air turning her nose into a dripping tap.
“Your dog is as barmy as you,” she said, stuffing her tissue back into her pocket. She pulled her beanie off and tousled her hair, savouring the cool air blowing through it. “That the summit?” Nat lifted her chin ahead of her, to a small crop of rocks. “Or is it an illusion?”
Ash laughed. “It’s the summit, I promise you.”
“Can you imagine if we’d brought Chloe up here?” Nat said. “Imagine the grumbling.”
“Livvy probably thought it would have been character-building for her.” Ash rolled her eyes.
“I miss her,” Nat said suddenly. “Livvy.”
“Me too.”
“Do you ever wish you could turn the clock back?” Nat asked, not meeting Ash’s eye.
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t just mean about…me and you.” Finally Nat looked at Ash. “I mean about everything.”
“But does anything ever stay the same?” Ash asked.
“We were so happy,” Nat said, not answering Ash’s question. “You, me, and Livvy.” Her gaze grew distant again. “Sometimes I remember the stuff we did at school, and that’s when I wish I could turn the clock back.”
“It was all a long time ago now.”
Nat felt Ash’s hand on her arm and looked down. Sensing Ash looking at her, she raised her eyes to meet hers. “Yes, but sometimes I wish…” Nat began.
“You wish?”
“Nothing.” Nat smiled. She shook herself, as if to shake the thought from her. “Shall we press on? I’m getting hungry.”
❖
The summit of Brown Willy was worth the burning thighs, the breathless lungs, and the sweat that now trickled slowly down into the small of Ash’s back.
As she sat on a rock, Nat’s unanswered wish still lodged in her mind, Ash gazed out around her, indulging herself in the beauty of the moors. Dark streams cut a swathe through the desolate moorland, which was dotted with rocky outcrops and granite boulders. The evocative sound of curlews calling to one another in distant marshes and estuaries echoed in the air, and intrigued, Ash shrugged her rucksack from her back, opened it, and pulled out her binoculars.
She felt Nat sit down beside her but didn’t pull her binoculars from her eyes, instead choosing to concentrate on the small flock of lapwings skimming and diving across a distant boggy field. Just like on the boat, Ash sensed a disquiet from Nat and knew she probably wanted to finish what she’d started further down the hill. But for now, Ash was happy for her mind to be free of thoughts and for the silence—only punctured by the distant wail of the curlews—to remain.
Finally, once the lapwings had settled and the curlews remained elusive, Ash put down her binoculars.
“Anything interesting?” Nat asked.
“Few birds. A boat out on the River Fowey.” Ash shrugged and placed the binoculars at her feet. “And lots of moorland.” She threw a grin to Nat. “Lots of moorland.”
“Hungry?”
The emptiness in Ash’s stomach suddenly made itself heard. “Guess that answers that,” Ash said. She brought her knees up to her chest, embarrassed at her rumbling stomach. “Talk about timing.”
“Mine usually rumbles during meetings,” Nat said. “And always at the quietest moments.”
“Why do they always do that?” Ash accepted the foil-wrapped sandwich that was handed to her. “Good thing about my line of work is no one can hear when I’m hungry over the sound of the boat’s engine.” She laughed.
“I remember years ago, during my finals…” Nat stopped.
“Go on.”
“Just…thinking my concentration was going to be ruined thanks to my noisy stomach.”
Nat’s discomfort at her words was palpable.
“You can talk about your time at medical school, you know.” Ash unwrapped her sandwich but avoided eye contact with Nat. “It won’t kill me.”
“It’s not important.” Nat cleared her voice. “It was a stupid story anyway.”
“But you still sailed through your finals,” Ash said, “despite your annoying anatomy.” Unexpectedly she wanted to know. Why, though, knowing Nat was uneasy about it? To make her squirm? No, that wasn’t it. Ash bit into her sandwich. She wanted to know, to find out how Nat’s life had panned out compared to hers. Gaps needed to be filled.
“Yeah, I did okay,” Nat replied.
“The letters after your name tell me you did more than okay,” Ash said.
“Funny how being up here, far from London, makes all those letters seem so immaterial,” Nat said.
Ash turned her head slightly, watching as Nat stared out ahead of her, soaking up the view.
“Belfast will be nicer than London, though,” Ash said. The words sounded forced, almost as though she didn’t want to speak them. Didn’t want them to be true. “Can’t get much greener than Ireland.”
“I guess.” Nat unwrapped her sandwich, then hesitated. “No, Belfast’s going to be great.” She shot a smile to Ash. “I’m going to give it some of that positivity you talked to me about on the boat yesterday.”
Ash felt a stab of disappointment, immediately followed by shame at her hypocrisy. What made her think she could dish out advice to Nat, then be frustrated when Nat acted on it?
“Back there on the hill,” Nat said, breaking Ash’s train of thought, “I told you I wished something.”
“You did.” Ash narrowed her eyes and peered out in front of her. She wouldn’t prompt, or question. She would just let Nat tell her what she so obviously felt she needed to tell her.
“I wish things had turned out differently.” Nat’s brow creased. “That…we’d stuck together. If I’d known at eighteen that I’d lose my two best friends before I’d reached forty then I’d have—”
“Thought more about your actions?” Ash offered.
Nat pulled her gaze to Widgeon, weaving his way round the rocks to the side of them.
“Seriously?” Ash twisted her body round to face Nat better. “You and Livvy?”
“Oh, it wasn’t really anything like that.”
Nat was backtracking, Ash could tell.
“She couldn’t understand what had happened,” Nat said, “or that I’d never tell her.”
“Did you two fall out?” Ash was astonished. She’d had no idea. Sure, she knew Livvy was upset at what she’d perceived as a major falling out between Ash and Nat, but she’d never told Ash any more than that.
“For a while,” Nat said. “That’s why I ended up going to uni in Edinburgh.” She looked at Ash. “Oh, we made up. It was all a storm in a teacup.”
“I’d hardly call you finishing with me a storm in a—”
“I didn’t mean me and you.”
The severity in Nat’s voice surprised Ash. Her own knee-jerk sharpness back to Nat surprised her further.
“Well it was a big deal to me.” Ash tossed the remains of her sandwich to one side, no longer hungry.
“Me and you,” Nat said, “is a whole different ball game.” Now she’d finally spoken again, her tone was gentler. She paused, and not for the first time over the past five minutes, Ash wished she could read her mind. “One which maybe we ought to talk about again,” she offered. “We do still need to talk about us, I think.”
“Did you know the name of this hill comes from the Cornish for hill of swallows?” Ash screwed up her foil and put it into her pocket. “No swallows today, though.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I know.” Ash jumped up, brushing breadcrumbs from her trousers. “Guess I’m not in the mood for talking right now.” She hastened away from Nat and clambered over a pile of small rocks, whistling sharply to Widgeon as she did so.
She headed towards a man-made rock pile, savouring the hill air that buffed around her, occasionally making her jacket billow. Blowing Nat’s words away from her. She crouched at the base of the rock pile, studying the myriad rocks that other climbers had placed there over the years, each one of whom probably had their own stories to tell. Ash picked up a small rock and studied it. What had Livvy said to Nat all those years ago? She’d never told Ash any of it, had never even given a hint that the pair of them had fallen out, even if their falling out had only been brief. Ash turned the rock over in her hands, half expecting Nat to join her. She didn’t. The rock was smooth. A good size. Perfect. Had Livvy guessed it had been more than just two friends drifting apart? This rock would nestle nicely with the others in the cairn. Just another rock from another person on the hill with another story to tell. Now Nat wanted to tell Ash her own story, but Ash wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
She leaned closer, placing her rock in a convenient small crevice, then wiggled it a little until it settled into its space. She slipped a look back down to Nat, still sitting on her rock, still eating her sandwich. Ash watched her for a while, secretly wanting her to come up and join her, whilst at the same time wanting to be alone so she could process her thoughts which were scrolling through her mind at a hundred miles an hour.
Ash picked up another stone and rubbed her thumb over it. And what about her and Nat’s future now?
We still need to talk about us.
“We do.” Ash murmured, wiping the dirt from the stone. “We don’t.” She watched as the lumps of mud fell in small clumps from it.
There was no us, even though Ash had liked the way Nat’s words had set off a clatter of confusion inside her. Had loved the way in which Nat had said it had muddied her mind with a bewildering mixture of excitement and disquiet.
Ash stood, dusting the dirt from her hands.
Could there ever be an us? Only she, Ash thought, as she took one final look back down to Nat, could answer that particular question.
Chapter Eighteen
Nat felt the first drops of rain just as she swallowed the last of her sandwich. She scrunched up her foil wrapping, stuffed it into her rucksack, then glanced up to the heavy purple sky, blinking as raindrops, fatter now, fell onto her face.
“We need to go.”
Ash’s breathless voice sounded somewhere behind her. Nat turned just in time to see her hurrying back down the hill towards her, sending gravel tumbling down in her haste.
“What were you doing up there all that time anyway?” Nat asked as she stood.
“Adding to the cairn.”
Nat followed Ash’s gaze back up the hill.
“All this time?” Nat asked.
“All this time.” Ash grabbed her rucksack. “We really need to go.”
The rain was falling faster now, drumming against the rocks with increased fervour, sending water spraying out with each hit. Nat shouldered her rucksack, shuddering as water from it trickled down her neck, and followed Ash, already four or five steps ahead of her. Lightning flashed in the distance, the sky now darkening with alarming speed, the thrashing rain greasing the already precarious rocks and familiar gravel path. To her side, the dark mass of the forest which they’d walked through on their way up quivered as the thunder grumbled in reply to the lightning, already much closer than it was before.
“Does the weather always change this quickly up here?” Nat fell into step beside Ash, casting a worried look behind her as the dark clouds continued to chase them back down the hill.
“Always.” Ash laughed. She batted the rain from her face, then flicked it from her fingers. “Bodmin Moor isn’t for the faint-hearted.” She flashed a grin at Nat.
Nat glanced at her, surprised to see the glee in her face. Nat, her wet trousers plastered to her cold legs, her red hands so frozen she could no longer feel her fingers, felt anything but gleeful.
“You’re mad.” Nat shook her head, then hunched her shoulders as another roll of thunder swept over their heads, this time accompanied by an immediate and fleeting burst of lightning.
They scrambled back down the hill, their silence only punctured by the hammering rain which drummed against their waterproof jackets and the rocks. An occasional sharp whistle from Ash to Widgeon kept him from straying too far, but the dog seemed as keen as Nat to get back to the safety of Ash’s truck which was still too far away for Nat’s liking.
“My mother always said”—Ash called out to be heard over the sound of the rain—“that there’s no such thing as bad weather. Only insufficient clothing.”
Nat looked down at her sodden trousers.
“I always thought your mother was eccentric,” she said. “Eccentric but—”
It all happened in a heartbeat. In amongst the chaos of the rain, the thunder, Widgeon running between them, and the glassy granite rocks, Nat didn’t see exactly what happened, but the shriek from Ash was enough to tell her that whatever had happened was bad.
She was at Ash’s side in a heartbeat, stumbling over tufts of wet grass and crawling the last few inches on her hands and knees to get to her. Ash had slipped and tumbled away from her, coming to rest further down the hill. She was lying in the foetal position, cradling her arm against her chest, and as Nat scrabbled over to her, she could see her face was twisted tight in pain. Nat wasn’t sure what was worse: Ash’s look of utter anguish, or the rain continuing to pound relentlessly onto her blanched face, insensitive to her obvious agony.
“Ash.” Nat knelt next to Ash and wiped the wet from her eyes, still screwed up tight against her pain. “What happened?” The dislocation of her shoulder was obvious; less clear were any other injuries. Instinct kicked in, and Nat knew she had decisions to make. She looked down the hill, calculating the amount of time it would take them to return to Ash’s truck, then back to Ash. When Ash’s answer was too hoarse with pain to be heard, Nat leaned over her and scanned around her, frantically looking for any rocks nearby that Ash could have hit her head on. She could see nothing obvious, except for the slab of sh
iny, wet granite Ash had evidently slipped on, further up the hill. Relief flooded Nat’s senses.
“Did you hit your head on anything on the way down? Ash? Ash? This is important.” Nat’s fingers moved expertly up and down Ash’s spine and neck. “Can you feel this? And your toes?” She gently pushed Widgeon away as he leaned against her, intrigued at his owner’s apparent new game.
“Shoulder. It’s…”
Ash moved and winced.
“I know. Don’t move.”
“I can feel you touching me,” Ash whispered. “And I can feel my legs and toes. I didn’t bang my head. It’s all good.” She gingerly straightened her legs and rolled onto her back, still cradling her arm against her, then turned her head to one side, blinking the rain away from her eyes. “It’s just my shoulder. It’s gone again.”
“I said don’t move,” Nat chastised. She hunkered over Ash, her body sheltering Ash’s face from the rain, and again started feeling her way up and down her neck. “And that’s all okay? Can I move your arm a little so I can see your shoulder better?”
Rain continued to drench them, and Nat angrily blinked away the raindrops that dripped from her hat and down her forehead, blurring her vision. She gently moved Ash, apologizing when she cried out.
“You’ve dislocated it before, right?”
“Twice.” Ash’s face creased. “But not for a few years now.”
Nat shifted her position. She smoothed away a stray strand of wet hair that had escaped from Ash’s hat and gazed down at her, her mind in chaos. Sure, she’d done reductions before, but not for many years. And certainly not on the side of a rain-lashed hill.
“The answer’s yes.” Ash’s eyes met hers. “Because I know what you’re about to say. You’re going to put it back in, right? So the answer’s yes. Do it.”
Nat shot a look back down the hill, imagining Holly Cottage, a hopelessly long distance away, remembering the bog they’d both struggled through at the start of their walk. The weather, the quagmire at the entrance to the car park, and the terrain all made it impossible for Nat to even contemplate guiding Ash back down with a dislocated shoulder. She angrily swiped away a raindrop from the end of her nose and gazed back down at Ash. What choice did she have?