‘Mate,’ I say, my mood rising considerably. ‘You’re the best.’
‘There’s more,’ he says, unzipping another pocket.
‘What you got in there?’ Helen says, wiping her face. ‘A parachute so we can all just float back down instead of climbing?’
‘Even better, my love, even better,’ Luke says, pulling out a flask. ‘I’ve got … whisky.’
Helen doesn’t look thrilled but Theo and I are all over it, and in a handful of minutes Luke’s tapping the bottom for the last dregs. I lie back, my legs dangling over the edge, nothing but air between me and death six hundred feet below. The moon is a Cheshire cat’s smile in an inky, cloudless sky.
‘There she is,’ Luke says, leaning towards Helen and pointing at the whitest peak. ‘Mont Blanc. The imaginatively-monikered “white mountain”. Highest mountain in the world.’
‘Western Europe,’ Theo corrects.
‘Highest mountain in Western Europe,’ Luke says sourly.
We sit for a moment in the still warm air, looking over the silhouetted peaks towering above us and the lights of Chamonix below, the hostels and alpine huts glimmering and small as a gingerbread village. To the right I can make out movement, or what looks like a stream of ants hustling along a narrow trail. I take out my binoculars and there they are: hordes of climbers already setting off on the trail.
‘Feels like we’re going on a pilgrimage,’ I observe, stupidly.
‘You bring your rosary with you, then?’ Theo says.
I pass the binoculars to Luke and he glowers at the people heading off. ‘This isn’t a pilgrimage, it’s a traffic jam.’ He looks over the lights in Chamonix and I read his mind: we didn’t think there would be so many hostels. ‘Thought we’d be doing this alone,’ he says. ‘Just the four of us.’
‘Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse?’ Theo says.
‘You’re so competitive,’ Helen tells Luke, rubbing his arm.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Luke says, kissing her hand.
‘It’s not like there’s someone at the top handing out awards for whoever arrives first,’ Helen laughs.
Theo shrugs. ‘You never know.’
‘The summit is its own reward,’ Luke says.
‘So you won’t be bothered if I get there first?’ Helen says, and I see Luke’s face fall.
‘Not at all.’ He breaks into a beaming grin, then slaps me and Theo on our backs before tilting his head to the sky.
‘I love you guys,’ he says, then adding: ‘and girl.’
‘Luke, babe, don’t take this the wrong way,’ Theo says. ‘But … I’m not snogging you. Don’t care what you give me. I draw a line at tongues. Pecking is fine, but snogging – no. I’m your brother and it’s wrong.’
Helen laughs out loud while Luke and I lie on our backs sending loops of smoke drifting into the night air. I don’t say it, and this is a rare feeling for me, but right now there is simply nowhere else I’d rather be.
30th August 2017
‘Mum!’
Reuben is running down the hospital corridor towards me, his arms spread wide. He presses his face to my chest and I give a loud cry of relief. There’s a nasty bruise above his right eyebrow, some cuts and dried blood on his forehead, his T-shirt smeared in blood, but otherwise he seems fine. I start to sob – relief or fear, I can’t tell – and he starts to cry, too.
‘Can we go home now, Mum?’ he says, trying to climb on to my knee. ‘I want to go home, OK? Let’s go home.’
‘OK,’ I whisper weakly, wiping tears off my face. ‘We can go home. I promise.’
I tell him as gently as I can not to sit on my lap and hold his hand tightly. The nurse says something that I make out as an urge to keep going, so I tell Reuben to stand and we’re off again, the nurse pushing my wheelchair briskly along the corridor as Reuben staggers alongside me with both hands holding one of mine.
When we turn into a side room I see a figure lying on the bed. Strips of white tape run across his nose, chin, forehead and cheeks, holding a series of tubes and valves leading from his mouth to a monitor by his side.
Slowly I’m skewered by the realisation that this bloodied, unconscious figure is Michael. It’s a realisation that seems to stop time. Trembling, I move closer. A bloodied ear, a small patch of his beard, two blood-encrusted nostrils and a pattern of dried blood on his shin.
‘Why’s Dad not waking up?’ Reuben says behind me. ‘Wake him up, Mum! Wake him!’ His cries wrench at my heart. I try to console him but I grow more and more upset by his distress.
A doctor comes into the room and introduces himself as Dr Atilio. ‘This is your husband?’ he asks me.
I’m gasping for air and my heart is racing. I’m in the grip of a major panic attack.
‘He was awake when the soldiers brought you here,’ I hear the doctor say, though he sounds distant, far away, as though I’m underwater. ‘He is falling in and out of consciousness.’
It’s only when I see Reuben from the corner of my eye and remember that he’s in the room that I somehow find the strength to stop and hold myself together. I hear myself tell Reuben it’s alright, everything is OK, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m chanting the words over and over to help regulate my heart rate. The nurse moves me close enough to take Michael’s hand. It is limp and covered in dried blood.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can barely breathe. My thoughts whirr and strain to find answers, solutions. I remember with a hard punch to my chest the sight of Saskia on the ground in front of the car.
‘Where is my daughter?’ I shout frantically. ‘Her name … Her name is Saskia. Saskia Pengilly. She’s seven years old, she … she has blonde hair, she was wearing a stripy T-shirt …’
‘We will take you to her,’ the doctor says, and they wheel me abruptly out of Michael’s room towards another ward further along the hallway.
The sight of Saskia on the bed is like a fist slammed into my face. She’s hooked up to machines, there are blood stains on her pink cotton dress, her small, limp hands are bruised and painfully gashed. It is unbearable.
I start to shake, a strangled scream escaping from my open mouth. Even when Reuben starts slapping his head I can’t stop. A nurse appears at my side, pulls the waistband of my shorts down below my hip and sticks a needle in my backside.
Blackness.
‘The lady, she come here for see you.’
A nurse is leaning over me and adjusting a tube in my arm. The room is swaying. Another woman comes into focus. Slim, young. Bobbed black hair, red lipstick. Wide smile. A suit.
‘I’m Vanessa Shoman,’ she says, stretching out a hand. ‘I’m from the British High Commission. The doctor told me that your family had a car accident.’
The knowledge of why I’m here hits me like a wrecking ball. An invisible