As such, Tara’s sudden suggestion that they stop moping around the camp and actually get up into the wilderness – do some real walking, get some proper exercise and fresh air – had seemed like a godsend. It wouldn’t even be that difficult, she’d said, as they pored over a map on the fourth morning. Watendlath to Elter Water was not a great distance. The guidebooks described it as a ‘challenging route’, but they weren’t looking for a stroll in the park. If it took them all day, so much the better – they had nothing but time anyway. Once they reached Elter Water, they could catch a bus to Ambleside, stay overnight in a B&B, and head for home by train.
‘I mean, how difficult can it be to just check the weather forecast?’ Jane grumbled as they trudged doggedly on, their backpacks jolting their aching spines.
‘With what, Jane?’ Tara retorted. ‘The club and bar were closed, so we had no access to a telly. Our phones aren’t getting any signal up here. No one was selling newspapers on the site, and even if there’d been sufficient Wi-Fi for your iPad to be any use, the bloody thing ran out on us …’
‘Alright, alright, for Christ’s sake!’ Jane’s face reddened, and not just from the unaccustomed exertion.
On all sides, meanwhile, the midnight fog hung in impenetrable drapes. At this height and temperature it was like movie fog, a dense, grey mantle that rolled and twisted, obscuring everything. There hadn’t been any sign of this when they’d set off that morning, in broad daylight – it had been clear as a bell. But even if it had still been daylight now, only a few yards of harsh, rocky ground covered with frost-white tussocks would be visible. And of course, it wasn’t daylight; it was dark, which didn’t so much obscure the surrounding landscape as obliterate it. Naturally, they’d neglected to bring a torch. The last few occasions they’d needed light – to try to make sense of a dog-eared map, which was now next to useless anyway, as some time back they’d unconsciously veered off the flinty footway that was their prescribed route – Tara had switched her phone on, using the dull glow of its facia. She was increasingly reluctant to do this now, as she didn’t want to run its power down. It would be typical of their luck if they suddenly entered a better reception area and were able to make an emergency call, only for the battery to die.
The guidebook had predicted the journey would take six hours, meaning they’d finish well before nightfall, but they’d now been struggling along for at least twelve.
‘Look …’ Tara tried a more placating tone. ‘If we can’t find our way down to a road, we should maybe think about pitching the tent. Just camp for the night. Hopefully this fog will have lifted by morning.’
‘Newsflash, Tara … it’s perishing bloody cold!’
‘So we wrap up.’
‘Everything’s wet, you dozy mare! We’ll die from bloody hypothermia.’
Their voices echoed and re-echoed, creating the illusion they were in a chasm rather than on some open hillside. It was more than uncanny.
‘Jane, it can’t be a good idea to just keep ploughing on. We don’t know where we’re going, and this ground seems to be sloping upward.’
‘We can hardly pitch the tent when we can’t see our hands in front of our faces,’ Jane said. ‘Anyway, what if the fog hasn’t gone by tomorrow? We’re up on the fells, remember … not in some nice park a few yards from your mum and dad’s nice little middle-class house.’
‘Alright! You don’t need to be such a bitch about it.’
‘Anyway, what good is sitting tight going to do? No one’ll come looking for us, Tara, because no one fucking knows we’re here. Didn’t it ever enter that air-filled brainbox of yours to tell someone what we were planning? And I don’t mean that bloody campsite owner. I mean someone who might actually care about us, who might actually have been listening when you were talking to them. Like our fucking parents, perhaps! I mean, Jesus, how difficult can it fucking be …?’
‘Alright, I said! Christ’s sake, Jane … I’m in as much danger as you are!’
Jane muttered some incoherent, vaguely foul-mouthed response, and they trod along in silence for a few more minutes, hearing only their own grunted exertions and the hollow thuds of their feet. Fleetingly, oddly, Tara was uncomfortable with the otherwise complete silence. It was a stupid thought, of course. There was no one else up here, but why did she get the sudden feeling their latest outburst, which would likely have been heard for miles and miles on a night like this, might have drawn the attention of someone listening? Even if it had, that ought to be something they’d want – and yet there was a brief queasy sensation in her tummy.
‘Sorry about the airhead thing,’ Jane muttered self-consciously.
‘It’s alright,’ Tara said. ‘Sorry about the bitch.’
Tara Cook and Jane Dawson were able to converse like this, one minute at each other’s throats, the next offering consolation, because they were close enough to be sisters, having grown up together in Wilmslow.
Jane was now a sales assistant at Catwalk, a clothing retailer whose branded products were strictly mid-range, while Tara had a bar job but was also studying for her PhD at Manchester Met. Money was tight for the both of them and, wanting to get away for a bit, it had been Tara’s idea that they visit Cumbria.
‘Let’s just put everything on hold for a few days,’ she’d said enthusiastically. ‘Let’s go camping in the Lakes. We both love it and it will do us a world of good.’
It was true, they did both love it. As children they’d holidayed in the Lake District many times with their respective families. But on those occasions, they’d stayed at hotels, rented cottages, or bed and breakfast accommodation. More to the point, they’d travelled up here in June, July or August – not November. Even so, Jane had thought the idea a good one.
‘Let’s do it,’ she’d said.
It hadn’t been difficult arranging it, given it was the off-season, and they’d been able to sort everything out that same evening. It was going to be great, Tara said.
It scarcely felt that way now: lost, frozen and well over a thousand feet up, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the ground was indeed sloping upward again. It had been difficult enough coping with loose, ice-slippery stones, and clumps of spiky mountain grass – so much so that they hadn’t initially noticed the shallow upward incline – but now it was steepening sharply. In addition, the fog seemed to be thickening, which was hardly helped by the clouds of soapy breath billowing from their lungs. Even walking shoulder-to-shoulder, they were only aware of each other as featureless phantoms.
‘Look Tara,’ Jane said, unconsciously lowering her voice. ‘We need to get real about this. We’re in pretty serious trouble here.’
‘I know …’
And Tara did, though perhaps only now was it really dawning on her. When you were down in the Lake District’s lower country on a bright summer’s morning, taking tea and crumpets in whitewashed villages, it seemed such a benign environment. The stories you heard about people getting lost on the fells and dying from exposure surely applied to another time and another place.
And yet suddenly, bewilderingly, that time was now and that place was here.
The oft-quoted phrase, ‘how did we get into this mess’, occurred to her with shocking force. It felt as if they’d led themselves blindfolded,