It’s Now or Never

by Carole Matthews

  ‘Oh, Chelsea.’ Lauren gave her a hug.

  Her sister’s tense body relaxed slightly and she cried on Lauren’s shoulder while the latter patted her back soothingly.

  ‘I’ll see if there’s any more tea left in that pot,’ Greg said, and they both sat Chelsea down at the table while she sobbed.

  ‘Everything I was certain about in my life has been stripped away,’ she said bleakly.

  Lauren closed her eyes. To think that it was Chelsea’s apparent perfection that had motivated her and Annie to change their lives. Now look what had happened. She felt sorry for her sister who had seemed to have it all and yet had always been on the periphery of their lives. Well, it wasn’t too late for that to change either.

  ‘We can help you,’ Lauren said. ‘When Annie comes back, all three of us will get together and see what we can do.’

  ‘I’d really like that,’ Chelsea sniffed, gratefully.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lauren said. ‘We can help you to rebuild it all.’

  If The Terrible Twins could turn things around, then their big sister could start all over again too.

  Chapter 114

  Greg sat next to Ray on the canal bank. The day was shaping up to stay grey and overcast, the sun never quite managing to fulfil its potential.

  Annie was on her way to Peru and already Greg felt as if there was a big hole in his life. He’d let her walk away, going off on the adventure of a lifetime with a bunch of people he didn’t know, who might not look after her, and a bloke who definitely had designs on her. The thought knotted his stomach and all the pleasant rituals of setting up his tackle had failed to relax him.

  Annie had gone and he was frightened that she might not come back.

  ‘If I was Prime Minister—’ Ray started.

  ‘Shut up, Ray,’ Greg said. ‘Please shut up.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Ray said. ‘Tetchy today, matey. Want to tell Uncle Raymondo what’s wrong?’

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said flatly.

  His friend’s eyes widened. ‘She’s left you?’

  ‘No, no. She’s on her way to Peru.’ He hoped that was all, but his heart felt heavier than he’d ever known it.

  His friend tsked. ‘Bad,’ he said. ‘Bad.’

  ‘She looked really happy.’

  ‘You’re too soft with her,’ Ray intoned. ‘That woman walks all over you. I told you, you need to put your foot down.’

  Ray had, indeed, told him that on many occasions. But was that really the way to run things? Greg had offered a lifetime of quiet, loyal steadiness, and it had worked for many, happy years. But it wasn’t working now.

  What would he do if he was fishing? He wouldn’t just sit there moping. He wouldn’t keep on casting with the same bait, sitting in the same fruitless spot. He’d try something new, move on down the river. Anything to interest the fish in his bait. Perhaps that’s what he had to do now?

  Ray sucked in a breath. ‘If I was you—’

  Suddenly, Greg put down his rod and turned to his friend. ‘Tell me, Ray, how many times have you been divorced?’

  His fishing companion looked taken aback. ‘Three. Four if Marla carries on the way she is.’

  ‘Then why, exactly, am I taking my relationship advice from you?’

  Ray opened and closed his mouth, rather like the perch that was testing the bait at the end of his line.

  Greg snatched up his own rod, broke it in two and hurled it in the canal. ‘That’s what I think of your advice.’

  He had things to do – he could see that now. And if he hurried, if he moved more quickly and more decisively than he’d ever done in his life, he might just manage it.

  Chapter 115

  I didn’t get much sleep at the hotel. It’s a scuffed, well-used airport box, noisy with people coming and going all night long. Where are they going to, I wonder, with their smart wheeled cases and their scruffy backpacks? Are they feeling as anxious, as stressed, as sick to the stomach as I am now? Is their trip a big, bold adventure for any of them too?

  We sat in the lounge bar until late and then I shared a twin room with Minny and, bless her, she chattered excitedly until about three o’clock before she finally fell asleep. The bed was as comfortable as lying on a pile of housebricks and I really missed Greg. One night away from him and I’m already questioning how I’ll manage for the next two weeks on my own.

  We were up long before dawn. It took Minny an hour to do her hair and put her make-up on. She took up gabbling again the minute her eyes opened and I wonder if I’ll be sharing a tent with her on the trail. If so, I’m not going to get a minute’s peace. It’s like coming away with Ellen and I get a pang that my daughter has no interest in doing something like this. I smile at Minny as she preens in the mirror as she’s almost beside herself with glee. With her cropped trousers, heels and over-size handbag, she does, however, look more like she’s going out for a night’s clubbing rather than a trekking holiday. I fight the urge to ask her if she’s brought some sensible shoes with her and some warm clothes. I’m not her mother – I must remember that. To counter Minny’s glamour, I went down the more native route and put on my jeans and fleece and hiking boots and no make-up to give myself a taste of what’s about to come.

  Now the whole group is assembled together at the airport. Blake is organising everyone, thank goodness. We’ve joined an enormous queue snaking through the departures area. The flight to Lima goes via Miami, and as well as us with our smattering of hiking gear – and Minny’s clubwear – there’s a lot of people in Hawaiian shirts and shorts who clearly aren’t coming all the way with us.

  There is the air of a school trip about us and everyone is completely hyper – like the kids used to be when they ate blue sweets. Except me. I feel nauseous with nerves. For two pins, I’d drop my bags and run.

  My palms are sweaty as I edge forward at the far end of the line. Blake Chadwick comes to my side. He is in immaculate designer trekking gear from head to toe and looks like an advert for Davidoff aftershave. ‘Feeling okay, Annie?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say tightly.

  ‘It’s natural to be a bit nervous,’ he offers.

  I try to stop chewing my fingernails as I look up at him. ‘I’m not nervous.’ I’m terrified. Utterly terrified.

  He slings his arm round my shoulder. ‘You’ll be cool,’ he assures me. ‘You have me to look after you.’

  But I don’t want Blake Chadwick looking after me. I want Greg. I wish my husband was here, his big solid presence giving me reassurance.

  We inch forward in the queue. I just want to be on my way now. I just want to be there. The mounting tension as we edge nearer and nearer to the desk is threatening to make me explode. Time is ticking away. The hour of the flight departure is getting nearer and nearer.

  As we get to the desk, Blake Chadwick stands aside and ushers me in front of him. ‘You go first, Annie.’

  If he says, ‘Age before beauty,’ I’ll smack him one. But he doesn’t. My boss is being genuinely nice and caring and I risk a smile. ‘Thanks.’

  The rest of the group are standing waiting for us, shuffling about impatiently. ‘Come on, you two. Get a move on,’ Minny shouts. ‘We’ve got a plane to catch!’

  Blake lifts my bag on to the conveyor belt. ‘Ready for this, Sexy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say with a grin. ‘Let’s do it!’

  Chapter 116

  After a gruelling twenty-three hours of travelling, we arrive in Lima, Peru. I’m here. I’m finally here.

  The air is hot, thick and smells of diesel from the snaking traffic jams that clog the roads. Apart from the small, nut-brown, sturdy people who populate it, the outskirts of Lima look much like any cosmopolitan city.

  Then we take a short orientation tour into the heart of this, the City of Kings, which blends ancient and colonial architecture with the modern, and I feel that the real Peru emerges. As we twist and turn through the squares and walk under the shade of the intricate balconies of old Lima, the city’s
history starts to unfold for us. The old ladies with black bowler hats sit swathed in their hand-woven red blankets smoking pipes. Young men in ponchos sell cheap alpaca hats and gloves and socks, and I think that I should have brought a bigger bag for all the souvenirs I’ll want to take back. Children in brightly coloured traditional clothing, full skirts, felt jackets and flowered bonnets, clutch dolls in the same attire and pose with smiling llamas and alpacas for photographs with the tourists. Music from lilting pan pipes fills the squares.

  We stroll through the Plaza Mayor visiting La Catedral with its imposing twin towers then on to the striking yellow and white Spanish-Baroque church, convent and cool catacombs of San Francisco. A high proportion of Peru’s population live cheek-by-jowl in Lima and the bustling streets only serve to confirm it.

  That evening, tired and footsore, we check into our hotel in Miraflores on Peru’s Costa Verde. It’s a beautiful, Spanish-style building with white adobe walls and dark wood shutters on the windows. After dining on rocotos rellenos – hot red peppers stuffed with meat and tomatoes and raisins washed down with my very first pisco sour – the first of many – I sleep like the dead in my bed covered with colourful Inca blankets. In the morning, I throw open the shutters and, looking out at the ocean, I think that I’m raring to go on the other side of the world. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. Let me out and at it!

  Jet lag? Pah! I feel alive, zinging in every nerve cell. My incredible adventure is about to begin. This morning we’re setting off on the first of our long bus journeys. This one takes us south on the Pan American Highway across the vast wastelands of the Atacama Desert and on to our ultimate destination, the incredible Nazca Lines. Before we depart, I try ringing home for about the third or fourth time since I got here. Mobile phone signals are, at best, patchy and when the line has eventually connected, I haven’t yet managed to catch Greg once. At the other end, the phone rings again but no one’s at home and I can’t quite work out what time it should be there. Every minute, with all the wonderful sights I’m seeing, I’m wishing that he was here too.

  I text my husband to tell him that I love him and I text Lauren and Chelsea to tell them that I’ve arrived safely and am already having a brilliant time. Then I haul my bag downstairs and out on to the pavement. The smokers among us are having a quick drag before we leave and the others are stuffing last-minute additions into bulging backpacks. Blake Chadwick is walking up and down looking very keen to be off while Sarah Bennett – the inspiration behind this trip – is busy supervising the loading of the luggage on the bus.

  Minny is bouncing with excitement. ‘I can’t wait,’ she says.

  ‘Me neither.’ I’m itching to get going, be on our way.

  ‘Ready, Sexy?’ Blake asks me.

  I nod. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘You’re doing great.’

  ‘I’m loving it already,’ I tell him.

  ‘Glad you came?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and I know that I owe him for organising this for me. Blake might be brash and the world’s biggest flirt, but I do think that he has a kind heart too. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  He hoists my bag into the luggage hold and I take one last glance at this hotel. The next time I see it will be in two weeks’ time, when we spend our last night here. Then, as I go to climb on to the bus, I hear a voice call out my name.

  ‘Annie!’

  I spin round and I can’t believe what my eyes are seeing. Surely, I must be hallucinating!

  Running down the street towards me at warp speed is my husband. My Greg. Tourists out for an early-morning constitutional dive out of his way as he races through them, arms flailing.

  ‘Annie!’

  He’s carrying a rucksack and, for a moment, my addled brain wonders exactly what he’s doing here. And then I realise that my husband – my stick-in-the-mud husband, who prefers his holidays in Cromer, has travelled halfway round the world to be with me – and tears spring to my eyes.

  ‘Greg!’ I shout out and, dropping my backpack, I weave my way through my colleagues and start to run towards him, scattering the tourists going the other way.

  As we get closer together, I can see that Greg looks as if he got dressed in the dark. He’s wearing an ancient fleece and trekking trousers that he hasn’t had on for years. The Worzel Gummidge of trekkers. By contrast, the rucksack he has over his shoulder still has the label attached to it. My heart squeezes with love for him.

  ‘Annie!’ he shouts again, and there’s anguish in his voice.

  ‘I’m here!’

  Then, when he sees me, the relief on his face is palpable. He too throws his rucksack to the ground and I run full pelt into his arms. As we meet, he picks me up and spins me round, his mouth on mine. He hangs on to me tightly.

  I press my face into his neck. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he says breathlessly. ‘I couldn’t let you go alone.’

  We hug each other again.

  ‘Why? Why now?’

  ‘I was sitting on the canal bank with Ray and I suddenly realised what a twit I’d been. I thought, what on earth was I doing there when you were going on this adventure without me?’

  I look at him again to make sure that he’s really there. ‘But how? How did you do it?’

  ‘Chelsea brought the cash she borrowed back yesterday and I raided your old handbag for the rest of the sandwich money. I just had enough so I phoned Dream Days and told them that I was a complete idiot and I needed to be with you. They fixed me a ticket at the last minute.’

  ‘The very last minute.’ I glance back at the bus. Everyone else is on board and Blake is standing on the step by the door.

  ‘Come on then,’ I say, excitedly. ‘Or they’ll go without us.’

  Greg takes my hands in his and our eyes meet. ‘I was so worried that I’d left it too late, Annie.’

  ‘You nearly did, Greg,’ I breathe. ‘You very nearly did.’

  ‘I’m here now,’ he offers. ‘Can you forgive me?’

  ‘If you can forgive me.’

  ‘Let’s fulfil our dreams together from now on,’ my husband says. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘As long as you don’t want me to take up fishing,’ I joke.

  ‘No more fishing,’ he says. ‘Now it’s just me and you. We’ll do whatever you want. Travel the world, jump out of planes, swim with dolphins. I don’t care as long as we’re together.’

  There are tears in my eyes when I tell my husband, ‘I’m liking the sound of that.’

  ‘Come on, you two lovebirds,’ Blake Chadwick shouts across at us. ‘You’ve got a bus to catch!’

  ‘Let’s do it for Team Ashton,’ I say to Greg.

  ‘This is the start of the rest of our lives,’ he says.

  And we both break into huge grins as we run towards the bus and the beginning of our big adventure together.

  Chapter 117

  Two weeks later, we crawl on hands and knees up the Omigod Stairs – a near-vertical set of Inca stone steps that mark our final ascent to the lost city of Machu Picchu and the ultimate goal of our challenge. Fourteen long, mad, adventure-filled days after we left good old Blighty for the exotic continent of South America and we’re here, we’ve made it. Only a few more metres to go.

  My heart is pounding in my chest due to the thin air, and my thighs are burning from the long, strenuous walk. Greg takes my hand and helps me up the last step and on to the stone plateau at the top. We stand together, breathing heavily. I lean on my trekking pole and my husband’s arm.

  The last two weeks have been among the best of my life. Only giving birth to Ellen and Bobby can begin to compete. The sights we’ve seen, the places we’ve visited have made me cry tears of joy and it has been all the sweeter for Greg being here with me.

  Hand-in-hand we’ve watched the giant Andean condors soaring over a landscape that’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. We’ve bounced in a small airplane above the a
mazing, ancient drawings at Nazca, have come nose-to-nose with sea lions at the Ballestas Islands, have bathed in the natural hot springs at Chivay, watched a magnificent thunderstorm split the sky over Lake Titicaca. We’ve marvelled at the sunset over Arequipa and, pisco sour in hand, watched the spectacular sunrise at the Inca ruins of Saqsaywaman. We’ve danced to the music of pan pipes more times than I care to count, have raced through the streets of Puno in bicycle taxis and have white-water rafted on the turbulent Urubamba River.

  This has been, and continues to be, the trip of a lifetime.

  But, of all those things, the Inca Trail has been the most exhilarating, most taxing, most punishing thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  Despite my training, I’ve huffed and puffed my way up the steep Inca pathway that runs from the River Kusichaca in the east to the Urabamba in the north. The wide stone paths, which were built to accommodate llama trains, follow the rapids of the river down the Sacred Valley to Llaqtapata, one of the thirty historical Inca sites on the trail, then on to the Inca settlement of Wayllabamba. From Llulluchapampa the views of the snow-covered peaks of the Andes moved me, once again, to tears. Then we grovelled our way up Warmiwañusca – more commonly, and appropriately, called Dead Woman’s Pass. This is the hardest climb due to the lack of oxygen at this height, but at the top you can look down on the Pacaymayu Valley and up to Runkurakay, the second highest pass on the trail. From there we went down through cloud rainforest thick with vines and orchids and glossy trees. High on a ridge above the Urabamba we stopped at Puyupatamarka – another name that I remembered from my guide book – and nearly wore out our camera taking photographs of the snowcapped mountains of Veronica and Salkantay, one of the most beautiful places on the trail.

  Today, before dawn has even had time to think about breaking, we’ve descended to the giddily terraced ruins of Wiñay-Wayna and have wound our way to Machu Picchu itself – our final and most fabulous destination on the trail.

  ‘Okay, guys,’ Blake says, as he claps his hands. ‘We’ve made it this far. Let’s do the last push together!’