by Paige Toon
Angus was sweet. He still is, bless him. I love him to bits, but luckily not like that any more. Now he’s just Gus, my gorgeous big brother who looks out for me.
I had absolutely no idea that Eliza, while acting like she couldn’t be arsed to come downstairs and say hello when Angus called around, was actually avoiding him because it hurt too much to see him. That seems like an entirely different level to what I felt.
The urge to hug her returns.
I’m being ridiculous. All of this happened years ago and Eliza must be over her feelings for him by now. She’d better be, because she’ll be seeing Angus all the time once he moves here.
I feel a stab of jealousy. I’ve been a core part of Phoebe and Angus’s London gang for years, and now Eliza will have them all to herself. It makes me remember that hellish year at school when Mum and Dad decided to separate us. We constantly squabbled so they put us into different classes and Eliza was the one who got Phoebe. I feel a pinch even now as I remember them tailing off to go to their classroom together.
I sigh heavily. At least I’ll still have Josie to spend time with in London.
I was disappointed when Phoebe didn’t invite me on her hen holiday, although I did understand. Chamonix was her and Josie’s thing, not mine, and Phoebe could hardly ask me without inviting Eliza. But I’ve got to know Josie well over the last few years and she feels almost as much my friend as Phoebe’s.
Luckily she and her husband, Craig, will still be in my life when Gus and Phoebe leave. And Gerard, too, of course.
I jolt. What’s the time? He was supposed to call me tonight.
Oh well. We’ll speak in the morning. I pick up Eliza’s diary and continue to read.
Chapter 6
Eliza
It’s a pretty decent round of applause, all things considered. I smile at the crowd of predominantly pot-bellied baldies and give them a little bow, before taking off my guitar strap and hopping down from the tiny platform that they like to call a stage.
‘The usual?’ Bob asks from behind the counter. I tend to stick around for one drink, but only because the manager is paying.
‘Sure.’ I give him a curt nod and prop my guitar up against the bar, tensing as I notice a certain someone approaching out of the corner of my eye.
‘That was good,’ Angus says.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask with shock.
He shrugs, amused. ‘I said I’d come.’
‘How did you know where I was playing?’
‘I got the details from your mum after you nicked off without telling me. Don’t you do any of your own songs any more?’
Bob plonks my half pint of beer down on the bar top and raises his chin at Angus.
‘Same, please,’ Angus says amiably. ‘Actually, make mine a pint.’
‘I’m not sticking around for long,’ I’m quick to point out, as Bob waddles off.
‘I’ll drink fast,’ he replies, shoving his hair back off his forehead. It won’t stay in that position for long.
‘So, why only covers?’ he asks of my set list.
‘It’s what they asked for,’ I reply with a shrug.
He nods thoughtfully and drops the subject. ‘Did you come by Metro?’
‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘I’ll give you a ride home,’ he says.
I raise one eyebrow. ‘In your shitmobile?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s a classic.’
This makes me snigger. The two of us have been known to go on and on like this.
‘So, Liza...’ he starts, resting one elbow on the bar top and staring at me with his freakishly beautiful eyes. My heart contracts. I wish he wouldn’t call me that. I love it when he calls me that. ‘What’s this crap about you leaving Manchester?’
I groan and look away.
‘Phoebe will be gutted,’ he says seriously.
‘Yeah, well, it’s not all about Phoebe.’
‘You’re the main reason I got her to move back here,’ he continues, unfazed by my comment. ‘She misses you. She wants to spend more time with you.’
‘She’ll get over it,’ I reply.
He leans in closer. ‘You know you’re her favourite, right?’
‘Bullshit.’ I can’t help but smile because this comment is ridiculous and he knows it. If anything, Phoebe is closer to Rose these days, not that she’d ever pick favourites. He returns my smile.
‘I thought you loved it here,’ he says gently.
My lips tug down at the corners. ‘I do.’ I feel downhearted, but the emotion morphs smoothly into annoyance. ‘Is this the only reason you came here, to pester me about doing what’s best for Phoebe?’
Angus looks wounded. ‘No, I came to see your gig. I haven’t seen you play for ages.’
I humph and turn back to the bar.
‘I’m only teasing.’ He elbows me in my ribs. ‘It’s up to you where you want to live.’
‘Good. Glad we’re agreed on that.’ I take a gulp of my drink.
Later, I stare out of the car window as Angus takes me back to Sale. I’ve lived in Greater Manchester for most of my life. I’ve never gone anywhere else or done anything of interest. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve got nothing to show for it. I am going to move to London, I think determinedly. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow and start flat hunting. I know Phoebe will be hurt. She’s been encouraging me for years to move to the Big Smoke to be near to her and Rose, but I couldn’t. And I can’t be near her now, either. Damn Angus for driving this wedge between us! This wedge that she doesn’t even know exists.
‘What is it?’ Angus asks, sensing the change in atmosphere. I’m angry, and he has always had an uncanny way of noticing, even when he’s not looking at me.
‘Nothing,’ I snap.
‘Liza...’
‘Don’t call me that!’
That shuts him up. Stupid man.
We ride the last few minutes in stressed silence. He pulls up on his driveway, cutting off the engine and turning to face me.
‘Thanks for the lift.’ I unclick my seatbelt and reach for the door handle.
‘Wait,’ he says with frustration.
I glare at him. ‘You know I’ve broken up with Dave, right?’
He swallows. ‘No, I didn’t.’ He shakes his head.
‘Well, it was a total nightmare.’ I’m overstating it. Dave was my boyfriend for about four months, but I was the one who ended it – he just clung on a little too hard. ‘I need a break from this place, alright? Get over it.’
‘Stop,’ he says, his no-nonsense tone making my mouth go dry.
A shiver runs down my spine as he gives me a hard stare.
‘Gah!’ I erupt, pulling myself together and getting out of the car.
He does the same, going around to the boot to retrieve my guitar case. I don’t meet his eyes as he hands it over.
‘I’m sorry about Dave,’ he says.
‘You thought he was a dickhead,’ I point out, looking up at him. They met a couple of months ago at Easter.
‘He was a dickhead.’ He nods definitively. ‘I hope you find someone nicer.’
‘Oh, piss off, Angus,’ I mutter.
‘Hey!’ He grabs my arm as I turn away. ‘I mean it.’
‘And I mean it, too. Piss off.’ I shake my arm free before thinking to glance quickly at my house. Rose’s bedroom light is off, I notice with relief.
‘Liza,’ he says gently, stepping towards me. I stare up at him, scared that if he hugs me, I’ll crumble. He makes a move to do just that, but a split-second before his arms come around my back, I stiffen my resolve and push him away.
‘Fine,’ he says flatly. ‘Have it your way.’
I stalk off to the sound of him locking his car and our feet crunching across the gravel towards our respective front doors.
But this is not having it my way. If I had it my way, we never would have met.
I don’t know what it was about Angus that drew all three of us to him. There was clearly something in
his chemical make-up that was like a drug to us. If only there had been three of him, like there were three of us. Rose has swooned over him from the word go and she probably still fancies the pants off him. But deep down, I know that the reason I’ve grown less patient of my eldest triplet over the years is because I can see myself in her.
Screw Angus, and screw chemistry.
I go inside and only just manage to stop myself from slamming the front door behind me.
Chapter 7
Phoebe
It’s late at night and my head is spinning and not from the wine. I sobered up after dinner, but Josie thinks I’m off my face – or out of my mind. In truth, it’s probably both. I’m sure she thinks I’m going to come to my senses in the morning, but she’s wrong. I’ve been lying here for an hour thinking about Remy and I’m becoming more and more certain that I need to see him again tomorrow.
He doesn’t seem to have changed much. He’s older, sure, but life here clearly suits him. He’s done everything he set out to do – he’s living in his favourite place in the world, climbing mountains every day and earning a salary from it. He’s stuck to his guns and I expected nothing less of him. I’m happy that he’s happy.
So why do I feel like crying? Maybe I’m drunker than I realised. I should phone Angus – he’d sort me out.
But no. I just want to think for a while, about Remy, and the night that we began...
‘Nervous?’ Cécile asked.
‘Excited,’ I replied with a grin as Marcel blew my friend a kiss. We stood and watched as he and the rest of our colleagues disappeared through the clouds on the last cable car of the day.
It was my first overnighter and Cécile had arranged for us to be guardians together. Usually she stayed up here with her boyfriend Marcel, but he hadn’t minded swapping with me. Perhaps I should’ve been nervous about being one of only two girls sleeping in a tiny apartment at the top of a mountain, but all I felt was exhilaration.
Before we could kick back and relax, we had to go through our check-list to ensure that everything was clean and in order for the next day. This meant inspecting fuel and water tank levels, machinery, toilets and stairs. Fire doors had to be closed, the cable car needed to be turned off and put on charge for the next day and one toilet was to be left open for any climbers who had missed the last cable car home.
But before we got on with our tasks, we took a moment to stand on the footbridge and breathe.
‘It’s so still and quiet,’ I murmured.
Cécile and I tended to speak in French, even though her English was good, too.
‘You should see it in a snowstorm,’ she replied, leaning over the handrail. Her wavy dark hair was blowing slightly in the breeze. ‘It’s really eerie and cold.’
‘At least you usually have Marcel to cuddle up to,’ I pointed out with a smile.
Jagged grey and brown peaks protruded through the fluffy white clouds and the vast sky curved over our heads in a pale-blue dome.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
It was a Tolstoy quote, but it always made me think of Dad because he said it aloud every time we went climbing. The memory of some of our summits filtered through my brain and I wished he was with me now. He had promised to try to come over in the summer so we could do Mont Blanc together, but first he needed to persuade Mum. He was in his early sixties, which she thought was too old to do a big climb, but I couldn’t imagine going up there without him.
My family had almost come to see me at Easter, but in the end, Somerset had won out. Our Aunt Suzie had a cottage there and apparently both Eliza and Rose had been keen to go. Mum had been so surprised that they’d wanted to spend the break together that she’d agreed. She would’ve done anything to keep the peace where those two were concerned, but they also had to take finances into account now that Dad was retired.
On the one hand, I felt hurt that my sisters hadn’t jumped at the chance to come and see me. Eight months earlier, when I’d first left home to go travelling, I’d cried so much. I felt like a part of my soul had been torn from my body when I said goodbye to them. But something happened to me in the days and weeks that passed. I began to enjoy my independence. It was the first time in my life that I’d been able to do exactly what I wanted, without having to take Rose or Eliza’s feelings into consideration, and I liked it more than I could have predicted. A part of me was glad that they hadn’t come to Chamonix and cramped my style.
I had also been sensing a detachment on their part, especially since Christmas when I’d briefly returned home. Rose took forever to reply to my emails, and Eliza was cold and standoffish when I called. Half the time Mum and Dad made excuses for her and she didn’t even come to the phone.
But I knew that our distance – both physical and emotional – was only temporary. I’d have time to make things right between us when I went home. I just needed to make the most of the here and now.
It was with that thought at the forefront of my mind that I took a deep breath of the crisp, clean air and felt a little more at peace.
When I started work on the Aiguille du Midi, I did a couple of days training. The staff were expected to be ‘all-rounders’, so we pitched in and took turns on a rotational basis. I could’ve been a ‘liftie’, i.e. manning the cable cars; ticket inspecting at the bottom, middle or top stations; or working as a substitute for either of these. There were also elevator lifties who brought clients up to the top terrace; and when it was open in the summer, various roles working on the Panoramic du Mont Blanc cable car to Helbronner in Italy.
Everyone had a preferred and least preferred task. After being a chambermaid, I wasn’t keen on picking up other people’s rubbish for hours on end, but some of my colleagues preferred the cleaning shifts to riding repetitively up and down the mountain in a cable car.
Personally, liftie days were my favourites. I hadn’t yet got bored of reminding tourists to take off their backpacks or hearing them exclaim how fast the cable car in the opposite direction was going. It was an optical illusion: we were on the same cable so when the cars whizzed past each other they were going exactly the same speed. I still smiled when my passengers squealed as we flew over the pylons, and I thought I’d never tire of breaking through the clouds to gasps of delight.
I wasn’t sure how I would have fared if I were caught in bad weather, though. In Cécile’s first summer season, she had been manning a cable car when the operators in charge heard of a huge storm on its way. They thought they had time to bring up the last clients of the day from Chamonix to the middle station, but the storm had come quicker than expected and Cécile had to stop the car en route and wait for the bad weather to pass.
Storms never lasted long, but she said it was scary swinging there for half an hour and calming down the passengers while huge gusts of wind blew the car this way and that. These days she just laughed if it happened, but I didn’t think I’d find it very funny.
I quickly changed my mind – being a guardian of the top was now my preferred job. I suspected it could well end up being my favourite job of all time.
Or maybe not, I thought to myself a short while later as I scrubbed away at a toilet bowl. My head shot up and my blood ran cold at the sound of Cécile crying out for help.
I scrambled to my feet and ran outside in the direction of her voice, jolting with shock at the sight of a young couple coming through the ice cave from the ridge. The man was supporting the girl and her face was creased in pain.
‘She fell. I think she’s sprained her ankle,’ he said in French.
I did a double take. ‘Remy?’
He stared back at me, disoriented.
‘You know each other?’ Cécile asked me.
‘Yes. I’m Phoebe,’ I reminded him, feeling a stab of disappointment as his face only belatedly registered recognition.
‘Hello,’ he gasped, panting.
I quickly came to my senses, rushing to his aid.
We went to t
he nearby staff canteen where Remy lowered his companion into a chair.
‘What’s your name?’ Cécile asked the girl.
‘Amelie,’ she replied as Remy crouched down to unlace her left boot.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
The pair had been on a day trip doing the Midi Plan crossing. They’d come up on the first cable car this morning.
‘I was too slow,’ Amelie lamented.
‘It was my fault,’ Remy chipped in miserably, gazing ruefully at her foot, which we could now see was blue and swollen.
‘No,’ she cut him off firmly, putting her hand on his arm. ‘You told me we shouldn’t take so long for lunch. But we’d gone all that way.’ She winced. ‘It was my first time doing the route,’ she explained.
The Midi Plan crossing takes about six or seven hours if you’re good, but Remy had realised they weren’t going fast enough and he knew they needed to step up their pace to catch the last cable car home at five thirty. Amelie had been at the bottom of the ridge when, tired and exhausted, she had got one of her crampons stuck in her trousers and fallen, twisting her ankle. Remy had had to help her the rest of the way.
I was intrigued as I listened to her speak. She was definitely French, but Remy’s girlfriend had been Italian. Had they broken up? But if that were the case, who was Amelie?
Although Cécile was trained in first aid, she wasn’t allowed to administer any medicine without first calling the doctor. The doctor in turn asked to speak to Amelie before determining that she’d be fine to stay at the top overnight. An ice pack, water and some pain relief tablets would see her through.
‘Is there anyone you need to contact?’ I asked Remy. Amelie had called her mother a little while ago, but Remy hadn’t rung anyone to let them know he was safe.
‘No.’ He took off his red woollen hat and dragged his hands across his scalp, skewing his short, dark-brown hair. He had stubble that was bordering on a beard and his face was tanned and lean.
I couldn’t help myself. ‘You don’t need to call anyone in Turin?’
