“Why, Miss Masters! Contain yourself. It is not I who has, how shall I say it, ‘sinned and fallen short’.”
In response to this, all Alex could do was shout questions. She had never felt so indignant, so angry, even when she had thought about her parents. She suddenly felt such a deep and overwhelming love for Conner, and a corresponding anger for this repulsive man who was again attacking her family and making her life a misery.
“Where is he?” she shouted, hot tears forming in her eyes. Her mind filled with images of her brother.
“Do you know,” answered Lench in a mock-casual tone, staring again at the grotesque dashboard of his car, “I really have no idea. Perhaps he’s in a blubbering mess on the floor, perhaps he’s run away somewhere, I don’t know where he is, or how he is–” He was cut off by Alex’s outburst.
“What have you done to him?” she screamed at the phone, completely abandoned, completely desolate and desperate about her brother.
Angel watched, agonized, again restrained by the rules that governed his existence. He could not interfere, but he sensed the enemy. He could see what Alex could not: this man together with the whole menagerie of demons that plagued him, sitting in a car just across the road from where she lived. He knew she needed to finish this conversation, she needed to stop listening to this man, now.
Alex’s grip on the phone tightened, making her hand ache and her knuckles turn white. Lench spoke again again, but she wasn’t listening. Instead with some force of will she placed the phone back on the receiver cutting him off in mid-sentence.
“Miss Masters, your brother is a–” She heard no more.
What had happened? What had Conner done? What had this man done to her brother? What claim did he have on Conner?
“Stop, think,” she whispered to herself, shivering.
She called Conner, and there was no answer.
He wasn’t with his parents.
She called the other people who might know where he was.
“No,” said Daisy, “haven’t got him here.”
“I don’t think he is here, my dear,” said Caleb. “Bear with me a minute…” Caleb’s voice trailed off. She could hear him mumbling to Mrs Wicks. “No, we don’t know where he is.”
She even found a number for Conner’s new friend Poppy, but he wasn’t with her.
She called each of the band members, who professed ignorance about Conner’s whereabouts. Mark, who was close to him remembered the bizarre phone call that Conner had laughed off as a crazy fan.
She called Caleb again.
“He’s not answering. I don’t know where he is and I don’t really know what’s happened between him and this man. I think his mobile is switched off and I am worried about him.”
She was trying to regain her composure. Caleb asked her a couple of questions about what this man had said, and how he sounded. Then the phone became silent and, in the silence, Alex saw in her mind’s eye a picture of Conner again, as a young boy, the brother she had inherited. He had been part of the family she had gained, just as she had lost others. She found that she could not deal with Caleb’s questions, and she whispered her apologies and put the phone down.
She called Conner’s mobile again but got the answering service. She drove round to his flat, but no one was there. He had gone.
Alex spent a lonely night, with worry robbing her of her sleep. Worry for the brother she loved, worry for the business that needed his input, and worry that whoever it was who had terrorized her before had come back to haunt the people she loved.
13
If ever there was a fool’s errand, this was it.
Poppy had never climbed this mountain before. She had never been to this part of the country before. She didn’t know what equipment she would need; she didn’t even know if her journey was a huge waste of time.
But still, she was here, and she was here because when she heard Conner was missing she remembered what he’d said to her and, for once, she had done the reckless thing, the impulsive thing, and set off to find him.
It was only once she’d arrived in the Lakes that she called Daisy to tell her what she was doing.
She stood at the base of the mountain and stared up. The summit was swathed in damp wisps of vapour, surrounded by what looked from a distance like damp green felt. Within the first half a dozen paces of her long walk to the summit, she was questioning her actions. Already the hard lumps of rock were pushing up through her soft shoes. The other people she saw all had proper footwear, and expensive looking waterproof jackets. These people were organized, they had done what she had not and planned for this visit. She wished she’d bought some boots first, but the urgency of this trip had compelled her to come here straight away.
At least she knew now why Conner called this land intimate. It was imposing certainly, but also somehow close, distant but also intimate and accessible.
She carried on up, understanding more fully why Conner said he loved this place, but that was small comfort as the rocks bruised the bones of her feet.
“What a stupid name for a mountain,” she whispered to herself. “Harrison Stickle, what does that mean?”
About half an hour in, as the foolishness of the venture began to overwhelm her, a rainbow appeared. Just a short ribbon of colour set in the bracken ahead and she remembered the Kente cloth that she had admired with Daisy and Conner in Paris. Searching for any sort of encouragement, she accepted the rainbow as a sign of hope, a slender portent of success.
A stone path stretched before her, just lumps of rock wedged together to mark out the long, arduous climb. She began to ask herself why she was really doing this. Of course she wanted to find Conner, but why, why bother? What did it say about how she felt about him? And what if she did find him? What state would he be in, and what would she say to him? She couldn’t make what had happened to him disappear; it was going take a long time for him to recover. She examined her motives for coming on this search, and when she really got through to the honest answers the word “love” seemed to come up again and again, and she tried to distract herself by looking at the colours of the landscape around her.
But for once, the colours did not capture her.
Conner was a nice guy, becoming a friend, and she thought that this was as far as it went, and yet, and yet, here she was, bruising her feet, breathing in the damp air, and staring at the sodden looking sheep that were scattered on the slopes around her.
Up ahead, water rumbled through ancient gulleys, cascading over the rocks and stones, setting up a subliminal roar that became a backdrop to all of the other sounds. It was not so very different from the more familiar rumble of the city. She looked at her map; this was Stickle Ghyll, apparently.
After ten more minutes all she could do was focus on the route ahead. Another ten minutes after that and she was breathless, her socks were soaking and she felt a pang of irritation at Conner, as if he was forcing her to do this, and, perhaps he was.
“Morning!”
Poppy looked up. The cheery voice came from a wrinkled man with gravity defying curls of white hair that poked out from the sides of his head. He was walking back down on the same path as her. He had a gnarled walking stick, mountain boots, and a plastic sleeve for his map.
Another organized walker, she thought, and felt embarrassed by her lack of preparation.
“Morning,” she mumbled.
“Keep at it,” said the old guy, cheerfully, “the summit is worth the walk.”
“Really?” she said. “You think so?”
“Of course.” He paused as he passed her, and smiled. “It’s a bit of a slog to get up there, but for you it will be well worth it.”
“Right,” she said, “okay.”
He carried on walking, humming to himself, and disappeared from view behind a rock below her.
“Right,” she said again, and his words seemed to lift her, it would be worth it if Conner was up here.
She shook her head to rid herself of so
me clinging self-pity, and started walking again. Wet feet or not, she was going to get up this mountain, and if Conner was there she would find him.
On impulse she turned again to look at the old man she’d just spoken to, but she couldn’t see him on the path, and without much energy to spare for curiosity, she faced forward again and kept climbing.
Poppy judged herself to be about halfway up, when the path opened out onto rough grassland, scattered with mounds, like a burial ground for ancient kings. Her map told her that the shining body of water she could see to the south was Blea Tarn. The wind moved across the grass, a susurrus that dislocated her from the reality of her mission, and the air was punctuated with the rattling call of a black crow. She stopped for a rest, and munched on a bar of Kendal mint cake. She had never come across this stuff before, but she’d bought it in a hurry at the station and it seemed to be required food for hill walkers. It was shaped more like a bar of chocolate than a cake, and each lump had an intense minty sweetness, almost too sickly for her taste.
The mist was beginning to clear now. There were two or three darker shapes above her, the different summits of the Pikes. Below, she could see along the Langdale Valley, a rolling patchwork of farmland, sectioned off by walls and hedges.
Her stomach did feel warmer for the sweetness of the mint cake; but the rest of her was cold. The muscles in her legs, shoulders and back were aching, and the wind teased her thin coat open, and blew against her jumper so that sweat on her tee shirt was icy against her skin.
“Please, be here, Conner,” she whispered to herself as she set off again, labouring over the stubborn lumps of rock, the weariness in her bringing some honesty from within her. “I want you to be here, I want it to be me that finds you and rescues you, and holds you. I want you to talk to me, and I want to get warm again with you, and–”
“Morning!”
She looked up, startled from her soliloquy, as two smiling figures, again well dressed in the right kit, came striding down past her. There was definitely a kind of unspoken etiquette amongst these hill walkers: one obviously said “hello” to fellow travellers. This wasn’t like the enforced solitude of a cramped London tube journey. All of these people shared some common purpose, even if it was not her purpose.
At the end of a particularly steep climb she came up onto more rolling grassland. The ground was wet and boggy underfoot, and she thought she might have to throw her shoes away when she got back.
She blew her nose on an already damp and ragged hanky, and trudged off towards the peak on her left. The wind was quite strong now, whipping at her damp hair.
She wasn’t thinking of anything as she made the final climb. It was just one foot in front of the other, an aching trudge up to the top. The speculations were gone, and the emotional responses were gone. She just needed to do this, as much for herself now as Conner. She didn’t want to think about him at all, she didn’t want to waste her energy on the emotional consequences of what she was doing.
At last she reached the summit. She was exhausted and nervous and triumphant, and she looked out to the other peaks across from her, shielding her eyes from the insistent, biting wind. She looked around the clumps of rock for any sign of him, but even as she had approached the top of the mountain she felt concern. This place just did not seem to have the kind of features she remembered Conner describing in Paris. Where was the little patch of green facing out to the northwest? The place where she stood was nothing but a mound of bare rock.
She collapsed onto the stone beneath her, feeling the chill of her damp clothes clinging to her. She bowed her head, and contemplated that this had been one of the most pointless miserable things she’d ever done in her life. Her shoes were muddy and scuffed and her feet tingled under wet socks.
A snatch of human voice caught her attention and she saw a couple of other walkers chatting across from her, one holding up a plastic folder.
Without thinking she tuned in to their conversation.
“Still time for the other one?” said one, breathlessly.
“I think,” said the other, “we can get on to Harrison Stickle, then round Pavey Ark and down from there.”
She turned back and stared, tear streaked into the breeze. Now that she had stopped walking she was really feeling the cold.
She shivered, and then frowned as one more confusion settled in her mind.
They were going to Harrison Stickle, and that meant this wasn’t Harrison Stickle, this was some other stupid Stickle!
“This is the wrong peak,” she said to herself. “It’s the wrong damned–” But she stopped herself. She did not as a rule use bad language, and she wasn’t going to start now.
She took out her map and her bar of mint cake and just sucked on the sweet end of it. Her tee shirt still clung to her, chill and wet, and the wind picked up again as she steeled herself for the next walk.
“I haven’t come this far to stop now,” she said to herself, staring at the peak just a few hundred yards away, “I am here for a reason.”
A new sense of resolve formed inside her, and she scrambled down into an area dominated by boggy grassland. Lumps of rock stood like menhirs, half sunk into the earth. She headed off in what she thought must be the right direction, and was encouraged to see the two walkers who had been on Pike of Stickle clambering up the hill in front of her.
Slowly, painfully, she worked her way to the summit. Her feelings for Conner now oscillated between passionate love and anger; she didn’t trust either of these emotions, but she hoped that the anger wasn’t in the ascendant when she did see him.
If she saw him at all.
By the time she had scrambled to the top and hunched down on the old slate and quartz rock, her emotions had calmed and she just wanted Conner to be there, only so the trip was not a waste.
The summit here was broader than the previous peak. She could see a few hardy walkers, hunched together, sharing their lunch. The sight of people eating made her feel hungry.
Now she was here, she didn’t even want to search for Conner, didn’t dare to discover that he wasn’t here. So she just slumped down with her back to a piece of granite and looked around. The cloud hovered around the peaks nearby leaving banks of grey and green mountainside. She shivered again as the cold of the stone found its way through her trousers, making the bones of her pelvis ache.
If he’s not here…
The statement came into her mind but she had no will to finish it.
If he’s not here…
She did not have the mental energy to think it through, so instead she fumbled in her pocket and found the last fragment of the mint cake bar and just put it in her mouth. As the sweet taste burst over her tongue she whispered in a hoarse voice to herself.
“If he is not here, at least I’ve climbed two peaks in the Lake District today.” And she took some comfort from the thought that, even if he wasn’t here, he would find out that she’d come here to find him. The thought sparked a flicker of warmth in her heart.
She stretched her arms to make her tired muscles work again and climbed to her feet, and then she looked out across rock and water, farmland and forest, the restless wind buffeting her; and she admitted to herself that the view, and the achievement of reaching the summit did make her feel proud of herself.
She looked over to the north and east, to Pavey Ark. This was the view he had mentioned, visible from the grassy ledge; it would have to be over the shallow rim of rock where she was standing. She told herself he would not be up here, a couple of thousand feet up in the mist and the rocks.
On a whim, she took out her mobile phone and rang him. There was no answer, but she imagined she heard a sound, in the air, in the moan of the wind and cry of the crows, an unnatural sound, like the voice of a cartoon character.
Poppy knew she couldn’t put the search off any longer, and so she switched off the phone and walked further around the summit, searching for this little grassy nook he had spoken of.
Her mind
was full of the foolishness of her mission, and the foolishness of Conner Adams, and the futility of it all. That was her defence, and a sudden blushing anger at him, the fool that he was. She told herself she hoped he wasn’t here, that he didn’t deserve all this effort, whatever he’d suffered. She conjured up the anger and hid behind it as she peered over a ragged lip of granite.
* * *
Of course he was there. Hunched up and staring out to the distance; and in the moment her heart softened, and she knew, of course, that she had been desperate to see him, desperate for him to be right there.
He was tucked into a corner of the rock face, sitting on some kind of groundsheet, facing out across the space to the next peak, and beyond that to the distant coastline. He looked like a little boy who had somehow lost his way. She could see that something had damaged him, see it inside him, and compassion for him welled up within her.
He hadn’t noticed her yet, and now she hesitated. Would he want to see her? Could she help him overcome the thing that had driven him here, could she help him face it? She felt a sudden urge to go back, to avoid the risk, and but she knew she would never do that. She could not leave him here, not now, and so she climbed down over the edge of the rock, and he glanced up to see who was coming, and she saw his eyes widen as recognized her.
“Poppy,” he said, “Poppy.”
He watched her approach, the ginger curls hanging damp around her face, and the wet patches on the knees of the jeans, and the hopeless trainers, and despite himself he laughed.
It had crossed his mind that she might come for him but the idea had seemed foolish, an indulgence on his part. He watched as she came and sat down next to him.
“Are you laughing at me, Conner?”
“Yes,” he said, “I mean, no, I’m just pleased, more than pleased, to see you.”
“I have just climbed up two mountains to find you,” she said, “and whilst this view is spectacular, I am cold and wet so I would really, really recommend that you don’t laugh at me right now.”
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