CHAPTER 43
I didn’t sleep that well that night, and probably came across as a little grumpy over breakfast. Chad and Maryam were off quickly, Kul and I following a little later. The drive into work was a bit tense at first, as Kul clearly picked up on my mood.

“I never met her, Mike. Wish I could have”

“Sorry?”

“Me being silly. If I had been given the chance to meet her, you would never have ended up in Sheffield, so we’d never have met, us two that is, and well, yeah. You’re thinking betrayal, aren’t you?”

CHAPTER 41
I was up early. Still slightly out of synch with local times, and also a little sore in the forearms. The routes with Vern had been fine, apart from the need to fiddle about for ages with those lunatic Aussie bolts. I could imagine how that must push local climbing grades: if you can climb E4 while gibboning like an idiot to place pro, then the silly grades must be that much easier.

I took my laptop down to the kitchen, sneaking past the sleeping beauties and brewing a cuppa as I searched for details about those granite cliffs near ‘Maggie River’. I found a site called ‘The Crag’, which gave decent photo topos as well as rather abbreviated route descriptions, but, well, beggars and choosers. Kettle boiled, tea poured, bowl of cereal before me, and Maryam walked in.

CHAPTER 39
The rest of the week was less scenic than my first visit, as I followed Kul around a number of businesses that included more than a few of that old favourite from Sheffield, the waste cooking oil account. Kul was quite bullish about them, which surprised me, for he had never pushed himself so far forward back in Yorkshire. I slowly came to understand how deeply he felt that the Australian venture was his own particular baby, and it would grow his way.

CHAPTER 37
It hissed at a couple of walkers on the path, no teeth visible, and then ambled back into the long grass. Kul waved at the nodding stems. Kul waved at it from our perch on some railings.

“You’ve probably guessed I am actually serious about the snakes, mate. Always, always check grass and that before you walk into it. Avoid the long stuff if you can. Don’t step over dead logs, walk round them. Don’t peer into holes. Whatever you do, even indoors, don’t poke your hands into somewhere you can’t see”

CHAPTER 35
It was a twisty road getting to meet the real Alys, for while she had known herself as long as she had been self-aware, the rest of us had to dismantle almost everything we had known or assumed we knew about her, and her fear of rejection kept its teeth in her for so very long a time. It was hard work indeed, but that metaphor of bends on a road became my mantra.

CHAPTER 33
I spent another couple of days in Bethesda, kipping in the bunkhouse, which wasn’t a problem, especially when Keith made sure I got the ‘private’ room, which would give some respite from the usual night music of the nasally impaired. Evening meals were taken in both houses as a sort of extended family, and each time we ate, Alys was in what was clearly ‘her’ dress. The morning after that first appearance dressed that way, Keith collared me after breakfast.

CHAPTER 31
Vic stared hard at me for a few seconds, before his gaze dropped to his plate. He pushed a few bits of chicken around with his fork before looking back up.

“Did Dafi really say he was frightened of us?”

Slowly, Rhodes.

CHAPTER 29
I was caught, well and truly. It wasn’t solving a puzzle, it wasn’t confirming my guesses, but rather receiving the two-edged gift of the hand grenade of Dafi’s confidence. That phrase actually ran through my head, and as one part of my brain ran off arguing about whether grenades had edges, the rest of me simply sat and stared, trying to work out a much more important question: what the hell to do now?

CHAPTER 27
Work was a bit of a cold shower after the weekend, but Betty had enough pictures on her digital camera to keep our colleagues happy at our first post-work visit to the regular place for drinkies and pisstaking. There were the usual dreadful-but-traditional joking comments about rain and sheep, plus far more serious ones about the shots of the Hiatt’s bunkhouse.

I was just cleaning one of the bunkhouse toilets when the shout came via my mobile.

‘Pick up Glan Dena soon as’

“Dad! Got a call-out! Gotta go!”

He nodded, passing me my grab-sack and lid, the gloves sitting inside.

“At least it’s a decent day for it, love. Any idea where?”

“No, just get to the hut and meet up. Get briefed there, I assume”

CHAPTER 26
I found myself struggling to keep my grin down, as Betty had clearly planned on shoving Pam in my direction. Shaun’s comments about his local lizard were still at the front of my mind, though, and I took a moment to think it all through.

Was I pleased at Pam’s shift of focus onto Shaun because I was one more roadside lizard waiting for the squish, or for other reasons? She was far from unattractive, and seemed good company, at least so far. Was I tuning all women out, or just her? Was I waiting for someone to enter my life, or just for the next car?

CHAPTER 74
“Minibus is leaving, love. You need to get down the hill”

“Mam, I don’t know! I’m sure I’ve forgotten something—just can’t think what it is!”

She stepped forward for a hug, bringing a smile with her.

The hotel was on a steep hill, which left the basement neither one thing nor the other. Uphill, it was indeed underground, but on the downhill side it had windows open to the sun. The hotel entrance, therefore was sort of ground floor, sort of first floor.

“Hello. Booked in for two nights B and B”

“Name, please?”

“Anderson”

“Mark?”

“… Cymru, yng Nghaerdydd; thank you for listening to Noson Werin, presented by myself, Siw Williams, with this evening’s guest the multi-instrumentalist Chrissy Morgan, who will be performing next Wednesday in St David’s Hall, Cardiff. This has been a Tidewave production for BBC Wales in Cardiff”

I waited till the ‘on air’ light was out, and confirmation from our producer, before I turned back to Chrissy, who was now encumbered with several instrument cases.

“How do you think that went?”

It was colder than he had expected, the sleet steadily hardening into snow, but Ken had endured worse. There was a hedgerow running between two of the fields which he thought might work for the night, and part of it looked to be hazel, or at least something with similar leaves, which the shrub had clung to despite the nastiness of the late Autumn and Winter. It had all looked so simple when he was little, the Boy Scout books almost rhapsodising about hatchets and straight staffs as a ridge pole, but walking around with an axe these days would get him lifted by the plod in no time.

The flight was not my greatest delight.

Silly words, but I was decanted from the 777 into Perth airport feeling like absolute shit. Sod all the advice about jet lag, I NEEDED sleep. The baggage trolley was awful, only the back wheels steering.

“What is the purpose of your visit, Mister Ellison?”

It was a shop day, so I had to bring my smiles, despite everything that had happened. My Dahon folder had caused a few comments when I had boarded the train at Croydon, and once again at Clapham Junction, but that was par for the course. It was still far more convenient than the bus ride into Barnes. Asa I was also covering duty manager that day, I had had to brave the full-on commuter rush into London, and once again I was grateful that the second trip was against the flow and the train a lot emptier.

OUT WITH THE OLD
“What’s her indoors packed for you, Tom?”

I showed her the plastic box of sandwiches.

“Stock cube family, Jen”

“Ah. Turkeyish, then?”

CHAPTER 24
Her place was a little overgrown, but I’d brought a few tools down with me just in case. As I removed a few weeds, preparing to plant a couple of bulbs, I found a plastic-wrapped card fastened to one of the flower pots.

‘If you read this Mike, a couple of us from the (climbing and folk) clubs stop by every couple of weeks to clean up. Not forgotten’

CHAPTER 23
The news was officially announced in an office meeting, and it was a little deeper than Betty had suggested. The boss was very clear in what the requirements of the posting would be. Yes, he did use that word.

“There’s been a lot of rubbish coming out about this one, so let’s put some of that silliness to bed. We are not going to be shipping lard and chip fat to Australia, no matter how wonderful Yorkshire lard products may be. We need the successful candidate to have an understanding of the processes involved, but that’s all. What we will be offering is much more along the lines of our management consultancy work”

CHAPTER 70
I followed them down, working through Lexie’s revelations. Hywel’s hints about the Roberts rape trial had hit home, especially that little snippet about ‘mother in law’, and I found myself revisiting what had happened to my own lover.

How on Earth had this lot survived, never mind managed to retain their sanity? I thought once more of the blonde woman, Candice, paddling out onto the lake each day, eyes somewhere I never wanted to be, seeing, remembering…

CHAPTER 68
I really didn’t put much into that Christmas, but I really think everyone understood why. I was more than a little surprised when Warren turned out to be a solid source of support.

“Simples, Enfys. Never thought I’d be where I am, and now I’ve had the surprise, I can’t imagine not being where I am. Sort of, well, knew what I was missing, then found it. Realised it was actually more than I had hoped for. Don’t want to be without her, do I? Don’t, can’t even think what that would be like. What it would mean. And I know you have your parents, both sets, and all your friends”

CHAPTER 22
It was a day that left me more than a little out of sorts. I had smiled at the way Steph’n’Geoff danced attendance on each other, but each little moment raised Caro’s memory. That could, should, have been us, was my first thought, which was then kicked well into touch by the simple understanding that it HAD been us. The wave of loss left me silent most of the way back to Sheffield, and after Kul dropped me off I waited at my closed front door before he had turned the corner, then walked to the local convenience store and bought a half bottle of Grouse and a bottle of dry white.

CHAPTER 21
We washed up our empty mugs, and then Kul grinned at me.

“Sod it. Refill to take with us? I can do them both. People will gossip if we come back together”

“People already gossip in this place, especially Betty!”

“Yeah, mate, but I like to steer it a bit if I can. Let her make up her own shit, and well never hear the end of it. Given where you get off to, it would all be ovine”

“All be what?”

“Ovine. To do with sheep”