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”

CHAPTER 65
We ended up borrowing the class minibus for the trip up to Shrewsbury, our housemates pulling out various excuses for coming back to college early. We stayed Thursday night in a Holiday Inn on the edge of the town so that we could get a decent pitch the next morning, and settled down in our rooms after a rather limited choice of evening meal.

The breakfast was adequate, and not long afterwards Jordan was steering us aimlessly through the town centre. It was only when I spotted a particular pub that I remembered the way to the site, despite all the big signs we had been passing. Some navigator I was!

CHAPTER 18
I was on another trip out to Bethesda around two years later when I got a serious surprise. The way time was flying was more than enough of a shock to start with, but then I was getting used to that as both Enfys and little Davvy seemed to change markedly on a weekly basis.

Kul and his boy were unavailable that weekend, so it was just me who loaded the bike for the run up to the bunkhouse. The forecast wasn’t the greatest, but I didn’t care. Sheffield was fine in its own ways, and the climbing was perfect for a thug like me, but I had always been a sucker for the call of real mountains.

CHAPTER 16
I left it a fortnight before I next rode across to Bethesda, on the simple basis that not only would things be a little hectic there, but that the two of them---no, three of them now---might want or need some privacy. Family time.

I went over eventually, of course, with a present of a plush stuffed narwhal in deference to an old sequence of jokes in the climbing club back in That Place.

CHAPTER 64
We clicked back into our courses as if we had never been away, my slightly skewed beak bringing more than a few jokes, including one from our tutor. His was a cheeky remark about remembering the old formula ‘Grid to mag, add’ if I ever found myself following my nose.

Cheeky, but actually quite clever.

CHAPTER 13
The year turned, the seasons shifted, and no doubt Doctor Derek and Mister Simes continued to fight for dominance in their bony cave. Caro and I simply carried on in that same traditional way, both of the clubs taking enough of our spare time to make life worthwhile in other ways.

CHAPTER 11
Routine could now be a thing in our lives, but that didn’t mean boring. Our weeks and months of domesticity were moored to fixed points, such as the folk and climbing clubs, and if Keith couldn’t make them due to his shifts, Pen was there to hold up their end of the deal. Whenever we could, Caro and I would pack our tent for a weekend of walking, or four of us would head off together for some climbing.

CHAPTER 9
The tent’s flysheet was soaking when I woke, but with dew rather than downpour. Our little spot was to the East of the rock pile that held the shelter, so the sun was already having an effect on the moisture. I wriggled into my breeks and shirt before slithering out, standing barefoot on a rock before stepping sockless into my boots. Nature was calling in an urgent way, and once I had disposed of that night’s wine I pulled the kettle out of my rucksack ready for Caro’s wake-up drink.

“You both up, love? I heard the clanking”