Our first morning in the UK was brighter, a communal breakfast taken in the conservatory and garden, bunkhouse style in the way everyone clubbed together. I still felt like shit, my usual reaction to long haul flights, but Maz and I had been woken by our daughter at about seven, Maz pretending to be asleep even after a prod from the girl. I understood why when LC finally turned to me for permission.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

The slightest of twitches from her, and then that surge of confidence, or maybe hope, that warmed my heart.

“Can I play with the dogs again?”

“If they are awake, love. You need to ask their owners if it’s okay first, though”

“Am I allowed to speak to them?”

That bastard’s dead, Rhodes. Deal with what he’s left behind, but nicely.

“Want me to come with you?”

“Want Mum to”

I looked down at Maz, who had her back to LC but was wide awake, and she mouthed ‘You go’ at me.

“Your Mum’s asleep, love”

I lip read ‘hangover’ and wriggled out of my side of the duvet, thankful I was wearing sleep shorts and a T-shirt, and slipped my feet into my trainers.

“Leave Mum to sleep, and I will come downstairs with you. Get Mum a cup of tea for when she wakes up, and see what the doggies are doing”

We padded down the stairs to find a reasonable number of people getting outside their own hot drinks, the two hounds curled up against each other right in the doorway. So typical of dogs: won’t play with me? I’ll just get right in your way till you do. LC walked up to them and bent down to pat the tops of their heads, one hand for each of them. One of the younger people called out to her.

“If I say the word, Pie will go mad, so do you want me to get the thing to throw?”

LC looked at me for permission yet again, and I nodded.

“Yes please, Tuan”

The lad laughed happily.

“I’m not Dwayne, or whatever. I’m Jim”

He waved her forward, slipping her a tennis ball and telling her to keep it out of sight, then called “Pie!”

The collie sat up, the spaniel looking a little aggrieved.

“Go with Carolyn!”

Once she was in the garden, he added, “Now let him see the ball”

That brought both dogs to their feet and outside, and all I then heard of them was a mixture of yips and laughter. No dogs at that slave camp, then.

I nodded my thanks and quickly assembled a cuppa for my wife, who sat up in bed to take it from me.

“How is she doing, darling?”

“Out with those two dogs. What does ‘Tuan’ mean?”

“Oh, Malay for ‘Sir’. Who did she call that?”

“Lad with the dogs. Jim”

“Fits. We were both… we quickly learned to be polite to them”

So many bruises.

“In the past, love, so let’s keep it there. What do you remember from last night?”

“I—oh! What is happening with our car? Hire car?”

“You were out of it, then. We have an offer of a loan rather than a hire, from one of the collective. He runs a hire business, and he just offered, out of the blue. He’s sorting us a reasonable estate car, and we’ve got about eighty offers of tents, sleeping bags, et cetera. And a lot of questions about the end of August, for some reason”

She slurped her tea, sighing in satisfaction, and I pointed to the bedroom door.

“Looks like they are starting a big fry-up, love. You okay for that?”

She stared into her mug for a moment.

“Still doesn’t seem real, my love. Sleeping in a bed, not on the floor of a hole in the ground. Proper drink. Proper food. Having you with me again… I need a Full English; prove this is real”

We had our Full And Extended English, before most of the visitors packed up and left for their homes, but Jim and his family, with their dog, stayed another night, which brought more happy laughter from a giggly girl, and that night Maz and I found an old, traditional way of proving that things really were as they seemed.

She was still so horribly thin, though.

Stewie’s temporary present arrived two days later, a well-worn Vauxhall that he assured us was in perfect condition, or at least as perfect as Vauxhalls could ever be. I got used to it with a few shopping trips into Crawley, where we picked up extra bits and pieces for our journey that included fleece jackets and walking boots for Carolyn, along with another childhood necessity in the shape of a bear. LC was fascinated by the Italian Kitchen place, with its multitude of salads and sandwich fillings, and the whole food court seemed to put her at risk of over-stimulation in offering too many new things at once.

She never asked for anything, though. Beaten out of her, I realised.

Our time with the Woodruffs was over far too soon, but they were storing our cases and some other bits ready for our return flight home in September. It was an emotional departure, of course, but this time the emotions were positive ones. LC was gradually emerging, helped immensely by such treats as a half day on Brighton’s remaining pier with its rides and games, where she finally decided to make a positive statement about, of all things, ice cream. Specifically, how her favourite flavour was choc-chip mint.

The drive up country was not exactly pleasurable, as it involved almost entirely motorways, but things improved a little north of the Dartford Tunnel. Ish was navigating for me, using my phone and a UK SIM, not that I needed it, and I was fretting slightly, as Auds and Alan, who were putting us up, had moved from That Place to Toddington some years before, so I would miss the opportunity to drive through the scenic wonders that are Chapel Street and Hockwell Ring, and so confirm that said That Place deserves not to be named fully.

It simply meant driving two junctions further up the M1 before once more pulling off onto rural roads.

“Nearly there, girls! How are you finding it?”

Maz shouted something about boring motorways, and I had to agree.

“I’m afraid it’s like that a lot, but some of the places we are going are much nicer, but those blocks to your right there, they are Hockwell Ring, and that is definitely not one of the nice places”

“What are the nice places like, Dad?”

I had to concentrate just then, as Carolyn had asked that question, totally out of the blue. Thank you, god, fate, whatever.

“There are a few of them, my darling. One in particular has a lot of friends, and a lot of mountains”

Ish laughed, saying “And a lot of sheep, and a lot of rain, so a lot of wet sheep”, but LC hadn’t finished.

“Will there be music there again?”

Oh wow.

“Do you mean like the music that Steph and Annie and their friends played?”

“Where I got my dress, and met the dogs, yes. It was nice. Will there be more?”

“Ish?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“I don’t need the maps. Could you use my phone to call Audrey for me? Number’s already entered”

“Okay… Hi! This is Ish Rhodes! Fine, thank you. Just passed a place Dad called Hockwell Ring. Yeah… Looked it. Anyway, Dad has a question. Dad?”

“Just ask when the folk club’s next on, or if it’s already the Summer break”

“He says is the folk club on, or is it Summer… right. Who’s on? Okay, we know him. Jimmy Kerr, Dad. Tonight”

I concentrated on getting us safely off the M1, as that exit has quite a tight bend and I certainly didn’t want to lose a family I had only just regained. Ish chuckled.

“Dad hasn’t said it out loud, but I know he’s thinking it. We’re just leaving the motorway, so is the kettle on?”

A couple more jokes, and he hung up.

“She said the club’s moved, Dad. Really awkward to get to now”

“Where to?”

“Pub called the Sow and Pigs. Where’s that, do you know?”

I couldn’t help laughing.

“I suspect it is now their local, as it is in the same village! Sorry, son, but Auds has always been a joker. She…”

I bit down hard on what I was about to say, for while Carolyn needed to know where her name came from, it wasn’t the right time. We would say hello as a family, and that information could wait until we were all ready.

“Carolyn?”

“Yes… Dad?”

“There will be music tonight, and it will be very good. A man who plays the fiddle, like the lady with the long red hair”

Maz added, “Just not as mad, I would guess”

‘At least Steph speaks English’ was my silent response, but they would find out the simple way. Leighton Road… Right! They had plenty of room out front of their house, and before I had turned the engine off, Auds was waiting for her hug, and it was nothing subtle. Alan held back slightly after a brief squeeze of Ish, and then softly asked Maz if a hug would be okay, and to my horror she started to weep before answering the question by embracing Alan as she tried to explain.

“I am sorry, but it was two things, together, and I am still not, you know, recovered. Someone asking me for permission, to do anything at all to me, that… It hasn’t been a feature of my recent life. And then, sorry, but your name. I lost another Alan”

She squeezed him again.

“I will be fine. It is simply that everything is still a bit raw, a bit sensory overload. I heard someone say ‘kettle’, I believe”

Auds led the way in, and there was indeed tea waiting for us. I settled into the sofa with a sigh, LC bookending her mother as always, and looked at our hosts.

“The kids?”

Alan laughed happily, pointing at some graduation photos on the wall by the door to the dining room.

“Not been ‘kids’ for some years, mate. Al’s on a dig up near York, and Gina’s counting beavers in Devon. Things they couldn’t get out of, I’m afraid, but they send their best. You’re looking well, Mike”

“Boy here pronounces that as ‘old’, Alan. Carolyn, what Mum and I explained to you, these are friends… I met the lady you are named after because she was a friend of this lady here. We all used to go and listen to music together. The man who is playing tonight is a friend of the lady with the red hair”

Audrey looked at her husband for a second before turning to me.

“Mike, this friend of yours, would she be called Steph?”

I nodded.

“Well, muggins here ended up running the club when we lost the grant. That’s how it ended up here rather than staying in Lu—”

I think I was first, but both wife and son matched my shout of ‘Don’t say the name!’. Auds gave me a funny look, so I simply suggested she think of ‘Candyman’ films and ‘P Fairies’, which got the message across, and she chuckled.

“Point taken, then. Well, we had to leave That Place That Begins With L, and the landlord here is amenable. What I was going to say was that we didn’t book the act, the act asked us to book him, and he said he’d been asked by someone called Steph. At least, that’s what I think he said. Steph?”

“Friend of ours. Lives near Gatwick, but I know her and her husband by way of climbing”

“Ah! Peak? Lakes? Snowdonia?”

“Peak and Eryri. They’re mates of Penny and Keith”

Al nodded in understanding.

“Yeah, we assumed you’d end up heading that way. Anyway, Jimmy’s basically doing tonight in return for a few pints and a place to kip. I suspect he’s fully aware of…”

He stared at Maz for a few seconds, then put his tea down.

“Maryam, this is awkward. I don’t mean the old history stuff, for we have had a very long time to move on, after. What I mean is, well, you and the child. Neither of us knows how to talk about those things, if we should, if you’d want to, so if we put our feet in it, please let us know”

My wife hugged our daughter after thanking Alan for his kindness, and LC spoke up, for once.

“Mum?”

“Yes, love?”

“Is everybody here our friends now? Nobody was before”

Audrey shuffled across to kneel by the girl.

“We are all your Dad’s friends, love, so we should be yours too”

“Dad said he had friends who had lots of mountains”

“He does. Some of them are our friends too. Mike?”

“Yup?”

“Can I assume you’ll be spending a lot of time with Penny and Keith?”

Ish was nodding and smiling, so I squeezed my wife’s hand, which was an easy thing to do as I was trying my best never to let go of it if possible.

“Well, plan is a bit long-winded, but here goes. I have a duty in Stopsley, where I have some people to introduce, as you know. Once we’re done there, it’ll be over to Suffolk. Boy wants to see Dunwich again, and, well, there’s a treat there for Maz”

My wife looked up sharply.

“What sort of treat?”

There was a way in which she pronounced that last word that worried me, but not now. Another squeeze of her hand.

“I haven’t really given you a route yet, have I? Anyway… Ish can explain Dunwich to you, but it sits right next to Minsmere, which is an important reserve for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds. Ish?”

“Dad?”

“Those parcels in the back of the car? What I got in Singapore?”

“Right!”

I tossed him the keys, and he left the room, as I turned to smile at my wife, something I had missed more than I had ever realised.

“From there we go up the East coast, ish, with a stop in Norfolk for more birds on the Broads, then York, Durham, and then one of Maz’s bucket list things”

Her voice was hesitant.

“The Wall?”

“Yes, love. Exactly that. There’s loads more I wanted to do, like the Lakes, and Scotland, but we’ve got other appointments. Last one’s in Cardiff with Di and her friends”

Shit: she was weeping. I went to wipe the tears away, but she just waved a hand at me and shook her head.

“Sorry, my friends. Memories. ‘Treat’, that was a word they used a lot. It meant a beating. That’s said: no more about it, please. You have to… We were in a pit. Both of us had been gagged and blindfolded, our hands and feet tied, so when the hatch was opened, all we had was a hint of light, and the sound, and then someone threatened to shoot us. I was…”

She pulled our daughter to her.

“They snatched her, and pulled off her gag first, and I remember she screamed, and I thought ‘This is it, finally’, but then they untied me, and they were soldiers. I got to the top of a ladder, and there were soldiers everywhere, and this woman, she had a face so hard, so angry, and I couldn’t see our girl, and then…”

She paused for a few seconds, breathing deeply, before continuing.

“I was in a panic, and then I saw a face, one I recognised, and it was a friend, Bobby, and that was when I realised, and suddenly there was my man. I think a couple of the soldiers tried to keep him back”

I found myself laughing at that particular memory.

“They did, love. Was never going to happen”

“I saw, love. Never again”

“Never, love. Auds, Di was one of the coppers that found her. There’s a whole team of them, in Cardiff, and one of them is a friend of Enfys, Keith and Penny’s daughter. That’s why we are saving the Lakes and Scotland for another visit: we’ll be in Snowdonia for a while, then South Wales, and we… Carolyn?”

“Yes?”

“In both places we have so many friends I can’t count them. Do you remember Diane?”

“Was she the lady who gave me sweets? On the aeroplane to Australia?”

Ish was back, and called across to his sister, “Yes, that’s her”, before handing me the parcels he had collected from the car. I left them on the coffee table, and smiled at my wife once more.

“Neil will be in North Wales, love, but he also knows the Roman Wall, so he will meet us there first to show us about. In the meantime, as we are off to Minsmere, I bought you these, and this package is for you, Carolyn”

Carolyn watched her mother ripping off paper before remembering how parcels worked, and in short order each was holding a pair of binoculars, LC’s being rather smaller and simpler. I received a kiss from my wife, and a puzzled look from our daughter. Ah, well.

“I suspect there’s something being plotted, because everyone kept asking about the end of August. That will be revealed when they’re ready, I suppose”

Alan looked at his own wife before speaking.

“Camping kit?”

“Been lent a load by friends near Gatwick, and got a load of outdoor stuff in Crawley. About as sorted as we can be”

“Right. I suppose we should therefore start getting ready for the club, then! We’ll have a meal there early doors, and then it’s Jimmy”

“Mum?”

“Yes, love?”

“Can I wear my new dress?”

“Of course”

That evening, Jimmy was exactly as I had expected, and Carolyn as entranced as she had been at the Woodruffs’, but she was asleep by the time the evening ended. Ish was the one to carry her home

“Hello, you. I have brought some new friends to meet you. This is my wife Maryam, and our daughter Carolyn. She was named in your memory, my love”

I didn’t normally speak to her grave so directly, but that day it felt absolutely right to do so. We were in a larger group as well, for half of both of our old clubs had turned out to share the day. We had a number of small plants to set by the headstone, as well as a continuous and copious supply of hugs from so many friends I hadn’t seen for far too long. In the end, though, we had to get rolling. I had decided to take a more northerly route than I usually did, to avoid motorways as much as possible, and so set off up the A505 towards Royston and Cambridge, as it led straight from Stopsley and avoided the centre of That Place, so it was a mixture of urban and rural driving for me.

My family sat silently most of the time, still slightly worn from the previous evening and, to be honest, a little hungover. Auds and Alan had felt the need to ensure as many people as possible got their chance to say hello, and as each of them felt the need to bring a bottle or more of alcohol, it had become hard work. I chose the more complicated route out of necessity, so as not to risk falling asleep.

Ish was tapping away on his tablet, of course, as Carolyn dozed against Maz in the back seat, when my boy went “Ooh, Dad!”

“What, son?”

“Imperial War Museum ahead!”

“Duxford. I know”

“Yes, Dad, but one of the exhibits--- could we please stop? This could be important for Mum”

I was intrigued, to say the least, as Ish hadn’t been one for Big Boys’ Toys like tanks and jets as a kid, but agreed to stump up the entrance fee, which wasn’t that cheap. The place had a café, of course, so we took a breather there and I went to gather drinks and snacks while Ish talked his Mum through whatever he had discovered. I was just paying for our mini-feast when I heard her yelp, in an absolutely Aussie way, “You beauty, son!”

When I set the tray down at our table, Maz was beaming, almost pushing the screen into my face.

“Our clever, clever boy, love! See what he found?”

The site was that of the museum, with a list of its exhibits, which were mostly aircraft, each with a sort of mini-biography attached. The one Maz had open was of some antique airliner, and I couldn’t see what had her so excited, until she paused, told herself “Calm down, Mrs Rhodes”, and began slowly explaining, as if forcing herself to avoid exploding.

“This aeroplane… When Alan’s Dad flew out to Singapore, it was in this plane. And you can go aboard it”

I started to ask how many such planes were left, and she cut me off abruptly.

“No, love: from what the old man told Alan, and he was very, very meticulous in what he recorded, this isn’t the type of plane he flew out on, but THE plane. The actual aircraft. How wonderful is that?”

My son is a genius sometimes.

We spent too much time wandering around the exhibits for Carolyn, but there was a playground, something else she had never encountered, and my son the generous genius volunteered to stay with the girl while Maz and I explored the four-prop airliner. Maz was snapping away with my camera, but surprised me by opening one of the toilets and taking several shots.

“Alan’s Dad told him he was airsick for the whole flight. This was where he was too much of the time”

Suddenly, she was wrapped around me, almost stopping my breathing.

“I feel like Kul, now, my love. He spent all that time telling the office what you were like, before we met, and the office, we all wondered how you would match up, and you did, more than I could have hoped… When that woman asked about the cutting, Carolyn… I said it to Suleiman and the others: touch my girl, and either me or you would find them and kill them. When Carolyn would ask why we spoke English, why she had to learn, I always told her it was because you would be coming for us, that she needed to be able to talk to her father, because you would never give up”

I squeezed her back, my guilt almost unbearable, because I had indeed given up on her, and she spoke again, clearly reading my mind.

“No, love. Coming to terms is not giving up. All you needed was a way, and I need to find a way of thanking Neil that won’t terrify him. Now, a few more photos, and then we gather our offspring”

We finally crossed the high bridge at Ipswich before switching to smaller roads as we approached Dunwich, Ish explaining its history with its Great Storm while, thankfully, avoiding tales of tumbling coffins or non-Euclidean geometry, with or without added tentacles. I had booked us two nights in a cottage not far from the beach and within a very short walk of another facility of some importance, which was the Ship, which might have been, you know, a pub. That sold Adnam’s.

I mean, I had been away from decent ale in Australia, Maz had been without her whole life, and the lad was now legal, so there was a need they could fill. As we awaited our starters in the Ship that evening, I handed Maz the present Steph had slipped to me as we had left Charlwood: the Collins guide to British birds, and I am almost certain I got a slightly miffed look from our daughter, as her own present count was a little behind. The meal was lovely, and the ale slipped down nicely, but it was soon a little girl’s bed time. I had slipped Ish the wink as we had finished our desserts, and he had himself slipped away on a ‘loo break’, returning a little out of breath but with a grin that announced ‘job done’. I looked at the other two with a smile

“Long day out tomorrow, people. Out past the graveyard for Ish, then through the woods to a car park. Down onto the beach and then the back gate to Minsmere. Be about five miles of walking, all told, but it’s almost all flat”

I checked all drinks were finished, paid the tab, and led the way from the pub back to our little cottage, where I ostentatiously wished the younger two good night. Our peace was shattered thirty seconds later when Carolyn reappeared, clutching her two new presents, her gaze flicking from her mother to myself and back again so I held out a hand.

“Shall I show you how it fastens, love?”

It was something Auds had spotted, and the idea had tickled me: a teddy bear, and a miniature ‘rucksack child carrier’ for it. Caro was nodding, entranced, so I simply talked her through the straps before asking what her bear was called.

“Don’t know!”

Maz waved for her to come closer, so she could see the rig more clearly, and simply said, “If you sleep together the bear might whisper their name to you”

LC simply looked confused, but it was our son’s turn to help, Ish calling out, “When I was very little, I had a stuffed rabbit”

“What’s a rabbit?”

Moments like that cut me, for each was a reminder of how much of our child’s life had been stolen by those bastards, along with that of my wife. Ish was still on point, though.

“It’s a little animal, Carolyn. We’ll show you some real ones, but mine was a toy, like your bear, for cuddling. Another name for a rabbits is ‘Bunny,’ and because I was very little, I called mine Bunbun”

“Have you still got it?”

“It’s at home, I think. Would you lie to see it?”

“Is home the place with the man with the smiley beard?”

“Yes. Our home, in Australia”

“Are we going back there?”

“Yes, after we have seen more friends here”

My heart lurched again, as I decoded what she must be thinking, that everything was temporary.

“Carolyn?”

“Yes, Tua—Dad?”

“We’ve met lots of friends, haven’t we?”

She nodded once, but said nothing.

“We have friends all over the world, love. We see them when we can, but when we’re in one place, we can only see the friends from there. They don’t stop being friends when we are somewhere else. We have a plan, though, when we get to one place where we have a lot of friends, and that is to talk to the ones back at home with them all together”

“How?”

How to explain a video meeting to someone who had never used a computer? Bugger it; the times would work. I pulled out my phone and rang Kul, sod the expense yet again.

“Hiya Mike---something up?”

“Not at all, mate. Could you switch to video? Someone wants to say hello”

Once he was on screen, I turned my phone to show the girl, and for almost the first time, her squeal was one of utter joy.

“Say hello, Carolyn”

“HELLO!”

Kul was grinning, that smiley beard in full force, when Carolyn suddenly turned away from the screen. It was a second before I realised she was still wearing her bear-carrier, and a memory of Enfys showing me her sweets came out from hiding. Kul chuckled.

“What’s his name, love?”

“Don’t know!”

“Shall we both think of names, then?”

All of a sudden, she launched into a rush of childish prattle, and it was all for Kul, but I didn’t care. Whatever it took to break through to my daughter’s heart was fine by me. No resentment, no jealousy. Maz was grinning happily, but Kul still had a sensible head on.

“Carolyn, love, I’m getting ready for work, so I have to go. Your Dad has planned some longer chats with us, so you’ll get to see Dal as well. Will you be there for me?”

“Yes!”

“And the bear?”

He caught her confusion, so channelled Maz.

“Ask him tonight, then. We will see each other soon, love!”

He cut the call, Carolyn wide-eyed in real delight, which meant a little delay in settling her down for the night after I had showed her where the loo was. The first time she had used ours in Scarborough, she had asked for permission to leave her room, dear god.

Stay with the joy, Rhodes.

Yes, we walked, Maz reminding me quite sharply that she and LC had ‘enjoyed’ an awful lot of opportunities for physical exercise over the years, which left things a little jagged between us until she saw her first ever European jay in the woods.

Through the carpark and down the little gully to the beach and its concrete blocks, right up to the public hide by the back door to the Minsmere reserve, and then it was with a sigh of absolute bliss that she settled onto a bench with book and binoculars, as well as the flasks of tea that Ish had carried in his rucksack.

She had her bins straight to her eyes, and…

“Avocet!”

The names followed in sequence, as they always had before that awful day, her little notebook filling up quickly.

“Mike?”

“Yes, love?”

“There were birds in Sumatra as well. Ones I knew well, nothing rare, nothing new, but… Carolyn? Remember what I taught you about the birds, back in that place?”

“Yes, Mum”

“These are all new ones here. Would you like to see?”

“Can Kawan look?”

She turned her back so that Maz could take her bear.

“He told me his name last night, like Mum said. Can I go to the water?”

Ish was straight up, yet again, taking the girl out to the edge of a very calm sea after promising to show her how to skip stones, and I settled down by my wife, pouring us each more tea.

“What does that name mean, love?”

“Just ‘friend’, darling. I think that’s the word that is triggering her. We haven’t had any for so long, the whole of her own life, yes? And now, so many, and you just called up Kul, and he was there. Lets her see things exist beyond what she can touch and see. Godwit… which one… black-tailed! Sorry, but the birds, it was a real cliché for me. They were there, they were free, even if we weren’t. We… I had my dreams, Mike, my hopes, but she, I never knew what she held to her. Nothing for her to work from, no past. All I could do was try to give her a future to believe in, even if I didn’t. Green plover… Now we give her friends, love. We give her a real future”

I reached across to take her binoculars, but only so I could kiss her. Outside, I could hear the squealing of a little girl, and later, when we returned to our cottage, she rode on my shouldeRS.

We spent some time at the Wetlands Trust reserve at the Ouse Washes on our way north, Maz slightly disappointed not to have been there for the mass Winter invasion of various types of swan, but she was still happy with what she saw. My target was York that day, by way of the long bridge over the Humber, but we weren’t staying in the city. I had spotted a campsite next to a village called Acaster Malbis, for some reason the name stirring a vague memory, and it was small enough to let me try out how Carolyn felt in a tent while still having the possibility of somewhere more solid nearby if she were unable to cope.

“Welcome to Moor End, Mr Rhodes. This your first time staying here?”

“First time in this part of Yorkshire, to be honest”

“Can I ask how you found out about us, just so we can tweak our marketing? Internet? Word of mouth?”

I laughed at that question, as I had no idea at all.

“I don’t know, my friend. It was something about the village name; seen it somewhere before”

“Ah! I suspect I know the answer, then. Any canals or other inland waterways near where you live?”

Ish snorted.

“We live in Australia, mate”

I held a hand up.

“Yes, but I used to live near the Grand Union”

The camp site man was nodding happily.

“That’ll be it, then. We have a lot of hire centres here, boats that is, like Dobbs and Barker, even though Old Man Barker followed Mr Dobbs a few years ago…. Lovely man, Gerald Barker, absolute gent. Anyway, I know they do one-way hires down there. Other yard fettles them and then hires them out for the trip back”

Maz almost snorted up her breakfast at that one.

“Sorry, but, well, we do, my husband and I, we do business consultancy in Australia and--- Darling, those must be the people you got the idea from”

She quickly explained about our Canning Vans solution, and our man was chuckling away.

“All the way to Australia, eh? I shall have to let them know, if that’s okay. They’ll be chuffed, though Susie might want a cut, woman as now runs the place. I’m joking! Right. Two nights, two tents, then, three adults and one child, and the car?”

I paid, he showed us the pitches, and then the facility that had really caught my eye: a family shower room, where Maz and Carolyn could shower together without risking terrifying our daughter. We pitched our two shelters, and that evening ate in a pub, also called the Ship, where the ale was Timothy Taylor’s rather than Adnam’s, and a little girl fell asleep after her ice cream was finished.

We did the City the next day, walking its walls and wandering through the Shambles, with time in the museum by Clifford’s Tower, both girls fascinated by the reconstructed rooms and period streets, and as LC had seemed to settle easily on her first night in a tent, I booked us an extra one, just so she could spend more time feeding the swans, ducks and geese by the marina.

More and more the inner child was emerging from the victim, and Maz seemed to kick far less in her sleep when under canvas. I mentioned that as we sat on a convenient bench while LC insisted on listening to a busker, music clearly calling to her more and more with each day. Maz was pensive when I mentioned her bad dreams.

“Darling, I think.. It’s memories, love. The tent… It’s Gracetown, yes? The Bibbulmun as well. It’s… I had to wash so much when we got home, wash that place off me, and this, it’s like being back there”

She barked out a laugh.

“Just a bit wetter, fewer nasty biting things… Oh! Is that a skylark?”

One more day of healing.

We headed off after that third night of Maz as close to me as she could get, LC clasping Kawan while still pressed against her mother, and we took lunch in Durham City before a break at Marsden for the seabirds I had researched on the net, and then into Newcastle and a couple of nights in the Station hotel, the first of which included the folk club at the Bridge hotel. As we walked down from our hotel, Ish dropped in beside me, his voice soft.

“She’s healing, Dad. It’s two things, really, and one of them’s the music. I mean… well, how could it not be, in our family?”

“The other?”

“She keeps asking about friends, Dad. She’s very…. Look, you said it to me, once, about linear maps. When you were explaining about where the Hiatts live”

“Eh?”

“You told me you only knew Bethesda as the road through it, a linear map, not all the places to the sides, like where they lived. I think Elsie’s like that: sees friends as, well, she meets them, then they’re gone, and that’s it. What she can no longer see is gone”

He paused for a moment, then smiled.

“When you called up Kul the other night, when she saw he was still there, still her smiley beard, I think you broke a hole in her shell”

Before I could embarrass him by saying something soppy about pride, he changed the subject, asking, “So who’s on tonight?”

I still hugged him before replying.

“Oddly, Jimmy again, but as a support. Jez is headlining”

“Jez Lowe?”

“Yup”

“Ripper, bonzer, she’ll be right!”

Jimmy was waiting at the bar, and to her delight, as soon as he saw LC, he waved, saying something I only half understood, which still made her laugh, and that was the start of her best evening since her rescue. Jimmy was funny, Jez was Jez, and I made sure I spent a decent sum on their discs before the walk back to our rooms, for I was determined my girls would have something more than fading memories, something to fasten the good times to them. There was, after all, a CD player in the car.

Our second evening was almost as good, spent in the Forth, just up Pink Lane from our hotel, because we had a visitor. We had just given our food order at the bar when Maz squealed, LC looking terrified for a few seconds as Ish calmed her, before turning to offer a hand to our new arrival after he had released Maz from his hug and finished wiping his eyes.

“Neil. Be welcome, mate. Be so bloody welcome! Carolyn?”

She started, almost as if slapped.

“Ish?”

“This is Neil. He is not just your friend, he is someone who helped Dad find you”

I stepped forward to relieve my wife and son of their hugging duties, but I felt all too reluctant to release him, for Ish had been absolutely on the mark. Without Neil, no Lexie, no Di, no Rahim. No family.

I could feel him starting to tremble, so set him free to take the seat we had held for him. He settled himself, then smiled at LC, who recoiled slightly.

“Carolyn?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“Remember when Mum and me showed you our wedding photos?”

“Yes?”

“This is the man who took them. Do you remember Lexie? Di’s friend?”

“Was she the one with the hole in her head?”

Shit.

“Yes, that’s the one.. Neil was the man… the friend who said to Lexie that we had lost you. Before Lexie and Di did their thing to find you. Do you want to say thank you?”

“Thank you”

She clearly didn’t get it fully, but she was still so young; it would come. I turned my smile back to Neil.

“What do you have for us, mate?”

“Are you okay with a youth hostel, mate?”

“I am not sure”

“It’s next to a pub”

“Ah! That’ll be the Twice Brewed, then. Still not sure, though”

I glanced at Carolyn, and he nodded.

“That’ll be why I booked the cottage up the lane, then”

He was grinning, but I could still detect the fragility it covered, as he kept glancing at my wife, almost as if checking a scorecard. Two found, but one lost.

“I’m on the Kwak today, Mike”

“That still running?”

“Sort of. I swapped engines about ten thousand miles ago, and the forks and rear shocks have all been replaced twice, so it’s a bit Argo Navis”

“What’s a go nah viss, Tuan?”

Maz patted her shoulder.

“This is Neil, my darling. He is and always will be a friend. Just ‘Neil’, okay?”

“Neil. Sorry”

He turned his smile on, it seeming to come far more easily for a child.

“Argo Navis means ‘the ship Argo’, Carolyn. It’s from a very old story. If you have a… do you know what an axe is?”

She twitched, but nodded. There was a story there I wasn’t sure I needed to hear any day soon.

“Well, if I have an old axe, and it’s so old that I have had to change the handle six times, and replace the head four times, is it still the same axe? Argo Navis is like that, but about a wooden ship”

“No. Is your quacker made of wood?”

“No, love. My Kwak is a motorbike, and the frame is still the original one. And the petrol tank. Everything else—oh, and the handlebars and stuff. Everything else is newer”

He turned back to me.

“Got a room in the Station, mate, so we can plot last details over breakfast. I… can we have a couple of minutes outside, just for a chat?”

I nodded, slipping a quiet “Back in a bit” to my wife before following him out into the street, where he found some space sitting on a window ledge of the Town Wall pub. I joined him, asking what was up, and he sighed.

“History, Mike. I want to… I used to go up… WE used to go up to the Wall regularly. Maddy and me. It was… We had been… Start again. I was staying at Garrigill, doing some general work. Maddy was, coincidence, was working in Durham City. That was when we got together. That was… first times, Mike. First of everything. We found a helmet for her, and we spent the next day visiting the Wall. Never looked back from there, either of us, and we came back up so many times. Stayed in the pub so often they knew what we drank and almost had it ready before we ordered it”

He paused, his gaze years away in memory.

“There’s a place we loved, a little Roman temple, not an obvious thing from the road”

“Brocolitia?”

“That’s the one. Place really spoke to both of us, and, well, Maddy and me, both sort of isolated from the mainstream ourselves, it really was ours. We have an entire section of our catalogue devoted to it. I might… First times, yeah? This is the first time I have been back, will have been, since I lost her. If I get silly, please don’t worry”

I laid an arm over his shoulder as a group of young men walked past.

“Ah haddaway, ye fuckin’ aad puffs!”

Pull it back in, Rhodes. Not the time.

Neil was chuckling now, which was odd.

“Perfectly wrong timing, mate! Anyway, bit of odd coincidence stuff. When Maddy… When we first went there, someone was sprinkling ashes. I am pretty certain it was Debbie, the one with the girls? Old Pat’s friend?”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Some day, I’ll have to tell her. I, we, we took loads of photos that day. She might want one or two”

And you might just put your foot in it big style, mate, but once again, not now.

“You okay to join the others now?”

“Better be. She’s terrified, isn’t she? Carolyn?”

“I think so. Ish was saying how she talks about friends, frightened they disappear once out of sight”

“Frightened her freedom is temporary I’d guess”

“I rang Kul a few days ago, as a video call”

“That must have cost a bomb!”

“Priorities, Neil”

“Point taken, mate. Did it help?”

“I do believe it did. She calls him the ‘smiley beard’, and that’s what she got”

“Oh… nearly forgot. Did you pack your rock boots?”

“Me and Ish both, just in case. We sort of assumed we’d need them with the Hiatts”

I lowered my voice, checking the door of the Forth, just in case.

“Also brought her boots, Neil. Ust in case”

“What I would have expected. Right, time for another pint”

He rose from his impromptu seat and led the way back in, where we found Maz and LC guzzling crisps as Ish guided the barman through the creation of an LLB. Neil did, of course, have a paper map with him, and it was a specific archaeological one of the Roman Wall, with all the relevant sites marked. Maz was beaming.

“What you called my ‘bucket list’, husband of mine?”

“Well, you are my SWMBO, after all, wife of mine. Oh, Ish? She Who Must be Obeyed. H. Rider Haggard, not H.P.L. Fewer tentacles”

Neil chuckled at that one before adding that Alys had now moved on to the works of Charlie Stross, which had more than enough tentacles to go around, thank you very much, and I realised that my pint had been replenished rather more often than I had noticed, the clock advancing in parallel, and that was the first inkling that I was accepting a new condition in my life.

Safety. My family, all of us, were safe. Finally.

Breakfast was a solid one, and yes, we did leave with a few sandwiches, muffins and pieces of fruit for later. After a short visit to a corner shop to top up our tea and breakfast supplies, Neil led the way out of the city until we were on a fast dual carriageway, where I nearly lost him as he flicked through the junctions at Heddon. The road had changed little since my last visit, and old memories were warming me as Maz slipped our new copy of ‘Old Durham Road’ into the CD player, with a grinning comment about accents and old straight roads as Ish almost obsessively followed our progress on his phone’s mapping app.

We had agreed to stop at Chesters for a look at the museum, which forcibly reminded me that this was the first time there for my whole family, even though it was all so familiar to me. That was when I understood that Carolyn hadn’t even known what ‘Roman’ meant until we had entered that same museum. So many gaps to fill, as Maryam might have said, all those years ago. It was actually a good thing that we had agreed that stop, because Maz had insisted we stop for a bird check at Harlow Hill and the Whittle Dene reservoirs, and she was, after all, SWMBO.

I was actually feeling a little excited myself, as I knew what was coming, and it would bring joy magnified by the number of new eyes I was bringing to enjoy it, so it took me a little time before I realised that Carolyn was now joining in with the rest of us as we sang along with Jez Lowe.

Our last stop before a visit to the massive Housesteads fort was, of course, to a tiny temple, hidden away from the road. I made an excuse about needing a coffee from the stand in the car park, which allowed Neil a few moments on his own to salve his grief. As Ish talked LC through the soft drinks, yet another blinded spot in her knowledge, I explained to Maz.

“This was where he took Maddy, love. The morning after, well, after they had…”

“After she had first become his, and vice versa?”

“Yes. Exactly”

“Shit. He’ll be wobbly tonight, then”

“We have a cottage, love, and he will be fine”

“And if he isn’t fine, he will be later, yes?”

“We will make sure of it, love”

We gave him twenty minutes before following the path round the former fort walls until we found Neil leaning on the wooden fence next to the stile, his eyes more than a little red. Maz and the kids hung back for a while as I checked on him.

“You okay, mate?”

“Sorry, Mike. Just realising I should have come here years ago. Let Maddy have this place to dance in. I looked it up, you know?”

“Sorry? What did you look up?”

“When I saw what I think was Debbie, and they were sprinkling ashes. What one of them said, and I am pretty sure, it was in Welsh, yeah? I think it was ‘Dance on the wind’ and, well, made a decision. Maddy is still at home with me, but I think I should let her dance as well”

He gave me a weary smile.

“Like I said, first time I have been back here since things happened. This… I will be back here in a month or so, and my wife will get her dance”

He drew in a long breath before asking, in a steadier voice, what our next destination would be.

“Sheffield”

That broke the spell.

“Why didn’t you go there on the way to York?”

“Ah, timing. I want to catch the office lot on a Friday, for the post-office drinks. Then it’s a surprise for Ish before we hit North Wales. Talk us through the temple, mate?”

The cottage was in a prime position, a short way up a lane from the Youth Hostel, which was in turn almost next door to the pub. I parked the car on the patch of hard standing out the front while Neil walked his Kwak into the garden before applying a multitude of locks. Once we had shed our loads in appropriate rooms, I convened the family.

“Right, you lot! Time for an amble, and just this once it will be away from the pub. Outdoor clothes and rucksacks. Got that bag I gave you, Ish?”

“Yes, Dad!”

“Dad?”

Where was her new confidence coming from?

“Yes, love?”

“Can I take Kawan?”

“Of course. He’d be lonely here, wouldn’t he? Chop-chop, then!”

No sooner in the cottage than out of it, up the road to the Pennine Way just before the Steel Rigg carpark and that iconic view across to Crag Lough, the Wall running along the top of Peel Crags before the dip of Sycamore Gap, Maz seeming more excited with each step. I let Neil stride ahead, a massive rucksack on his back and our children in his wake, as I took time for two of us.

“Remember what I said about bucket lists, love?”

She grinned, far more relaxed than she had been at Dunwich.

“I remember us saying we weren’t going to see it as a ‘before I die’ thing!”

“Exactly. Can we see it now as an ‘I’M ALIVE’ one?”

I took a kiss before she could answer, so she left that as her reply, and her response to the view of Crag Lough was similarly wordless. We followed the Way across the top of Peel Crags, the Wall marching beside us, until we arrived at the famous Gap., and the dance began as Neil, Ish and myself worked several cameras to get as many memories as possible locked down, and once again, as in Espy, Maz found a random passing stranger to ensure we had photos of the whole family, including Kawan.

Once she had slaked her lust for her list tick, I whispered in her ear, “Something else for you round the corner, love”

Neil led the way again, back across the wall and then traversing the hillside towards the crags between the dark waters of the lough and the crags of the Whin Sill below the Wall, and Maz’ smile became a grin as I took her hand once again.

“When we went out to Statham’s that first time, and I asked what the rock was, and then said I was familiar with it?”

“That you’d climbed on it before? This is the place, isn’t it?”

“Yup. Hang on… Ish?”

“Yeah?”

“By That obvious chimney, son”

I turned back to my wife.

“Time to crack the flasks, I think. Got that bag, son?”

I settled myself on the grass, as he handed Maz the package.

“Best get these on, Mum”

She squealed with joy as he handed over her rock shoes, Neil laughing as he brought out a rope and some basic protection kit, mostly slings and krabs.

“It’s SRT rope, Maz, so no leading today. Soloing and toproping only”

Her brow furrowed.

“I don’t know…. What does ‘SRT’ mean?”

“Ah. Caving thing. Single Rope Technique. Cavers do more abseiling and Jumaring than leading, so SRT ropes are made with much less elasticity. No need for shock absorption, no abbing ropes suddenly flying up out of reach when we unclip. It’s…”

He had been tapping a finger against his leg until he abruptly stopped speaking, then grinned.

“Back to word counting. Nearly away on an explanation loop there. Anyway, I can set up some toprope belays. Brought two ropes, and… And Enfys sent me something for Carolyn, just in case. Remember this?”

I did indeed remember the child’s harness from all those years ago, but I didn’t want to put our daughter somewhere she might not want to go. Let her watch for a while, make up her own mind. I slurped my tea, pulled on my shoes and waved at the crag.

“Right, people: this is the Whin Sill, and the rock is dolerite, same stuff as at Statham’s in Perth. Carolyn, love, all of us here like a thing we call ‘rock climbing’, or just ‘climbing’. We have places back home, indoors as well as outdoors, where we do this. Smiley Beard and his son also climb with us. We are going to do some here, but you only have to do it yourself if you really want to”

“Why do you do it?”

Maz chipped in with, “Because it’s fun!”, while I thought about that focus that could chase away the demons in one’s life, even if that relief might only be temporary. Not today, Rhodes.

“Right! That is a local joke, because it is always described as both the first and the last route here, as which it is depends on where you start from. It’s West Chimney, but I remember it being called ‘Introductory’, because it’s the first route and it’s a good introduction to climbing. Ish and Mum, friction’s not great here, so don’t rely on it too much. Now, let me show you…”

I took my time over the chimney, so many memories coming with each hold, and secured it at the top with three anchor points before reversing the route. Maz was now in her own harness, another portion of the package I had entrusted to Ish, and as he held one end of the rope, I smiled at my lover before she answered my simple “Ready?” with an emphatic nod. I tied her in with a figure eight knot, and called out the familiar opening words to Ish.

“Take in!”

Some hours later, when we walked down to the pub for our evening meal, Carolyn insisted on wearing her gifted harness over her princess dress, while Kawan wore his own kit, made from an eight-foot sling and a single screwgate krab. My wife simply kept smiling.

-----0-----

The pub was almost empty, save for a group of obvious hostellers in one corner, but the barman had a smile for us.

“Evening, just! What can I get yez?”

His smile dropped almost at once.

“Sorry, but you look like… Neil? Neil Strachan?”

Neil’s face lit up.

“Anth! Great! I didn’t know if… I’ve not been back for…”

“Neil, marra, I… I followed the news, so can I just say how sorry I am? So many years before that bastard… No. Drinks first, marra?”

I nodded, pointing at one of the local ales.

“I’ll have a pint of that, my friend. My son here will probably want a lager”

“No he won’t, Dad! I’ll have the same as you. Mum?”

“Um, a large pinot grigio, please, and…”

She whispered to LC.

“And a small coke with a slice and ice for our daughter here, and could she have another one for her bear?”

As I passed the drinks one by one to the others, ‘Anth’ looked at me rather closely, before dropping his voice.

“I do follow the news. Not much else to do out here when I’m not working. I don’t want to put my foot in it, so please tell me if I have the right idea about who you lot are”

“What idea is that?”

“Kidnap and slavery”

I nodded, and he winced.

“I’ll change the subject, then. I didn’t realise what had happened to Neil and Maddy until I saw that cu--- that arsehole’s trial in the news. How is he holding up?”

I looked over my shoulder to see the others settling into another corner, around a large table.

“Better than he was, mate. Much better. Thanks for your concern”

“Aye, well. You’ll understand that”

Suddenly, he laughed.

“Sorry, Mr Rhodes. Just a joke we have on our website”

“Mike. The others are Ish, Carolyn and Maz. What joke?”

“Ah, we stole it from a pub in Glen Coe, sort of. They have a sign saying something like ‘No hawkers, tinkers or Campbells’, so we have a ‘You’re barred!’ list. A few different categories, like, with a few jokes, but a lot of them are deadly serious. There’s a cooperative one where been banned from a load of pubs: banned from one, banned from all, aye? Then there’s a sort of ‘celebrity nasty’ list, the serious ones, not just a goalie that missed a penalty, like. That cu—arsehole Forbes is on that one”

“Cunt, mate. You can say cunt. Neil is a very close friend, and to a large extent, I have my wife and daughter here only because of his help. We have another friend that owes him her life, so enough said”

“Oh aye? I’ll leave that for Neil to tell, then. All I’ll say is, well, be welcome. Looking at the little lass, I’ll guess you’ve been cragging. Crag Lough rocks?”

I nodded.

“First time for the, er, little lass. First…”

I realised that I was being ambushed by emotion, and took a few deep breaths until I felt I could control my voice.

“My wife, Maz, she has had a bit of a break from climbing, unsurprisingly. Anyway, Neil’s more of a caver, but he knows how to use a rope properly. Bit fussy with it, sometimes”

“Aye. I know he’s a bit trainspotterish, but does that bloody matter? Now, thank you for bringing him back up, letting us see he’s still wi’ wa; specials board is over there, and here’s the main menu. And put your card away, Mike. That round’s on me”

“Thanks, Anth. I’ll be back with the orders in a few”

“Ne hurry. Oh: that pint’s one of ours, so let us know what you think”

I joined the others, passing round the cardboard menu as I studied the ‘specials’, which had more than a few oddities I suspected Maz wouldn’t recognise. As I read, it struck me that despite the hair covering in Sumatra. Carolyn had raised no objections at all when offered a traditional pork-heavy breakfast.

She was talking to Kawan, offering him sips of ‘his’ drink while repeatedly undoing the screwgate before re-tightening it and ‘checking.

“Carolyn?”

Once again, she jerked, with a look of guilt fleetingly crossing her face.

“What did you think of the rock climbing?”

I could hear her thoughts: do I say what I think, or might it displease the master?

“It was good. Easier than palms”

Leave that one for now, Rhodes. Maz was watching closely as I asked the next question.

“Did Kawan enjoy it?”

Her most natural grin so far burst from her face.

“Yes! That is why he is so thirsty!”

“Well, back at our home, I have something I made for Ish. It’s like a copy of rocks to climb on. Would you like me to set it ip again for you and Kawan?”

“Which place is home?”

“That place where we had the barbie with Mister Smiley Beard”

“We are going back there?”

“Yes. We have some more friends to meet here, and I know they love to climb. Now, I have to do some long driving tomorrow, so we need to choose what we want to eat. Would you like your brother to help you choose?”

My boy was as reliable as ever, leaning across to talk her through the ‘small bites’ and ‘kids’ plates’. Maz was far more direct.

“Remember those sausages at Soapy Joe’s. darling?”

“I remember a lot of his sausages, love”

“The venison ones. I think that might have been on our first.... They have a venison stew here, with wild mushrooms. Please”

“Neil?”

“The steak and ale pie and mash?”

“Okay. Kids?”

Ish looked at his sister for confirmation, then gave ne their order.

“The gammon for me please, Dad. With pineapple, and chips. Carolyn would like what she had for breakfast, she says: sausages. With mash”

I rose to head for the bar.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“Where are we going tomorrow?”

“Somewhere for your Mum, son. No climbing, I’m afraid. Neil? Quick chat?”

I led the way outside, Neil looking a little apprehensive, but I smiled as best I could to reassure him.

“Nothing to worry about, mate, just wondering if you would be okay squeezed into the car. Didn’t want to assume”

To my surprise, he laughed out loud.

“I was going to ask the same question about the day after! Bit of walking I’d prefer to do in proper boots”

“Oh! Where are you planning?”

“Simonside”

“Perfect!”

“Where are we going tomorrow, then?”

“Wait and see, mate”

“Right… Carolyn’s still nervous, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely”

“She’s opening up, though. Excuse me…”

He pulled out his phone, dialled and then put it on speaker.

“Ga’I helpio chi?”

“Hiya, Alys”

“Neil! Yay! Where are you to?”

“Hadrian’s Wall, with Mike. On speaker, so he can hear you”

“Hiya, Mike! How are your women?”

I sat on the surge of emotion boiling beneath me.

“Both fine, love. Went climbing today. First time for Maz since, you know, and first time ever for our daughter”

“How did she like it? Carolyn, that is?”

“She’s made a harness for her teddy bear, and of course she was wearing… we got the present from Enfys, and Carolyn is STILL wearing it. Over a princess dress”

“Ha! I will let my darling know: she’s on a shout this evening. Michael, my, our, love, we have so much planned for you”

“Well, if some of our time ends up devoted to lying on our hacks looking at the mountains, that is all we need. That and the right company, of course”

“What are your plans?”

“Couple of days out from here, then Neil leaves us. We head down to Sheffield to see my old team, camp out at North Leas and do some stuff on Stanage, then it’s across to yours”

“My other Dad’s put a chunk of the bunkhouse aside for you, Mike. Will Carolyn be okay with that? If not, we have two houses—three, like the Spanish Inquisition. We have three houses to share. And you have tents as well, yes?”

“Absolutely”

“Then the end of August is a goer, then”

Yet again that comment. I decided to leave it for as long as I could so that whatever surprise they were clearly organising would remain just that: a surprise.

We said our goodnights, and ambled back to my family, just as the food was arriving. Ish was staring at his glass.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“This doesn’t really taste like beer”

“Not quite right, son. It’s the stuff back home that doesn’t taste like beer”

Carolyn was eating for Northumberland, offering the odd bite of sausage to her bear, while Maz just smiled at her. Neil held up a hand, as he often did before speaking.

“It is the yeast, Ish. You are drinking ale, which uses a yeast that rises to the surface during fermentation. Australian beer is lager, which uses a yeast that sinks to the bottom, and works at lower temperatures. It makes beers with less flavour, and they need to be stored longer until they mature, which is why they are called lager, which is German for ‘store’, so--- I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

Ish patted his arm.

“Not at all, Neil. You just told me almost everything I needed to know, in one bite”

“Oh. Could I give you two more?”

“Go ahead”

“First, there’s another type of beer, from Belgium, called lambic. It is only brewed in colder months, and it’s just left open for wild yeasts to get into it. Yeasts that live in the vats, that is. Second, you are drinking IPA, which stands for ‘India Pale Ale’. Beer shipped out to India during the Empire would go off, so they added lots of hops to it. Hops are a preservative, but they make things taste bitter. People liked the taste, though. It needed a particular type of mineral water, from Burton on Trent, so they found a way to add stuff to water to ‘burtonise’ it and…”

He started laughing.

“Nobody expects the Neilish Inquisition, eh?”

He was so clearly on that spectrum, but this was so different in tone to those days of anguish I remembered. Still ploughing his own furrow, still recognising it, but now able to laugh at it, or himself, or both. It didn’t matter which: he was laughing.

Neil got the next round in, returning with the dessert menu along with the drinks. They had apple and blackberry crumble, which was my target, Ish choosing STP and Neil opting for tiramisu. Maz and Carolyn looked confused, my wife admitting she had no idea what half the choices actually were. Ish was still on form.

“Mum, me and Dad, ey? We get ours, you two try a bit of both, and then choose. I had STP first time I came here with Dad. It’s really nice. Or, Carolyn?”

“Yes?”

“They have ice cream as well”

“Do they have mint and chocolate?”

“I’ll ask for you, okay?”

He was back a couple of minutes later, grinning.

“Ordered the three puds, and explained that Mum will deice in a bit. Landlord said he has no choc and mint ice cream, but he can offer something like it”

Maz decided on STP after some serious tasting, and LC’s treat turned out to be on of those Cornetto ice creams, capped with chocolate and filled with mint ice cream and yes, it got offered to her bear.

In the end, I carried her the last few hundred yards back to our cottage as she was fast asleep. She woke as I was removing the harness, and she suddenly flung her arms around my neck, squeezing as hard as she could, whispering, “Thank you, Dad”

Maz was already in bed awaiting me, and we settled down into that comfortable cuddle, her head on my shoulder, as we talked through the day.

“I was worried about Carolyn, love. Pork and that”

“Sorry?”

“They covered her hair, didn’t they?”

“Yes. Hypocrites to a shit, they were”

“And food?”

“We ate what they gave us. If you didn’t, someone else would, and you went hungry. Simple as that. This is… It’s all new, darling. She gets a choice, that’s a big thing, but she’s asked what her choice is, and that’s even bigger. Never had that. She’s…”

Maz wriggled a little to get closer to me.

“Her play, now. It’s a little bit, well, younger kid stuff? But she’s playing, for the first time. The climbing, wow. That one, I think, well, choices again. Choices of which holds to use, realising some won’t work, but all the time she’s doing it off her own bat, not just what someone else is telling her to do. She could be a handful when teenager time comes. Anyway, she’s happy. That’s what she tells me. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. It’s a drive out bit of a trek, but more of your bucket list thing. Now…”

“Yes. Now would be a very good time, love. And…oh yes! Stay on your back, love, and…”

‘Now’ was indeed a very good time, as we continued to make amends for so many years apart.

The weather was much greyer in the morning, but we weren’t going high. Flasks filled, snacks ready to hand, Ish squeezed into the back seat with the girls as Neil took the front and we were off, not long after seven o’clock. I drove back along the Military Road to the bridge near Chesters, where I turned North, sticking to quieter roads rather than going back to the big city and the A1. Postcard-perfect village after village went past until I cut the corner from (Shew us the way to) Wallington to Morpeth (Rant). I couldn’t help it, as so many of the places we were passing featured in tunes I loved. We were soon on the A1 north, and after Alnwick I turned off for Beal, which was when Maz started making happy sounds.

“My man loves me indeed!”

I gave her a quick grin.

“This is only part of the day. Morning here, more later”

I had spent ages studying the tide tables, and we were slowly following the retreating water as the causeway revealed itself foot by foot, Carolyn’s eyes wide at the apparent magic.

“Neil’s going to do some work in the Priory, but we will have about three hours to wander around”

“Eider!”

“Yes, love. Lots of them here. Lunch will be down the coast a bit, before Part Two”

I dropped Neil off in the village before parking in the visitors’ facility, leading my family north rather than down to the Priory, Kawan riding in his carrier but his lady in more sensible clothing than her princess dress.

“This is for your Mum, okay? Dune system, Maz, very similar to a place near where Enfys lives. Dunes, the North Sea and… there. See?”

“A gannet! So many of them!”

We spent an hour relaxing in the dunes, as Maz sighed each time one of the huge birds plunged into the water, wings folded straight back. There were all sorts of other birds scuttling or hopping around the dunes, far too many for me to keep track of, but she was in her own world of delight, LC running around the place in delight, chattering away to her furry friend, as Ish and I relaxed on the top of a dune.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Elsie asked something yesterday. When we were climbing”

“And?”

“She was waiting to climb, that first route. She asked me if she had to climb, and… if she said ‘no’, would you beat her?”

“Oh hell! I thought she’d enjoyed it”

“She did, really did. It was her idea to keep the harness on, just in case there was more. She’s just not… It’s taking her a while to understand she can make choices”

He paused, watching as another gannet hit the sea like a missile.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“Those men. Are they all dead now?”

“I believe so”

“Good. And… and my grandmother, she can go fuck herself. Sorry”

I slithered across the grass to hug him, and he squeezed me back hard.

“Just, well, learning a lot of things right now, the hard way. I think Mum’s coming back to us, but Elsie, well: Mum’s already been in the world, already knows how it works. Elsie’s having to learn it all so, so quickly”

“You’re doing so well, son. You make me so proud of you”

“She’s my sister, Dad. Those people took six years of our lives away. Never again. Now: what have you planned for later?”

“You’ll find out when you find out, son”

“Tease. Anyway, if we want to see the other bits, we should move”

He was right, so we gathered the others and made our way through the village to the Priory and the views of the castle, cobles and coble huts along the beach.

“Dad?”

Another direct question from LC, praise be whatever.

“Is that a hut or a boat?”

“That, love, was a coble, a local type of boat. When it got old, they cut it in half, turned it upside down and made it into a hut, so it’s really both”

“And what’s that?”

“That is Bamburgh castle, we’ll be driving there in a little while. Now, where we were climbing, that rock, is all part of a long line of the same stuff. The little castle over there is on a bit of it, and so is Bamburgh”

“What’s a castle?”

Breathe, Rhodes.

“It’s a place where princesses sometimes live.”

We collected Neil from his odd position lying underneath one of the statues in the Priory, taking upwards, upskirt almost, shots, and collected the car to cross a drier causeway back to the mainland. As we hit the coast again, he called over his shoulder to LC.

“I’ve been taking photographs. Carolyn, and I had a thought. Can you grab this, Ish?”

He handed the lad what turned out to be a compact digital camera.

“I always take a few plotting shots, for the layout, with that. It’s a lot quicker than my other cameras, and it makes a record of how things tie together when I do the closer-up shots. Carolyn, would you like to try taking some pictures? Ish can show you how. It’s got a clean SD card in it, Ish”

Her voice was almost inaudible.

“I can take photos?”

“Several of us at once said “Yes”, but she wasn’t finished.

“What do I take photos of?”

Another multitude of answers, but they all meant the same thing: your choice.

I did stop by the huge castle, but I had other plans, so we simply took a few shots of its bulk from outside before I set off for the real treat. By coincidence, it was the car park of the Bamburgh Castle Inn where I left the Vauxhall, before a simple lunch without alcohol. I led the way to the harbour afterwards. Maz rhapsodising about all the eider swimming so close to us, apparently unconcerned.

“So many bords here, love!”

“Well, if you would all like to put these on, please”, I said, handing out our collection of sun hats, and her face lit up.

“Arctic terns?”

“Arctic terns”

So much passion in her kiss, so little flesh on her bones, but still there, still my lover.

I had, of course, booked us onto a boat trip to the Inner Farnes, complete with bobbing seals and divebombing seabirds, hence the headwear.Ish had a handkerchief; Kawan gained a bandanna.

I dropped the rest off at the pub with my order before parking in front of the cottage once more and then walking down. Ish carried his sister home that evening, and Maz passed an entire night without a single twitch or kick.

Neil directed us the next day, even though I knew the way, which allowed him to prattle on about the local sites and sights while I simply drove. For once, his chatter fitted the day for it worked like a cross between a sat nav and a tour guide. We heard all about how Cragside in Rothbury, powered by hydroelectricity. how the steam turbine was invented in Newcastle, which also had the world’s first electric public lighting, using the light bulb invented in Sunderland and copied by a man called Edison, and Neil was partway through a rather too detailed account of lawsuits and combined companies when he stopped dead.

“Sorry, all. I got talking, and then I remembered another place I want to see. It’s a little before the car park, Mike”

We were already on the open moor road, heather in great sweeps to either side, when he simply said, “Next right to park”, and I turned into a rather full rough car park. Once we were out of the car, he gathered us together, now almost schoolteacherish in his manner.

“Please don’t stand or climb on any of the rock around here. This is Lordenshaws, and it’s very, very old. We’ll walk there and back, so I can get some photos and you can see something special”

He led us up a gentle slope on a pleasant grassy track, Maz chanting away bout meadow pipits and curlews, until some ridges became apparent to our right.

“Maz, Mike said something to me one night in Australia. About four years ago. He might not remember, because he was very drunk at the time. About a bucket list”

She raised both eyebrows.

“I don’t remember anything around here, except the Wall and Holy Island”

He shook his head.

“No, but you did say ‘Stonehenge’. I don’t know if you’ll get to see that one, but this might be close. That’s a hill fort, and it’s around two thousand years old”

“Wow!”

“Not finished yet”

He led us to a slab of rock sitting just off the path. It was speckled with odd holes, each surrounded by carved rings that looked as if someone had tried to depict raindrops hitting water.

“These are cup and ring marks. They’re about SIX thousand years old, which is older than Stonehenge”

“I’m… Neil? You are bloody amazing!”

She flung her arms around him, planting a very tender kiss on his cheek before pulling out her own camera, LC following suit, before discovering how she could lean against the wind by holding her opened jacket out wide. As Neil began his ‘proper job’ on the markings, the other three headed up to the fort as I hung back for a few moments.

“It’s okay, Mike: I’ve been up there several times. You don’t have to wait for me”

“Just a question, mate. I don’t remember that chat”

He stared at me, that tight focus he showed sometimes locked on my face.

“Ish was staying with the Butts that night. You were very drunk, Mike. And you were crying. I didn’t think that would be a helpful thing to mention. She’s not healed fully, has she?”

I shook my head.

“She’s getting better, Neil, but I don’t know if she’ll ever be back to who she was”

“She’ll always be who she was, Mike. Just bend with her… Sorry. I am giving you instructions. Not my place”

“No, mate, you’re not out of place. Thanks for all you’ve done”

“I’ll change the subject then, sort of. She was laughing so much on the rock, and so was your little girl. I know you’re going down to Sheffield, but you won’t have any gear. Oh, I’m guessing you’ll be going to the Peak. I have some portraits work booked, so I can’t join you”

I found myself grinning.

“Already covered, mate! Maz is starting to discover how many friends she has that she hadn’t met. Speaking of which, how much longer here?”

“Ah, about another hour for me. Go and catch up with the others, then collect me on the way down. I’ve… Maddy made me set my phone alarm when I started something detailed. I’ll do that now”

I gave him a quick hug, without the snog, then joined my family, who were entranced. Maz settled against me as a I sat on a grassy lump.

“He is inspired, man of mine! Six thousand years, wow. I thought the Wall was old!”

“So this suits you, then?”

“Oh most definitely! What are the hills over there?”

“Edge of the Cheviots, love. Scotland on the other side of them”

“So close?”

“The Border slants”

“Could we…?”

I had planned out a route for the following day, skirting the edge of Newcastle to pick up the A1 south, but… juggling routes in my head, I was considering Gretna and cutting back through Skipton, but that would mean crap around Bradford, and…

Neil’s alarm obviously worked better than my internal one, for it was he who collected us, rather than the other way round. We drove the short distance to the Simonside car park, where all our climbing kit was gathered, and we set off for the summit rocks. Just as we passed through one of the areas planted with conifers, Ish held a hand out, then put a finger to his lips, as a rather large deer walked out of the trees to stand on the path looking at us from a distance that must have been less than forty yards, before something about us registered and it took off at speed.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“What was it?”

“That was a deer, love”

“Is this a good picture?”

That it was. She had caught it beautifully, and I knew we had a job to do back home.

“Mum? Come and see what Carolyn got for us”

Maz and the others gathered round, making appreciative noises, until I simply said , “Print?”, and Maz replied, “For the wall at home!”, as Ish added, “And e-mails to the Butts and your work” and a little girl preened.

It’s a bit of a walk to the rocks, but we were eventually there, settling on the Picnic Boulder for a look at the crag proper, before we started uphill once more, and my family were introduced to decent Northumbrian sandstone. In between toproping some lower-grade stuff, from Mod to Hard V Diff, which suited LC, Ish and I soloed some Severes. Maz gradually pushed her own limits, until we had her finishing a couple of routes at HVS.

It was hard to pick out a highlight for the day, but, just possibly, it was Great Chimney, always one of my favourite easier climbs. You start and finish up said chimney, but halfway through you come out of the back of the chimney into a pleasant little cave. I soloed up to the cave, followed by Maz, as Ish followed LC as Neil worked the toprope. Once we were all cuddled in the cave, I showed them the finish, Neil following after I had reset the belay and taken in the rope. He could have soloed it quite easily, but he never seemed to feel willing to push that boat out very far.

It was windy on top, as usual, but the views were even wider than they had been at the fort, the North Sea glinting to the East, and my family happy around me.

I changed the route back, curling round by way of Elsdon while avoiding its famous gibbet for obvious reasons of not having to try and explain what it was for to a six-year-old, and took the road up past Otterburn until Maz got her tick at the Border, in the lay-by at Carter Bar, where we fed ourselves bacon buns from a van marked ‘Reiver’s View’, which naturally led to all sorts of questions from my lot. There was a man in a kilt playing the great pipes, various bits of souvenir tat to but and the usual excess of national symbols found at any border. As we drove back towards our cottage, Neil did his schoolteacher thing once again.

“A reiver was a man who stole from his neighbours, and it was very violent. The local word ‘rive’ means to twist and jerk at something until it comes loose, and it was like that. Films all show Scots reivers coming into England to steal cattle, but it was usually the other way, as you can see from where the fertile land is”

“On the Scottish side?”

“Yes, Maz, except that’s also not quite right. Both sides were neither Scots nor English, and it was all based on family. English Armstrongs, for example, would rob in Scotland and England, and when the authorities, such as they were, came looking for them, they would stay on whichever side of the border was safest. Then there came the Union of the Crowns, and they had nowhere to go. That piper there, that’s from the North of Scotland, and has nothing at all to do with this place. All rubbish for tourists. You were laughing when we got down from Simonside, Mike”

A change in subject, thank god.

“A memory, Neil, from a solo trip there years ago. Got a good day’s climbing in, and got down to the car park just as twilight was starting to come on”

Maz prompted me with her “And?”

“And the midges came out. I was in my full gear except for my helmet, so I quickly pulled it on and dropped the visor”

“What’s midges, Dad” came simultaneously from both kids.

“Midges are small insects, bloodsucking ones. They come in clouds, big ones”

“What’s a visor?”

“That thing on Neil’s motorbike hat that he looks through”

Maz suddenly burst into laughter.

“Let me guess! You dropped the visor on a lid filled with midges?”

“Absolutely! Goy just past the trees before I nearly dropped the bike. They were only under those trees, so once I pulled the lid off, they were cleared away by the wind, but, well, just glad we left there when we did today”

“Did midges bite reivers, Dad?”

“Certainly, love. Possibly explains their bad attitude. Anyway, Neil gave me an idea for tonight”

“I did? When?”

“Earlier, mate. Maz, kids, after we’ve eaten tonight, we need to take a walk up from the cottage, just to get away from the pub’s lights. Stars, Maz: the Northern Cross will be up, and this is a ‘dark sky’ reserve. Chance to see some new stars”

We got home while it was still light, the northern Summer giving us so much more daylight, and our meals were just as tasty, Anth offering LC a ‘special pudding’ of her own, which consisted of four small bowls holding different desserts, which tempted her enough that she didn’t need ice cream. We had enough ale, wine or coke to satisfy us, and then said a proper farewell to a superb host.

“Neil, marra: you’ll be coming back now?”

“Anth, well, I have a plan. Maddy… She’s still at home. I think she needs to be free. The first time we came up here, we saw someone spreading ashes. ‘Dance on the wind’, those were the words. I think she needs that”

“She deserves it, Neil. You let us know when and where, and I’ll sort out a room for you, okay. And you can have our company for it as well. Which way are yez all heading the morn?”

“I’m off back home in Cheshire. This lot are heading down to Sheffield and the Peak, then over to North Wales”

Anth smiled at me, and it was indeed an open and warm one, as yet another decent human helped me cope with the world’s population of Nigels and Suleimans.

“What time are you all setting off?”

I shrugged.

“Probably about ten. Some crap driving to do, and I want to avoid any risk of hitting rush hour”

“Right. I’ll see you all about nine, then. Knock on the door, and I’ll shout yex all a family breakfast”

I started to argue, and he shook his head.

“Call it that ‘paying forward’ thing, Mike. I know you all live too far away to be regulars, like, but if you’re ever back this way, tell us in advance so I can get some of the right ice cream in for the lass”

So many good people; so, so lucky.

It was dark as we arrived at the cottage; I gathered our camping chairs and led the way up the lane until the few lights behind us were obscured, and the Milky Way emerged from obscurity as we settled ourselves on the footpath.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“There’s no such constellation as the Northern Cross. I looked it up”

I pointed straight up at Cygnus.

“And what’s that?”

“It’s a big cross…”

“So shush for a bit and watch”

“Dad, it’s OH!”

“It’s the Perseid meteor shower, son, not ‘OH’, as you seem to want to be pedantic”

Apart from several more murmurs of appreciation, we all sat in silence for an hour, except for Neil, who was doing something with a tripod every so often, and then, as the chill finally started to settle along with some dew, we headed back for our last night in Northumberland.

The drive south was awful, almost entirely on motorways once we had hit the edge of Newcastle. Partway through, Maz passed a disc forward, and we spent the next fifty minutes or so listening to ‘Galloways’ by Jez Lowe.

“Dad?”

LC, once again daring to break a silence, even if it was filled with someone else’s music.

“Yes, love?”

“Is that the man we saw playing things the wrong way in that city?”

“What do you mean by ‘the wrong way’, love?”

“He was using his dirty hand”

Fuck you, you bastards.

“Mum will explain it to you as well, love, but some people are simply left-handed. It’s how they’re made. Nothing dirty about it”

I took a slow breath to calm myself, choosing my words and running them through my sense-checker before I spoke.

“I think what I can say… Everything those people told you was wrong. They said it to hurt you, or Mum, or someone else. We, our family, and that means you, love, we don’t do that”

We do make some fucking exceptions, though, especially for people called Nigel or Suleiman. I would always keep a little space free for that sort of exception.

She changed the subject abruptly, as children so often do.

“Are we going to see Neil again? He was nice to me and Kawan”

Maz answered that one, as I overtook a line of lorries.

“We will see Neil in a few days, love”

“Will there be more music?”

“Dad?”

I had intended a surprise, but, well, arse.

“There will be, love. Where we are going now is where I used to work with Mr Smiley Beard, and I have timed it so we can have music. Then, when we get to the mountains, there will be more, and Neil will be there”

LC was silent, possibly having exhausted her courage., but Ish was on point.

“There’s a folk club in the mountains, Carolyn, and I think there’s one in Sheffield”

“Will there be falling stars?”
Ish gave up on that one, leaving it as my own hospital pass.

“There won’t be on the first night, but then we move to a tent, and I am hoping we will have clear skies for more falling stars. What is really good is that we will have to walk some way in the dark for a meal2

And beer

“So we will be in the dark for that bit, really dark, so, here’s hoping”

Sheffield arrived, having taken its time, and I stop-started my way to the city centre, or rather the western edge of it, where I had booked a Premier Inn, with some argument.

We had, in the end, a room with a double bed and a convertible sofa, which suited three of us, but LC ended up in bed with me and Maz that night. The problem wasn’t sleeping with our daughter, but rathe explaining to the receptionist that it wouldn’t be a problem. There was a pub a short walk away, but I had other plans, which involved a taxi.

We walked into the club, and there was a round of applause and shouts of greeting, half of my office there to cheer my return.

“Mike, mate?”

“Shaun! Who’s watching the pub?”

“The wife, mate. Got a proper business head on her, and she doesn’t like this sort of music, she says. Anyway, your boss is in, and he’s put some money behind the bar for us”

He waved towards the other end of the room, where Mr Charteris himself was recovering some of it in the shape of a pint. I warned Maz before leading my family over to him, His smile of welcome seemed absolutely genuine.

“Mike! And Maz… do you do hugs?”

She nodded, but to my surprise, it was me he embraced first.

“I was talking to both of you, Mike. Maz…”

He did spend longer with her, and I asked myself what he must be feeling. Was it guilt, perhaps, for putting us in harm’s way, even if indirectly, or perhaps that deeper sense of failure in not being able to bring her back? In the end, it didn’t matter.

“Pint, Mike? I’ve put a couple of hundred behind the bar for the staff, and there’s some finger food over there. I’m told it’s only floor spots tonight. Why here, and not just at the pub, by the way?”

I indicated Carolyn.

“Because our daughter here likes the music”

“Ah. Maryam? Drink?”

I went for a summer ale, Ish choosing an IPA, while Maz opted for some sort of ‘Mexican’ lager. Caro had two glasses of coke once again, because Kawan had developed a thirst during the long drive. The barman understood, and I got a happy grin from him.

The current club chair was Dick, and as he trawled the crowd for performers, he had a quiet word with all of us.

“Don’t want to put you on the spot, Mike, except as a floor spot. If you fancy giving a little chat about where you’ve been, I’ll understand, but only if you fancy. Plenty of new faces won’t know you, but there’ll still be loads of them as will have seen the news. If I put you on last thing before the break gives you time for a, well, an informed catch-up. That suit you?”

“Absolutely fine, Dick. It’ll just be me, and I’ve got two songs”

“Chorus stuff?”

“Second one, most definitely”

I did the rounds of former colleagues and club members, many of whom seemed somewhat reticent as they were clearly trying not to open wounds that might not have healed. Carolyn sat with us in silence, broken only by a whispered question about being allowed to sing when the first ‘chorus’ appeared.

My own spot came, and I ambled out to the front, in the familiar way of fplk clubs everywhere.

“Hiya, everybody! I’m Mike, and that’s my wife Maz and our kids Ish and Carolyn over there; we are visiting from a Land Down Under and, no: I am not doing that song. Nor am I doing any Eric Bogle, and certainly no Dylan, ey, ey, ey?”

That reference got a laugh, which was a good start.

“Those of you I used to work here, know me, and I’d like to thank our boss Mr Charteris for his hospitality. Could I have a ‘thank you’ from the audience? Thank you!”

I let the noise die down again before continuing.

“Most of you will be aware that my family suffered a serious loss six years ago, only now put right. This evening is part of that recovery process, so if my singing creaks a bit, blame it on not really feeling in the mood until very recently. I have two songs for you, and they’re sort of apt. Join in, please!”

I started with ‘All Things Are Quite Silent’, a song about losing a husband to the Press Gang, which sort of fitted, and my voice did indeed creak, but the audience were in fine form.

“Now for number two, and it’s one of the best chorus songs I know, and very fitting”

‘When We Go Rolling Home’ is actually about the end of a working day for farm labourers, but it worked well for me, and that was all that mattered. I was watching my family as I led the belter of a chorus, and both wife and son had their heads back and eyes closed as they gave it their best. LC, on the other hand, was staring at her bear. I saw her lips moving, and with a little surge of joy I realised she was singing to Kawan.

It was a wonderful night, and it felt almost like that time walking back from a Cyril Tawney gig, so many years ago, as the taxi took us back to our hotel. That night, I slept spooned around Maz, as she herself spooned LC, and our daughter did the same with her bear. Once again, that seemed to keep the night terrors away from my wife.

The breakfast was adequate, but nothing like the spread Anth had treated us to, and well below the standard at the Station. Maz was bubbling away over breakfast, still reliving the previous evening.

“Seen this, love?”

She handed me a small notebook, the cover clearly adapted with stuck-on paper to read ‘Aussie Family Rhodes’.

“It’s just a collection of best wishes, darling, but so many of them it would have been too much for a card. I was worried when they gave it to me”

“Why worried?”

“That it would be a mass of e-mail addresses we’d have to reply to. Is that being ungrateful?”

“No, love. Just realistic. Anyway, there’s a cheat for that”

“Which is?”

“Global messages. One to the office, one to the club. Simple as”

Bollocks: they had me doing it.

It wasn’t that much of a drive to the camp site, but I took the Ringinglow road for the views, with an obligatory stop at the Burbage bridge for the view down the valley.

“That’s all sorts of routes right next to the path. Really easy ones, plus some harder stuff. Bottom end is a former quarry, with REALLY hard stuff. Now, we aren’t due at the camp site until the afternoon, so I thought we could just boulder here for a bit, let you get used to the rock”

“What’s bouldering, Dad?”

“Very short climbs, just trying to make a move but only as high as you can jump down from”

“Will I need my harness?”

“Not for here, love”

I packed our rock boots into a day pack and led my family down from the road until we were at the first low walls.

“Now, you lot, THIS is what we came for. This is a hand jam, and you do it like so…”

I soloed a couple of severe cracks, just to feel the joy of thuggery while sanctimoniously claiming it was purely to demonstrate how jamming worked, and then spotted the other three for some low level gymnastics. For Carolyn, that actually meant standing with my hands either side of her hips, while she told me her own hands were too small.

“That, my love, is why we have fists. Try it this way”

A standard hand jam consists of sliding a bladed hand into a crack, pulling the thumb across the palm to make it bulge; if placed thumb down, the jam naturally cams as it is weighted, effectively allowing a hold that takes no real strength to maintain, although one’s pain threshold may be crossed first.

A fist jam involves placing the hand across width of the crack, and as it is clenched, the fist widens. LC tried it, and suddenly she was laughing, freely and openly. She pulled on her tiny fist jam, reached above her to put another one in, and forgot all about her feet, which left me with my arms full of six-year-old girl.

“DO IT AGAIN!”

So we did.

Whatever they had made her do, it had left her with surprising strength, and it was Maz who cried a halt to the games for the simple reason that it was nearly one o’clock and therefore, by definition, afternoon. Back into the car, LC demonstrating her fist technique to Kawan, and along to the Fiddler’s Elbow and a right turn.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“That flat bit, with the path over it. I’ve seen it before somewhere”

“Princess Bride, son. Lot of it was filmed around here. That’s Carl wark, another hill fort, and… that bit there is Higger Tor”

“Any climbing there, Dad?”

“Loads, as long as you don’t mind leaving all your skin behind. Overhangs a bit”

“A bit? How much of a bit?”

“It’s a leaning block, so like a reverse slab. Fifteen metres high, four metres of lean. Too painful even for me. Now, we’re just coming round to the… Right. Going to pull over for a few minutes. This is called the Popular End”

Ish went “Wow!”, while Maz asked the obvious question.

“How much of it is there, love?”

“Five kilometres, love. This is where I was taking Dal and Kul, or at least on day trips That’s Smily Beard, Carolyn, when we all lived here. Oh… there are red grouse behind the edge, Maz”

“How far’s the camp site, Dad?”

“See those trees in front of us?”

“Yeah”

“Just downhill from that. Seen enough for now?”

I had been silently texting as I spoke, with a kettle request, so when I finally pulled up at the North Lees site, Auds had tea ready. LC’s face lit up on seeing her, and I caught a whisper from Ish to her. I couldn’t quite hear, but I could guess the content: ‘See how your friends are still your friends, even if you can’t see them’.

“What kept you dirty stop-outs?”

“Please Miss, I can’t tell a lie, but bigger boys made me do it, and they’re called Burbage North”

“What kit have you got?”

“Rock boots for three of us, and one eight foot sling and an HMS screwgate, although they’re in use as a harness for Carolyn’s bear Oh, and she has her own harness”

“Right! I will admit I did some sneaksing, and checked littl’un’s shoe size. One of our lot works in London, so took a trip to Kensington High Street. Dose she remember who we are, Mike?”

“Yes, but it’s a bit of a trust issue. Not you; she doesn’t seem to understand that people, friends, don’t vanish from the planet when out of sight”

“Not being funny, Mike, bit I doubt she’s ever had a friend before. Maz, yeah, but mums are a different thing. Tell you what: let’s get this brew sorted, your tents up, and then we can natter”

She was right, and once we had our accommodation sorted, we gathered around one of the tables, friends around us in camping chairs or sprawled on rugs or mats, mugs in hands. LC was clamped to Maz, but didn’t seem frightened so much as overwhelmed by the number of people present. Auds did the FAQ bit for late arrivals, such as ourselves.

“Right! No fires, for very bright and warm reasons, but we have been put up in the upper field so that we can have a bit of music. The warden has told everyone who has booked that we will be having a sing-song, so expect some extra company. Just in case we are presented with some miserable campers, we have a noise curfew of ten o’clock, so be aware. Now, it is damper here than up on the moor, so we have permission for barbies, which should help make this lot feel at home. Once we’ve necked these, it’s an amble up past the Plantation for some exercise. Al?”

Her husband walked over to us, a bag in hand, and Audrey waved to LC.

“Hiya, Carolyn. Remember me?”

LC looked sharply up at her mother, before turning back to Auds and nodding.

“Well, we heard you’ve learned how to do fist jams, am I right?”

Another uncertain nod.

“Your Dad tells me you got so busy with hand jams you forgot your feet”

A much quicker nod, followed by, “But he caught me”

“And what did you say when he did?”

That brought a wide grin, and a shout of “Do it again!”, as Auds raised her eyebrows.

“You didn’t say ‘Thank you’, then?”

The grin vanished as quickly as it had arrived, with another jerk of her head to check for any hint from her mother, as Auds shook her hands to signal ‘No’.

“We only want to help you remember your feet, so we found these for you”

It was little Enfys once again, as Al unwrapped a tiny, tiny pair of rocks boots. Auds was so much softer in her tone.

“Want to try them out? We’re going for a walk up to the rocks, but we have ropes and things. Coming?”

Vigorous nodding, followed by an extremely quick look at her mother: ‘Have I done the wrong thing?” unspoken but clear in her expression. Maz hugged her, before asking, “Do you have harnesses for the rest of us? Our girl here has her own”

Auds nodded.

“And ropes and a few racks of gear. Shell we get moving, people?”

We ended up around the Twin Chimneys area, plus some time by Robin Hood’s Cave. I just had to do it, of course, and soloed Hollybush Crack, but much more of my time was spent watching one little girl, face set in concentration as she tried to compensate for her innate lack of reach. On a hunch, I walked my family down to Straight Chimney, an old favourite of mine for having two really sweet jams.

“Right, you lot. I am going to tow a rope up, but will set some runners, so set a ground anchor, Ish. Maz to second, then Carolyn, if she wants to try. Photos please, son, and then we’ll bring you up”

I checked over my borrowed rack, which carried a decent mix of wired and rope-slung nuts, plus slings and quickdraws. Dad and Lad, we danced through the ritual calls before I set off up the introductory wall.

In essence, the route is a wall followed by a narrow chimney, which is capped. There are footholds out on the ribs that form the chimney, but to get to them involves slipping a hand jam in either side of the capstone and sort of leaning backwards a bit. It’s not difficult: you’re only technically sort of a little bit upside down until you’ve brought the first foot out onto one of those holds on the rib. Honest.

It's then a matter of adjusting your jams one by one until you can step onto the capstone and finish. Easy peasy. I set up a multi-anchor direct belay, just in case, and brought Maz up. She arrived grinning like an idiot, and as soon as she was safe, I got a very, vert serious snog.

“That, husband of mine, was SO different! I see why you love it. Those jams, they’re just so, well, like the rock was made for it. You think she’ll manage?”

“One way to find out. Could you belay, so I can watch her?”

“No worries. Give me a few to tie into this…”

“Not that sort of belay, love. Direct: you’re out of the loop, deliberately, just in case. ISH?”

“Yes?”

“Carolyn still want to come up?”

“Oh yes! She said you were like an orang utan”

“Climbed like one, or, and be very careful, looked like one?”

His laughter came up on the wind, and I gathered the rope end.

“ROPE BELOW!”

Another well-rehearsed sequence, and LC was climbing. I clambered a short way down the broken stuff to her right, until I could see her, hair streaming out in the wind.

“Nearly at the chimney, love. Turn to face to your left when you get into it”

“Dad? Where’s Mum?”

“Waiting for you and Ish at the top”

I had to describe back-and-foot technique a few times before she caught on, but her jams were superb. Being so short, she simply stepped straight out onto the footholds, rather than gibbon about, but each upward movement of her hands brought a grin of pure delight. I scrambled back up as she topped out, and then it was another crushing hug for Maz, followed, after no hesitation at all, the same favour for me. I almost forgot about our son, until he casually coughed for attention as he cruised over the capstone.

“Not the only one who can solo, Dad”

“And you won’t be the first to crack a spine here, son. Please get used to the rock first”

He looked a bit shamefaced, but that mood was broken when something nearby shouted “Go back go back go back”, and a happy wife called out, “Red grouse!”

It was still light as we strolled back to the campsite, where one of our few non-climbers had set the barbecues burning, and in short order bottles were being opened as various food products were set out for conversion to crispy burnt bits. As half the climbing club or more was also in the folk club, the rest of the evening was absolutely predictable, with a steady flow of campers from the lower field heading up to join in. We had songs, we had tunes, we had ale, or beer, or coke, and that night’s sleep was as peaceful as I had ever enjoyed in a tent.

“Dad?”

LC’s voice drew me from a confused dream involving a barbecued melodeon.

“Yes, love?”

“Mum said I have to ask you”

“Ask me what?”

“Can we do the climbing thing again today?”

“Right… Could you squeeze across a bit, Maz, so Carolyn can get in the middle? Easier to talk that way”

The girl exchanged a glance with her mother, but was soon eliciting a series of grunts and comments like “Watch your elbow” until she settled down inside our double bag. I moved some of her hair away from her face, and while the flinch was still there, it was much less obvious than it had been.

“Has Mum told you what the plan is, for the rest of our holiday?”

“I can’t remember it all”

“Well, Ish and I have been here before, as well as other places. We are spending two more days here, and they will include climbing. Do you like climbing?”

“I like this climbing!”

“What’s the best bit?”

“It’s not like trees. I can’t fall off”

Maz simply murmured “Palm trees and coconuts, love, and rambutans, sometimes”, and I had to strangle my ‘for fuck’s sake’ before its birth.

“And I like the bit where you don’t have to grip”

“Sorry?”

She made a couple of moves with her hand, and it clicked.

“Jamming! My favourite, too”

“Yes. In that tunnel one, with the roof, that was best”

“That was called ‘Straight Chimney’, love, and it’s a little harder if you’re tall. Ish and me, we have to twist a bit”

“Did the new shoes help?”

“YES!”

“Then This is our plan. We have two days here, as I said, and then we drive to meet other friends, where there are mountains, and there will be a lot of climbing there”

She almost whispered her next question.

“Will there be music?”

“Oh yes, love. Our friend Enfys plays the harp, and do you remember Steph, Mrs Woodruff? With the long red hair?”

“Who jumps about?”

“That’s the one. There may also be some other friends, like Lexie, the woman with the hole in her head, who helped find you and Mum”

She looked at her mother for permission, and then asked the obvious question.

“How did she get the hole?”

“Ah, love, Di—remember Di? Yes? Well, Lexie and Di work to keep people safe, and that was what Lexie was doing when a bad man shot at her.”

“She was nice to me. Di was nice to me, but she’s scary”

Too bloody right, she was.

“Love, she’s scary against bad people, and that’s her job. Anyway, that’s another part of the plan, visiting Di and her friends, before we drive back to the airport”

“Why the airport?”

“Because we have our home a long, long way away, and we need to fly back”

“What will I do? Will it be cleaning again?”

Once more, I throttled the words I needed to say.

“No, love, except for helping me, Ish or Mum sometimes. We will be finding a school for you”

“School?”

“Where you will learn things, with other children your age. Make more friends. Oh, and we live next to the sea, remember? Lots of swimming”

“Will there be climbing?”

Maz answered that one.

“Yes, darling. Smiley Beard and us, we have a group of friends, and… Mike? When we get reception for the phones, that video?”

“Of course! Carolyn, we can show you what we do, and there is also a bit showing Ish, when he was just little. Would you like to see that?”

“Yes please”

I squeezed LC’s arm.

“Right, then. I think Auds mentioned Froggatt for tomorrow, so it will be the Popular End for today, and I can smell bacon already. Ready for breakfast, love?”

“Will they have sausages?”

“They will, love, because WE have sausages, in the eskie bag. Shall we see who is up?”

She wriggled out, unzipping the tent to exit barefoot, wearing her new pyjamas, and Maz chuckled.

“I suppose we have no choice now. Up and at ’em, Mr MBR”

“At your command, Mrs MBR”

A typical communal campers’ breakfast was followed by another walk uphill, where some groups were already gathering at said Popular End, and I began the mental process of ticking off the great routes that LC would be physically unable to complete, simply due to her lack of reach. No Flying Buttress, no Black Hawk Traverse, but there were still plenty of others available. Ish led her up Castle/Black Hawk Chimney, which actually left LC giggling. As for me, I decided that while she might be too short for the high step on Flying Buttress, I could pass her up to the start of the flake. Thus, she climbed the initial slab on a toprope, I placed her on the footholds so she could access the flake, which she fairly flew up, and then I hoisted her over the awkward finish for our son to secure.

That was how the day went, and I had no complaints at all, especially after soloing all three ‘Via’ routes and leading both FB Direct and The Tippler.

Thug is as thug does, naturally. Both Maz and Ish were able to follow me up FB Direct, with its heel hooks and roof, but neither of them managed the crux move on The Tippler. I still had my edge, appropriately.

We ate that night in the Little John, after a walk into town by way of Baulk Lane, and yes, there were a few falling stars. The next morning, we drove out to Froggatt by way of Grindleford’s station café, where we had a Proper Breakfast, and LC discovered what she said was her favourite climb ever, Heather Wall.

It’s a pretty low-grade Severe, but the middle part is the loveliest jamming crack, in a corner to the right of a nice rough slab. For me, it’s basically tow jams and up, but for LC it was a whole sequence of fist and foot jams until she could reach the finishing ledge, and once more I got a shout of “DO IT AGAIN!”

Driving allowed us to pick up some more supplies in Hathersage, and our last night with so many of my oldest friends involved another camp cooking session, a copious quantity of bottled drinks, and LC’s discovery that she could climb the outside wall of the toilet block, oh dear. Our final morning was more than a little emotional, as Auds actually wept into my chest. In the end, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve, before pulling Maz into the hug.

“Maz, I am probably putting my foot into things, but, well, Caro was my best mate, and, well, painful. When Penny told us about you, well, big shoes to fill, I thought, and now, here you are, and… I still mourn my friend, but you two, well. Shoes filled. Shutting up now, but please promise you’ll be back, all of you. Enjoy the mountains, and give them all our love”

I left Hathersage by way of the Hope Valley, making a stop in Castleton for simple tourist games, and a longer one for a boat ride in the Speedwell cavern. That one nearly fell apart, though, as LC froze at the entrance.

Maz and Ish had a quiet chat with her, Ish reporting back to me with a frown.

“Caves, Dad, Being locked up in one, to be exact”

“Ah. Hadn’t even considered that. What do you think?”

“What I am thinking right now is that I am glad those bastards are dead, but Mum is being clever. Telling her that Kawan might like to go instead, while she and Elsie wait outside for us. Anything else I can try?”

“Tell her there’s a boat ride”

“Really? Underground?”

“Yes. That’s why I picked this one rather than, say, Bluejohn or Treak”

“Right… Give us a minute then, Dad”

The bear ploy worked, and the boat ride even more, and LC was clearly entranced. Needless to say, her reaction quickly transformed into that she had shown in the climbing, and we were asked if she could do it again.

It wasn’t the shout we had heard at the crag, though, but much quieter and more hesitant, clearly still frightened at making a personal request. I explained a few things to her, and in parallel to the others, of course, as we had a cuppa before leaving.

“What it is here is that we have left the gritstone behind, love. That’s the rock with the jams. It’s why that part is called the ‘Dark’. This bit now is a different rock, one called limestone. It’s a very pale colour, so this area is called the ‘White’. It’s…”

Sod it, I thought, It’s only money.

“Right, then. We are going to go up a very steep road, where you will see lots of limestone. It’s called Winnats Pass. We’ll then turn off along a road that keeps falling down, because the hill above it is crumbling, to another cave. No boat, but lots to see. Would you like that, love?”

She nodded, slowly. Maz leant closer to her.

“Remember Neil?”

A rapid nod, accompanied by a broad grin.

“Well, Neil likes going into caves, to take photographs. Maybe he would like to see some of yours?”

Whatever you say, dearest wife, do not mention the diving.

So yes, we drove up the Pass, with its maximum steepness of twenty-eight bloody percent leaving me a little worried, before turning off to loop round the end of what had once been the Edale road. Before they had finally given up trying to repair it. Photos, park up at the second cavern, donate a huge sum of money once again, and then more cash, because my wife and our daughter each got a pendant of Bluejohn.

I could economise later; it was time to live in the ‘now’. Our child was slowly coming out of her shell.

We continued along Rushup Edge before joining bigger roads, something I had not been looking forward to, past Chapel-en-le-Frith and Whaley Bridge until we hit the ring road past Manchester airport, which left me thinking of Caro and Penny, and their term for the Birmingham stretch of motorways, the ‘Soul Sucker’. Past Runcorn, and memories from so many years ago, of yet another hell-on-Earth children’s home, which simply added another layer of value to my child, as she was out from hell, no Eurydice lost at the last moment.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“What’s up? You’ve gone all tense”

“Sorry, Ish. It’s just, well, thinking about escapes, horrible places. There was a really bad one in that town we’re passing”

“Mersey View”

“You read about it?”

“Lexie told me about it, Dad. She has a friend who was sent there, and her and Di, their lot, they had the case”

“Oh shit. Sorry, girls”

“Not happening again, Dad”

How the hell did Di and Lexie ever manage to sleep? As I learned more about them, I understood so much more fully why Lexie and Enfys were so close. Ish was so right, yet again.

I put Runcorn behind us, physically at least, and concentrated on the traffic as we bypassed Chester and approached Connah’s Quay.

“Girls? We’re about to leave England. Another country for you! Watch for the sign… just coming up… There you are!”

‘Croeso I Gymru’ indeed.

“Dad?”

“Carolyn?”

“I couldn’t read that”

I was struck by an obvious question, which was how on Earth Maz had managed to teach our daughter so much, including actual literacy. If it hadn’t already been at maximum, my respect for my wife would have peaked just then.

Ish took the lead, yet again.

“They have their own language here, love. You’ll see it on the signs, stuff in both languages. The people we will be staying with, they speak it2

“How will I know which one is right, though?”

A fair question, but one with no easy answer. Ish was still working, though.

“Well, shall we see what we can spot?”

That was followed by some excruciatingly mangled pronunciation from each of them, particularly when we passed some motorway services (‘Gwasanaethau’), but it lifted the mood delightfully. We were soon on the Expressway proper, and after passing the Scouse Riviera, we hit the coast near Abergele, and its “Not a real one, love” castle.

LC was entranced at seeing the sea once more, but wanted to know where the mountains were, as the inland hills clearly weren’t up to her standards.

“Just coming, love. We turn inland just here… right. Soon be there”

I drove down the Conway valley, through Llanrwst, where we stopped at the Co-Op and loaded up with breakfast necessities, to the junction at Betws. Over the Waterloo Bridge and park.

“Right, you lot. Time for something to eat, and there are outdoor shops here, and two of you need some extra stuff. It can rain a bit here, so you ladies need jackets. Food first, pick up some extra breakfast stuff as well if we see it, then up the hill”

“This is a pretty town, darling”

I took her hand, still feeling delight at having the chance to do so once more.

“It’s a bit twee, love, and it is a real tourist trap. Gets very busy, but I still like it”

“How far do we have left to go?”

“Only about half an hour, now. Might take longer, because I want to stop a couple of times”

“Views or bladder, man of mine?”

“Depends on how much tea we have, woman of mine”

Kawan came with us in his carrier, of course, and after we had eaten some chip-based meals, it was the old round of camping and outdoor shops, and that was when I had the stab to the heart. Maz noticed, of course, and took me aside for a moment as Ish big brothered our girl.

“What’s up, love?”

“Just memories, Maz. Caro. My lost one, I mean”

“Talk to me?”

“Ah, she was a gear hound, especially about tents. We’d go from shop to shop, bit like this, and she’d hand me her purse so that she couldn’t do an impulse purpose of a new tent or sleeping bag, whatever”

“Want to call it a day, then?”

I drew in a deep breath, counting more blessings than I could ever have earned, and shook my head..

“No, love. Deep end, jump in, and…”

Suddenly, I found myself laughing. Maz just waited until I ran down, then simply said, “Well?”

“Nothing clever, love. Just that I was talking about jumping into the deep end, then remembered how hard it can rain here, and, well, silly thoughts, silly times”

She stepped forward into my embrace.

“Not silly, not at all. Now, I intend to buy a new harness and some bits to hang off it, and Carolyn needs something as well.

A memory hit me, a little girl awaiting my gloves.

“Chalk bag, Maz. Penny adapted one for Enfys, so that she could carry essentials with her”

“Such as?”

“Sweets, mostly. Lollies, I mean”

Another financial hit, but it was fucking Cousin Suleiman’s money, in the end, so bugger it. We came out with a new jacket each for three of them (Ish was STILL bloody growing), a chalk bag and a couple of krabs for LC, a decent harness for Maz, and two new guidebooks, to Llanberis and Ogwen. Oh, and that third one, that sort of slipped into the basket, the North Wales slate one.

They also had fleece hats in all sorts of sizes, especially a Welsh flag one small enough for both a little girl and her friend. Oh, yet again, and a spare SD card for a little camera. It seemed I was exactly the sort of customer the shops liked.

Arse.

Back to the Vauxhall, and on up said hill past the waterfall, zig-zag bridge and Ugly House, so many memories of trips with Kul or Bets and her family warming me with each landmark. Of course we drove past the Brenin for the view across the twin lakes, as well as the long layby at Little Willy’s with the drama of Tryfan unfolding magnificently as we approached.

Those were most definitely camera moments.

“We stopping at the secret bridge, Dad?”

“Not today, son. I really want to dump the car for a bit, and we’re almost there”

“Understood. It’s the club tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yup. That’s why I fancy a bit of a lie=down before we get moving again”

“Excuse me, are you Mike Rhodes?”

“Do I know you?”

“Oh, sorry. We met a few years ago. I’m Alun Wallis. Camped in here”

I was still a little lost, until he said, “One of Debbie’s girls is my daughter”

“Guitar?”

“That’s me! Oh, um, I saw the news as well. I am so sorry, not sorry, if you see what I mean. I’ll just say that I also have a daughter who was lost and found. Are you staying here?”

“No. Mate’s bunkhouse in Bethesda”

He grinned happily.

“Cow tonight, then?”

I was most definitely warming to him.

“Yup. Who’s driving you, then?”

“Ah, it’s my penance. Booked some taxis for the return, but getting the bus down from Idwal Cottage”

“How many of you here?”

“Fourteen, all told. Most of them are up on the Glyderau today, or at the Perving Slab, as they call it”

Ah. I remembered hearing that one.

“Going to be a busy night, then”

“Hopefully! Hi. I know Mike here from the folk club. I remember you, son, but not quite as big as you are now. I’m Alun Wallis, here with my daughter and a load of her friends. Are you all climbers?”

To my astonishment, LC was first to reply, holding up Kawan as she gave him a very firm, “Yes! We like jamming!”

Maz gasped.

“Oh! I forgot! That video, darling. Carolyn, we said we would show you Ish when he was little. I have it here…”

She played it through a few times, Ish almost blushing as Carolyn informed him how little he was, while Alun made appreciative noises along with vows never to challenge me at arm wrestling, before quietly admitting that his reason for still being at the camp was a blister from wearing the wrong socks.

“Still got my guitar, though. See you all later, then”

He was off back to his tent, as LC stared after him.

“Dad”

“Yes love?”

“Do you…”

She paused, looking hard at Ish, and then at her mother, before continuing.

“Do… do we have friends everywhere?”

Maz hugged our girl.

“We have friends in lots of places, darling, which is why we go there. If we haven’t, we try and make new ones. Dad has friends here. I know some of them from talking to them like you did with Smiley Beard, and he has others that I’ll meet tonight, and you are right, my love: our friends, all of them”

It felt unnatural driving straight past Idwal, but the afternoon was almost gone, and I did indeed want a stretch out on a mattress before the evening, so it was down the hill, away from the big mountains and into Bethesda and up to the front of the bunkhouse, where a small area was coned off for us to park. The first one out to greet us from the building was Keith, who simply, wordlessly, hit me with a monster hug, before offering his arms to Maryam, which was when I realised he was crying. He reached past her to shake Ish’s hand.

“Could you got down to the house, mate, and let them know you’re here? It’s just Pen and Alys at the moment”

He turned back to Maz, apologising for his weakness, and she just hauled him back into her embrace as she called for LC.

“Darling, this is Keith. He is a very old friend of your Dad, so he’s our friend as well, and… Penny! We meet at last, meet properly, I mean”

Things got a little messy and soppy just then, as Alys and the rest of us danced through hugs single and combined. Alys made jokes about whether we now qualified as real sand gropers, while complimenting Kawan’s hat, and then we jointly dragged in our bedding and breakfast supplies, preparing our nests for later.

Our more serious heads vanished once again, of course, as soon as Enfys arrived, and then Vic and Nansi. We all settled into the bunkhouse for its greater room, as tea was prepared, and that video passed around yet again. Penny seemed clamped to Maz, Ish was comfortably chatting with our former house guest and her parents, while Enfys all but grilled me.

“Right, Neil and the Woodruffs have called, and they are each about an hour or so away. Neil told us that my old harness fitted Carolyn, so we need to know: climber or not?”

I called across to our daughter.

“Carolyn? Enfys here has a question”

There was the usual look of apprehension, but she came to me, and I waved at Enfys to go ahead”

“Carolyn, I sent you my old climbing harness. Did it fit you?”

A slow nod, and I could read her mind: is this woman taking it back?

“Well, good. Did you like the climbing?”

This time, it was the slow blossoming of her smile.

“Yes!”

I squeezed LC’s hand.

“What did you say afterwards, love?”

“DO IT AGAIN!”

Enfys snorted with happy laughter.

“Did you do it again, then?”

“YES!”

“Well, well. What grade did you put her up, Uncle Mike?”

“Um, some little boulder stuff. Usual”

“Right”

“Then a Mod, a V Diff, an HVD and a Severe”

“Sorry? At six?”

“Well, a couple of them had a long reach at the start, so I gave her a bit of a lift, but she loved it. You like jamming, don’t you, love?”

“YES! HAND AND FIST!”

LC paused for a second, before asking, “Is there climbing here?”

Enfys reached out for her other hand.

“Oh, lots. But I was thinking of going somewhere really easy. I might think of somewhere more interesting, and---Of course! Mum?”

“Daughter?”

“Have you still got that box with my old rock boots in? My kiddy ones, that I kept growing out of?”

“Yes. Under the stairs, as far as I can remember”

“Diolch! Now, Carolyn, I started climbing when I was very little, as well, so I had rock boots, but my feet kept getting bigger. Would you like them for yourself?”

“Can I say yes, Dad?”

I was adding up the extra weight of what we had already purchased, in terms of excess baggage fees, and Alys noticed.

“You’re thinking about overweight luggage, aren’t you? I had the same thing when I came back. Here’s our offer: you leave whatever here, we pack it for you, and send it by surface mail, package, thingy. Deal?”

“You can say ‘yes’, love”

She didn’t say anything, just breaking free and running, straight to Neil, who was still holding his lid. She was a climber, though, and she was up and in his arms in a second.

“Hiya, all! Can someone please take this, as I seem to have acquired a little girl from somewhere”

After a serious bit of hugging, or maybe strangling, by our girl, he passed her to her brother as Enfys set his lid onto a bunk. Settling himself onto a chair after doffing his jacket, he simply held out a hand as Alys placed a cup into it.

“How was the ride, Neil?”

“Not a bad one, mate, but I’m on the Beemer today, so took it a bit more gently. Club tonight?”

Keith was nodding and grinning simultaneously.

“You were ambushed by Jimmy again, I hear”

“We were. Steph’s plotting, apparently, oh: speak of ginger devils!”

More hugs, more rattling of teacups and sharing of journey details, clothing appropriate for visiting bears, and so on, until I turned back to the subject of the club.

“Picking up where we left off, yes, Jimmy did say he had effectively been sent by that one grinning behind her mug. Are you saying it’s Jimmy again?”

“Not tonight, mate. Chrissy Morgan is the pro turn tonight”

“Wow! I’ve been playing her stuff to Maz. How did you get her to come out here?”

Enfys and Alys shared a look just before corpsing, so I played the eyebrows game.

“And? You have something to admit?”

Alys looked at her hands before speaking.

“She’s, er, a friend of Diane Sutton, and Lexie. They each gave her a call when we knew the date you’d be here”

Maz started laughing, and it was a few minutes before she had fully stopped, with occasional snorted words such as ‘Assimilated’ and ‘Borg’. I held up a hand for silence, or sanity, or something.

“I’ve already been ambushed at Little willy’s, so I realise there will be a lot of visitors tonight. Penny? Oh, some man called Alun, Wallis I think. I remember him from years ago. He’s here with that Debbie, said there’s fourteen of them”

Keith nodded.

“They’ve been there for a week so far. Usual older ones, a few new younger girls. Alun’s sound; I’ll make sure they keep a spot for him”

I turned to LC to explain.

“We have a lot of friends, love, as Mum told you. Lots of our friends have other friends, and we know some of them, but not all of them. Lexie knows the woman who will play us her music tonight, and the man who spoke to us when we stopped by the big mountain is another friend of theirs. He will have lots more friends with him, some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t”

“What will we do with them? The not friends?”

I shrugged.

“Probably make them friends as well, love. Speaking of which, is Pat up?”

Alys looked straight at her wife, whose face had fallen, all humour gone, and I knew, immediately.

“How did it happen, love?”

Enfys looked at Steph, who was similarly slumped in her expression, and the younger woman explained.

“We got the call, Uncle Mike, that’s us in the Rescue, ah? You know the shelter up on Foel Grach?”

“It’s where…” Caro and me “It’s where we met”

“Well, she went up for an overnight with Debbie, and… In her sleep. Steph was one of those who came up on foot, but we brought the doctor, and… Sorry. Still hurts. Doc said she was lucky. Peacefully, ah? In a lovely spot, with someone who loved her. The Cow…”

She paused to wipe some tears away, then forced a smile.

“Illtyd sorted out a little plaque for the bar, an ‘in memory of’ thing. All we could do. We took her back up so she could, as Debbie put it, dance on the wind”

Neil looked up sharply at that, and I understood immediately. Time to change subjects.

“Food for tonight?”

Nansi said something in Welsh, which her daughter translated as “Lamb stew, with loads of extra veg”, followed by Ish’s laughed “And the chip shop on the way home?”, and that broke the spell.

LC was in an odd outfit as we walked down the hill, wearing boots and her new hat and jacket over the top of her princess dress, Kawan on her back in his own harness. The meal had been a delight, but I was now focussed on getting outside a pint and hearing some decent music. There was a corner of the pub taped off for us, which we swamped, Kawan taking a seat on the window ledge, even more hugs, including some from a surprisingly emotional Illtyd, and there was, indeed, beer.

Illtyd was busy in the traditional way, filling a little list with the names of those willing or wanting to do floor spots, so of course I said yes.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“Are you going to sing again?”

“Yes, I am”

“Could you do that one you did before? The one about rolling? Kawan liked that”

“I can indeed. Anyway, I’m only allowed to do one song tonight, because there are lots and lots of people who also want to do songs or play tunes, but that one will work”

“Will you sing in English?”

“I have to, love. I don’t know anything else”

“Is that Welsh? What the ladies are speaking?”

Alys, Enfys and their mothers were having some sort of discussion, so I nodded.

“Yes, but I don’t know what they’re saying”

Illtyd was talking to a tall woman I recognised as Ms Morgan just as the pub door opened and Alun’s horde began to troop in, and he was far from the only man there. I recognised one couple as that pastry chef and---yes, the second ring was there—her husband, and of course I knew Debbie, who had her own man in tow, but so many of the girls were not only strangers to me but looked a little apprehensive. Their guardian had her usual ‘don’t even THINK of getting me upset’ expression, but Alun tugged her elbow and nodded at me, and it was sunrise on a Summer morning as her smile emerged from hiding.

The two of them came over to me, Alun nodding to the barman.

“Ga’i tri pheint Butty Bach, Dil?”, then called over his shoulder, “Frank! Mae peint yma i ti”

Debbie shook my hand, her grip firm.

“We read what happened. Mike. Be welcome, all of you. What happened to the cunts responsible?”

As in-your-face as ever.

“Um, I am told a firing squad”

“Good. You singing tonight?”

“I am indeed. My daughter… OUR daughter requested a song”

“Which one?”

“One by Roy Bailey”

“Rolling Home?”

“That’s the one”

“Mam and Dad loved that song, Mike. I’ll let Martie know, in case he’s planning on doing it. Same for you, Frank, love”

The tall man was beside her, that third pint in his hand and his other arm around her waist.

“Dunno, love. Mike, is it? The floor spot card’s got a bit crowded, I’m told. How would you feel doing a group spot? Same song, just with a couple of us?”

I couldn’t really object, and LC’s question came back to me: did we have friends everywhere?

“Who would that be, er, Frank?”

“Me and Martie. Alun’s got weedy lungs. Oh, that your boy? How’s his voice?”

“Fine, but I don’t think he knows the words”

“Not thinking of that, butt. You do the verse, we all join the chorus, try and outdo the audience, aye? Diana Ross and the Supremes sort of thing, just a lot more butch”

I could see why Debbie liked him, and left them to rearrange things with Illtyd as I returned to my family with my own order of drinks.

The first spasm was soon over, having included Enfys on harp playing some traditional Welsh stuff, Alun playing and singing ‘Norwegian Wood’, and Steph going slightly berserk through a set of Irish tunes, before Chrissy Morgan took her seat.

“You lot are evil! I have to follow THAT lot?”

She really knew how to work an audience, which pleased me, as all too many musicians record well but fall flat when playing live. She was funny, sharp in her observations, and excruciating in her puns.

“A couple of great friends suggested I play here tonight, so here, indeed, I am. Brace yourself now as you get hurdied and gurdied”

There were songs and tunes, on multiple instruments, and abundant jokes, and I was shocked when she announced the end of the first half: time hadn’t just flown, it had vanished over the horizon. I was at the bar with LC in the interval when she approached me.

“You’ll be Mike Rhodes, then And are you Carolyn? Hiya! Mutual friends send their best, Mike”

“I heard”

“You haven’t heard it all. I’ll need a hand, several hands, later. I’m parked up at your mate’s bunkhouse, so getting this lot up the hill is going to be fun on my own”

“How did you get it down?”

“Unloaded it here first, before parking up there. Do I look stupid? Don’t answer that”

She grinned.

“Keith’s already agreed on your behalf, anyway. Love the princess dress, Carolyn. See you later!”

She was off to the ladies’, and LC asked that question again, about ‘how many more friends’ we had.

“Look around you, love. I think it might be everyone here”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Who’s Ish talking to?”

“That’s Mr Wallis, love. Alun. He sang earlier”

“No. I remember him. It’s the three ladies and another man”

“Ah, that’s a woman who makes cakes and things, and that’s her… That’s Marty, her husband, I think. I’m going to be singing with him and some other men”

“Why?”

“Because lots of people want to sing, and there’s only so much time for it before bedtime. They suggested Ish sings with me as well”

“Who are the other ladies?”

“I think one of them is Alun’s daughter. Don’t know who the other one is”

“Are they our friends? She keeps smiling at Ish”

Oh…

“We can ask Ish later, love. Now, it’s nearly time for the second half. Is Kawan still thirsty?”

“No. He’s had enough, but I haven’t”

It took me four runs to get the drinks back to our table, finishing just as Illtyd started the traditional ‘parish notices’ and drawing of the raffle, which was won by some of Debbie’s girls. A couple of other performers did their thing, and then I was out in front of everyone except for Frank, Marty and Ish, who whispered, “Remind me why I’m here, Dad”

“Chorus, son. That ‘Rolling Home’ song. Just harmonise with the others. Failing that, just shout, like you usually do”

“You are a sod, Dad”

“Yup. Evening, all! We have all agreed to combine our spots so that we can fit us all in, as it is such a popular evening tonight. I’m Mike, my son Ishmael, Frank, and Marty ---and Illtyd, it appears. It’s a chorus song you’ll know, and you certainly will by the end of it. Give it some oomph!”

As I started the first verse, there were a couple of shouts of ‘Yes!’ or similar, and when the first chorus came in, the volume from the audience just about matched that of my chorus. By the end of the song, there was no contest, so I simply sang the first verse again, and we stepped out of the spotlight to absolutely thunderous applause.

“What are you lot like? Bad enough following that lot in the first half, and now you serve up those lads? It’s not fair. I’m going to have to beat you down with the octave mando, so let’s banish your misfortune!”

It was a superb set, and once she had finished and started her last bit of CD selling, I let the others know of our imminent use as pack mules, and Penny chortled.

“Don’t bother, Mike. Illtyd’s already snaffled the bottle store for her. Just need a couple of hands to move the cases when she’s ready”

“Better tell her, then”

“I’ll do it, Dad. Have we got any of her discs?”

“We have all of them, son, but she’ll have a mailing list”

“Okay”

He was out of his seat like a rocket, calling back a request for another pint, and over to the little table, where he smiled at Chrissy, wrote on what was obviously said list, and then…

And then spent some time chatting with one of the girls who Carolyn had pointed out, and not the one I had marked down as Alun’s daughter. This one was all smiles, and as she asked one obvious question, she made a funny wave of her arms that I realised was meant to depict ‘climbing’, and my lad just nodded before pointing towards our table and holding his hand out palm down, which I guessed was his estimate of LC’s height.

I could almost read his mind as he spoke: ‘Yes, I climb, and so does my family, including my sister, who is only little’. That was fine, but I was a little surprised when the girl reached out to squeeze his forearm.

I had to mentally slap myself. If it was okay for Alys, and Steph, and poor dead Maddy, what was my problem?

I kept my counsel, in the end, as we finished our drinks, went next door to ‘Colin’s’ for chips to fuel our epic ascent to our beds, and I settled by our son as he paused to tie a lace.

“Sorry for dropping you in it like that, son. You enjoy it?”

“Bit nervous at first, Dad, but the others, you couldn’t see them, ey? They, it was all eye contact and nods, and it was… The harmony, Dad. Finding a different note that’s still the right one. And then the audience, wow!”

“It’s a great song for that, son. Simple enough to remember, no extremely high or low notes, and a chorus that just begs to be roared out as well as one to harmonise to”

“Absolutely, Dad. I couldn’t hear myself by the end”

“I heard you, son”

“You’re going to say I was rubbish, aren’t you”

“No, son. I was going to say we need to get some more songs learnt. Just one thing I did notice---”

“She’s called Clara, Dad. And yes, I know about her. You aren’t subtle when you stare”

“Ah. And what… How long are they here for?”

“Another week, then back to Cardiff”

“Which is where we will be going before we fly home, of course”

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“She’s… she’s nice. Am I being stupid?”

So much slammed into focus just then, as I realised how few chances he had been allowed for a normal adolescence. With his mother gone, presumed fucking dead, he had been my prop in so many ways. The Butts were always there for me, of course, along with all my other colleagues, customers and friends, but Ish had been the support, the only bit of his mother I had been allowed to keep, for all of his teens. I had never realised, never considered, what effect that must have had on him.

“No, son. Not at all. What was she asking you about climbing?”

“You heard?”

“I saw how she moved her hands, son”

“Ah. She said she liked to watch it”

I couldn’t help my snort, but apologised immediately.

“Sorry, son, but did she mention anything about a slab near their tents?”

“Yes. She said lots of climbers go there”

“So do most of her friends, son. To watch the climbers. The male climbers”

“Oh! You mean to, you know…”

“To watch and dream? Oh yes: they call it the Perving Slab. I rather think you have pulled, Ish”

We joined the others just as Chrissy caught us up.

“They’re a friendly lot in there, Mike. All my stuff locked away, no humping, not even the nice sort—er, sorry. Sense of humour gets a little direct when I’m tired. Got my ear plugs, so should be safe from snorers”

Ish looked directly at me, before saying “Snap!”, and then we were inside, the lad beginning a round of introductions for the woman, before she simply cornered Steph for a chat about strings or soundposts, or perhaps sanity and its retention. As usual, Geoff simply sat and laughed, as LC quite casually sat in Neil’s lap to show him her photos

The morning was a clear one, and Chrissy was already gone by the time I awoke, off to her next gig, which was apparently at a club in Worcester. Not my idea of a life, that. I took a walk outside with Enfys for a quiet chat, but she was already prepared for me.

“It’s that girl with Debbie, isn’t it? The--- I was going to say ‘the trans one’, but that’s a bit redundant with that lot. Getting a bit of the ‘icks’, Uncle Mike?”

“I think I was, love. It was… Look, I should know better, me”

“You’re the one who brought me Alys. I think we can give you some slack”

“Yeah, that’s the thing that got me. Like with Steph. I had… Look, this is going to sound creepy, but she didn’t really come into focus with me till I, um, heard her and Geoff together”

“Oh!”

“No details. It just suddenly made sense. Why I can’t, couldn’t, with Ish, god knows”

“Different when it’s your family, love, I suppose. I had another thought, though, and it’s something you can help with, I hope. He’s never… Maz went when he was twelve, and it was just us for all his adolescence, and that’s the thing: he never actually got to have one. Two of us, it was. Always in each other’s pockets until Di found her, and since then, we’ve been looking inward all the time, all four of us, and LC, well”

“Elsie?”

“L. C. Little Carolyn. Maz named her after my late wife, she says as a way to keep me alive in her head. She never got to be a little girl, and now Ish is locked on keeping her safe and happy, real big brothering stuff. Hasn’t left, doesn’t leave, time for him to be a lad, a young man”

“And Debbie’s girl?”

“Oh, I’ve got the waking mind sorted. Just need to slap the hindbrain a few times till it learns. Bit of help be nice”

She drew a slow breath, before smiling at me.

“Mental health stuff is part of my role, you know? And yes, I do have an obvious insight here, but, well, we’re starting from a good place in that none of us knew the girl before she came out, ah? No script to overwrite, no need for palimpsesting”

“That is not one of yours, love!”

“Nope. Blame the wife for that one, but it fits. You want to go to the Perving Slab with Ish, don’t you? So he can be perved at? I was going to suggest Milestone, but we can start off at the slab first. Anyway, I remember how Mam met Dad, so please tell me he won’t be in microshorts!”

“More like board shorts, knowing him”

“Then we have a plan. Breakfast first, my ‘rents are doing a mass of sandwiches, or so they said, then it’s on the road. We have a load of gear, and both nine and fifteen millimetre ropes, and I found a kid-sized helmet. And Nansi is cooking something up with Vic”

Breakfast was exactly as anyone would expect, and Steph spent some time filling flasks with tea before our little convoy set off, Neil riding with us once again as Keith simply locked up his business and climbed in with his two younger women. As we ambled through the campsite before the first ladder stall, I saw Marty and Alun tending to a number of kettles, the younger man calling out a greeting to Ish as we passed.

Up the hill, over the rock platform, LC needing a little boost over the ladders by the farmhouse but bouncing away over the rest, until we were at the foot of the great sweep of slab that is the introduction to so many new climbers, LC now staring at all the sheep, who simply stared back.

“Jamming, Dad?”

“Not so much here, love. All about balance and how small a hold you can use. Now, this is a bigger hill, so we have something else for you”

Enfys and Alys were approaching, carrying the promised lid, which fitted nicely after some adjustments. LC loved it, the little gearhound, but stared meaningfully at her bear until Alys laughed and produced a carrier bag.

“Mam and Dad made this. Shall we see if it will fit?”

They had simply taken a plastic camping bowl, cut out some holes for the bear’s ears and rivetted in a length of elastic tape as a chin strap. And it fitted, which delighted our girl. We left her explaining to her bear what we would be doing, and how he had to look after our bags, as those of us out for a climb changed our footwear and started to fasten on harnesses and then rack gear. The change of footwear was what brought child away from bear, and soon she was “READY TO CLIMB!”

Steph watched her as she bounced up the very easy broken ground at the lefthand foot of the slab, before pointing out a pale bulge on the rock, with a thin crack crossing it.

“Take her up the flake crack first, before doing that one? She’ll get some jams in on the flake route, but the second one will show her some gibboning and small hold stuff”

“Two pitches?”

“Enfys has sourced an extra length rope. One pitch only”

“Sounds good to me. Just going to solo the first route, get my head working”

Up the easy first crack, over the two little corners, and jog-slither back down to the group in time to watch as Geoff belayed his wife up the thinner crack, LC seated on an outcrop to watch.

“It’s flatter, Dad. Not so up and down, like the Dark was”

“It’s a slab, love. Come and try this with me”

I showed her one spot where, with clean rock boots, you can simply walk up the smooth slab, at least for a few feet. I got to my usual spot, stood on nothing, then eased upright to clap my hands. LC squealed in delight, demanding her turn, and then shouted “MAGIC FEET!” as she clapped.

Geoff simply carried on belaying his wife until she had taken her stance at the top, then called LC to him so that he could tie her on.

“Right, Carolyn, we have something for you here. It’s called a nut key, so you can take out the gear Aunty Steph’s put in. You use this bit to wiggle anything that’s stuck We fasten it here, with this screwgate, so if you drop it, it gets caught by this string. That okay?”

He grinned at me.

“Hairy’s doing without cams and that today. Almost had a strop, she did. Anyway, THAT’S CAROLYN!”

A short pause before we heard “Climb when ready”, but it was LC who yelled “CLIMBING!” and started up the route, and yes, her hands were small enough to find jams. It seemed our daughter was a thug.

Other pairs and groups were drifting up to the crag, as Neil set up what looked like his ‘Very Serious Photographer’ kit, including a tabard reading ‘N&M Strachan Photography’, the sneaky sod. He caught my stare, and grinned, our old friend clearly recovering from his despair.

“I have a living to make, mate!”

“How does that work?”

“People ask me for a snap, I take their e-mail, send them a watermarked proof. If they like it, they send me money and I send them a file, or whatever sort of print they fancy”

I laughed.

“You’ll get a few more customers here than in a cave”

“You’d be surprised”

“Let me rephrase that: more than in a flooded cave”

He just mock-whistled, and I gave up, as a shout came from above, “She’s up, but she is coming down by rope”

It wasn’t abseiling, but my daughter walked backwards down the route like a pro, to the astonishment of a couple gearing up to repeat the same route.

“Your kid?”

“She is”

“How old is she?”

“Six”

“Bloody hell! She’s doing well”

“Only up to Severe, so far”

“Shit! Where was that?”

“Froggatt Edge”

His mate elbowed him.

“Shall we just give up now, Gray?”

He turned to look at me instead of his mate.

“How long’s she been climbing, my friend?”

“Um, ten days or so”

“Right… Anyway, good luck. I’m just here to enjoy the rock, not compete. Certainly not with little girls. Six; oh dear me”

“Well, I will point out our mate over there. He’s a very good photographer, doing a sort of open shop day”

“Bit more sensible, then”

“Not really. He’s also a cave diver”

I left them to it after some good-natured assassination of Neil’s sanity, and collected LC, who was now chatting away at nineteen to the dozen.

“You enjoy that, love?”

“Hand jams, Dad!”

“Good, love. Did the nut key work?”

“Yes! Can we buy one?”

Geoff laughed, just as ‘Gray’ set off.

“That’s your nut key, Carolyn. Aunty Steph and me, we didn’t want to buy you things if you didn’t like the climbing, but Uncle Neil told us how good you were, so that’s our present to you. Severe, Mike?”

“Just Heather Wall, mate”

“Good start”

“She did Straight Chimney at Stanage the day before”

“Now that one, I think, is actually harder than the Froggatt one”

“Carolyn likes jamming, mate”

“Hands and fists!”

The volume was lower, but the sentiment was the same. Steph joined us, and I led my girl across the blanker piece of slab as Steph followed close behind to talk her through small hold technique, until we were once again jog-sliding down from the top to make some inroads on Steph’s flasks.

All through this, Ish and Maz had been climbing gentler stuff, and while we had been busy, a steady flow of girls had assembled at the foot of the slab, Clara among them. I made a decision, finally, praying it was the right one, and took a seat next to her and Alun’s daughter, as he poured from his own flask.

“Hiya, Mike. That was a bloody good night, wasn’t it, Alicia? This is Mr Rhodes, love”

Alicia prodded her father.

“Met him years ago, Dad! Friend of Enfys, aren’t you?”

“Yup. First time here for my wife and daughter, though”

She looked down at her hands.

“We all know, Mr Rhodes. We follow the news, and Alys, well, Enfys explained where she was staying. This isn’t the place… Not the right words. You got your family back. This is where I got my own back, right, Dad?”

Alun gave her a one-armed hug.

“It’s where I found my daughter, Mike, so yes, not the place for sad thoughts. The little girl really loves the climbing, doesn’t she?”

I could hear the laughter as LC worked through some little toprope problems under the huge ledge, belayed by Geoff as Steph offered advice, and I realised this was just about as far as she had been from me and her Mum since their rescue. Recovery, most definitely.

“She does. Alun, as well as the music”

I waved at Ish, some way up a blank section of slab.

“My son’s been a godsend in so many ways. Just…”

The words were there; all I had to do was let them out.

“Maz was snatched when he was twelve, and that was six years out of our lives. We’re all finding each other again. Finding ourselves as well”

Clara found her tongue at last.

“He’s really gentle, isn’t he?”

I laughed out loud.

“Say that after you’ve seen him playing rugby or Aussie Rules, girl!”

“Wish I could… I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry”

Keep that momentum, Rhodes.

“It’s not a problem, Clara”

“But he’s, and I’m not…”

“I said it’s not a problem, love. Now, I am going to break every rule of being a Dad and simply say that he thinks you’re nice, and no, what we are talking about isn’t a problem for him. I am boing to be busy with his sister, but we are looking to move on down the valley in a bit. Now, we have some spare harnesses. What would be nice for him is the chance to help someone learn to climb. You up for that?”

She nodded, eyes moist, and twenty minutes later, she was half way up the easy crack on her way to join Ish at the top. Maz simply sat watching, but Alicia had her own words.

“Thank you, Mr Rhodes. I need to tell you a few things about her, just in case. You already know the big thing, but it’s Clara’s history. Do you know what I mean when I say ‘chaser’?”

I nodded, remembering Neil’s use of that word, and as Maz stiffened, Alicia smiled.

“Innocent sounding word for something very nasty. With Deb, in the House, well, we have a lot of shared experiences. Like a hive mind, we are. Right, Dad?”

Alun just chuckled, and she carried on.

“Clara and the rest of us, well, we all share. Part of having so much common ground. We all had a moment, a sort of choice of paths, but that’s now the big thing. That big thing is luck, that’s all. Deb, a few others, they’re lie a net. Some of us get caught in it, the rest slip through. Clara was one we could have lost. We… Serena, Dad?”

“Yes, love. I know”

“Indeed. Could have been me in her place… Anyway. Clara was with a chaser, very young, she was. He was a drug dealer, as well, but I don’t think he’d got past the stage of getting his own jollies and onto the bit where the girl gets handed round various customers for fun and profit”

She paused at a shriek of laughter from LC, then tilted her head as she looked me in the eyes.

“Flippancy is how so many of us cope, Mr Rhodes. It won’t bring Serena back, or her mother, but it lets us talk about things without breaking. Sorry if it comes across wrong, but I do believe you understand. Clara was groomed. Thought it was all real. Then he made sure she was about when he had company, and all she had was a minidress. Police put his door in, though, arrested him for dealing coke, and didn’t even know she was there. That’s what I mean about luck: their custody sergeant knew someone who knew Nana Deb, and that is how Clara found us”

Alun tightened his embrace on his daughter.

“Mike. Maz, four of Deb’s brood have got married, so far. They, well, Gem and Marty are already here, but the others will be along later today”

Alicia nodded.

“Yup. Some real climbers there. The rest of us, well, we dream, but we see those who have made it, and it’s not jealousy so much as hope,; expectancy, almost. Freaked Dad out for a bit”

Alun laughed, but it held some bitterness.

“She’s right. One thing accepting your daughter’s, well, your actual daughter, but courting, that’s… It’s sort of homophobia, Mike, in my view. I try and think… You’ll laugh: I try and imagine any prospective boyfriend as a possible friend, for me, that is”

Maryam burst into happy laughter, which puzzled me, until she simply kissed my cheek and said, “Alan”

She turned to the others, with the warmest of smiles.

“It’s not a story for today, but each of us was married before, and each… We both lost our lovers. I had a thought, a bit like yours: if it was possible for my lost man to meet my found one, what would he say? I came down on the side of going for a pint together. This trip, it’s a sort of pilgrimage, partly, for Mike. There’s a shelter on a mountain somewhere over there that I want to see, a place with lots of memories”

Alun winced, and went to speak, but Alicia shushed him.

“Enfys said she’d explained about Pat. Another one who helped with that net, Mr Rhodes”

Maryam held a finger to my lips.

“My turn, love. Clara’s lonely, isn’t she?”

She turned to me with a Mum-stare.

“Not the only one who can watch and listen, love. He’s my son as well, and he’s been on his own for too long. We have another week with this lot, so let’s not push him, or her. Now, what’s this other cliff we’re heading for? I think we can squeeze one more into a car”

A rapid bit or negotiation followed, as Debbie clearly needed assurance her charge would be safe, and Neil was initially reluctant to move, as his little notebook was filling with e-mail addresses and names, but the promise of fresh victims finally settled the deal.

It had obviously been years since I had climbed on Milestone, but it had always been a favourite spot, right from my earliest puzzlement at how to use the unfriendly voids on Direct up to my realisation that the slab held enough holds in its ripples to make the climbing far more straightforward. As we uncoiled the ropes, Enfys was chuckling.

“Share, divulge, reveal, woman?”

“Oh, we had shout here a while back. Man got stuck. Guess where?”

“That carnivorous crack with a taste for knees?”

“Spot on. He’d apparently just warned his son about it. We rigged a hoist, lifted him out; as soon as he could take the weight off the leg, out it came”. How are we doing this?”

“Um, I lead, LC next, someone follow behind her?”

“I can do that, but I’ll be on a tope. That step around the Bivalve is an easy one, but it’s a silly place to risk a slip”

A memory surged, sitting shocked behind the finish of Tennis Shoe. Not today.

“What are the rest doing?”

“Steph’n’Geoff are going to do Soapgut later, but Steph will follow Maz, Ish and Clara while they’re doing Pulpit/Ivy”

“Have you warned them?

“Nope, but I have given Neil a heads-up, so he’s around by Little Gully Wall with his cameras”

“You are perverse!”

“Indeed. Alys loves me that way”

Possibly not her best choice of words, but I understood. Ish was clearly at the over-explaining stage of things with Clara, while Steph simply worked on his rack of gear, adding and removing bundles of nuts before slipping a doubled rope sling over one of his shoulders. I heard her slightly raised voice as he clearly asked what it was for.

“Extension at the top of the chimney, Ish. Don’t argue---you’ll understand when you get there. Oh, and I’ll set up an anchor at the top of Little Gully”

“What for? Is it a hard descent?”

“Not hard, just somewhere a quick ab or lowering off speeds the day along”

I missed the rest, as the wind backed, but I could read her gestures clearly enough: up there, onto that, over that bit, through there, into the chimney. I turned back to my ropemates.

“You all ready, then? Direct belay, love?”

“Mountain leader thing, Uncle Mike”

“Okay. Climbing!”

I made my way up the ripples, calling down to LC that it was exactly like the ripples on the first rock, just a little steeper. I slapped a runner in at the overlap for the sake of reassuring my friends, extended it, and was then up and onto the first huge stance. I was using twin rope technique, but only clipping one, Enfys on the yellow one and LC on the blue. I went through the ritual before bringing up a bouncy little girl, who I secured properly before taking in the yellow rope.

None of us got our legs trapped, nobody peeled at the Bivalve, but Enfys had to offer LC a boost into the final chimney, before we made our way round to Little Gully, LC still roped to me, Alpine style. We got there just as Maz was about to start Ivy Chimney, which was delayed for the simple reason that Clara and Ish were wrapped round each other like a pair of flexible limpets. Enfys was straight across to them.

“I’ll sort; you take over the belay and bring her up, please. Best to drop down to the top of the capstone””

Her authority surprised me, but she was right. I srambled down, set some fresh anchors for my own direct belay, having parked LC in a safe spot with a promise not to move, and started bringing Maz up as Enfys sorted the other two.

“Hi, Clara: that get to you, that bit?”

The kid had looked white.

“I didn’t expect that!”

“It’s a bit of a surprise. Guidebooks call it ‘amusing’ or ‘interesting’, which are both codewords for ‘terrifying’. You did it, though. One of my first ever leads, that”

She was still carrying on in that manner as I called down to my wife that I was on belay. She climbed easily up to the other side of the capstone from me, then lowered her voice.

“I am not sure if Clara screamed or yelped, love, but Ish: where did he learn those words? This is a frightener, isn’t it?”

“Ah, it can be, if stress blinkers go on. You go through the hole, and you’re on a vertical wall. Lots of chicken heads to stand on, and a forest of jugs over your head. Step out, stand up, pull round. Easy staircase to finish, so just go straight past me to the others”

“How’s Carolyn?”

“Guess”

“Do it again?”

“Exactly. Now, the wall you come out onto is to the side of the descent gully, and Neil is waiting there with his cameras”

“He’s a sod”

“He’s a sod who wants to repeat the route with a GoPro! Where’s Staph?”

“Right behind me”

“Hi, Mike! Drop me a rope end once Maz is clear?”

“Can do. You need one?”

“Reassures the girl if she sees me on a rope when I appear. Bit of a confidence wrecker, that move”

Maz was round the roof smoothly, and I watched her up the final steps before lowering the freed rope for Steph to snag, following Maz while still tied on. I recovered all of my gear before my own little clamber.

Lad was still attached to lass, even when they stood to follow Enfys to the descent, where two girls were lowered and the rest of us abseiled to the path proper. LC looked at the start, and simply said, “Dad?”

Neil led Steph up it, following me as I led LC, with Neil belaying me from the base of Ivy Chimney until LC was ‘READY TO CLIMB!’, and that evening our time in the pub was enlivened by scrolling through his downloaded stills and bits of video. Ish wasn’t with us, because I had dropped him off in the Valley with his little tent for a couple of nights.

We still had an agreed rendezvous the first morning, though, as my family had a duty to old memories. I parked in the long layby again. Ish waiting with Frank, Clara and Debbie, who were both in proper walking kit. That was a bit of a surprise, and not quite what I had planned. Deb was, as usual, straight to the point.

“Nell, Cath and their men are looking after the rest, on a wander over the Glyders, so we are free. I do believe we each have some memories over that way, Mike. Ish here explained it. You were luckier than me, getting to meet her man”

“He was a---”

“Good man. I know. Or rather, he would have to have been for Pat to have loved him. Which way?”

“I hate the CEGB road”

“Good. Cwm Lloer it is, then”

We had managed to persuade LC to leave her harness and helmet behind, but Kawan was with us, helmet firmly in place because I had told her there would be some rock work. The initial approach is over expansive grasslands by a tumbling stream, which left LC free to wander freely until we got to the hole in the wall and that little bit of scrambling, which she flew up, Maz immediately below her just in case. Onto Pen Yr Ole Wen, across to Dafydd, the long ridge to Llywelyn and a cuppa, before we struck out for a familiar little shelter in the rock.

The memories were savage, but still sweet, and I noticed Ish and the two girls hanging back as four of us approached the door, and I felt the need to say something.

“My wife… my first wife, the other Carolyn, and me, we were walking Aber Falls to the Valley. Ultralight tent, just in case, but we intended to sleep here. It was occupied, and that was when we met Pat and Rob, properly. Familiar faces, we all were, and he had some wine for their anniversary, and he’d seen me in Bethesda when I’d bought some to sneak up here. We camped over there, and, well, we…”

The tears were there again.

“I lost Carolyn in a road accident, and it was an accident, not an ‘incident’ or ‘collision’, and it turned out that she had been… She was expecting. This is one of the places we… Enough. Special place. Special memories”

Maz was cuddled into me, as Deb settled against my other side, Frank making it a foursome. His wife’s voice was fainter than usual, as she told of anniversaries, drunken birthdays, and shared nights spooned into each other as the stars moved towards another dawn. She opened her sack, producing a small bouquet, and Maz wriggled a little before announcing “Snap!” and setting ours with Deb’s on the little work surface inside the place.

The walk back down went by way of the CEGB road, and Ish and Clara were hand in hand for all of it.

With the new week, Keith had opened the bunkhouse once more to paying customers for simple reasons of economics and paying bills, but we had surprisingly few due to the seemingly settled fine weather. That second night without Ish meant a shared meal with Keith and Pen, the young couple back in Bangor for similar reasons of work, the Woodruffs away to their own place, but Neil still with us. I asked, he laughed, and explained.

“Couple of employees in the shop, Mike. All that stuff I did on the hill is web-based. I can edit the images on my laptop, send the samples, process the payments, and let the shop staff know what hard copy is wanted. I can even maintain the website from here”

“Why have the shop, then?”

“Passing trade, mate, and… And it was Maddy’s shop too”

“Sorry, Neil. Didn’t think”

“No, Mike. You did, which is why I didn’t get offended. Things are a bit different now, though, with Forbes on trial”

“Thought that was done and dusted”

“Not quite. That team are as persistent as…no, Strachan. ‘herpes’ is not a good example. Anyway, they have been digging into his electronics. Loads of porn, of course, some of it skirting the edge of legality, but, well, there’s more. I don’t know what it is, but Candice was chortling about upcoming headlines”

He grinned, which always transformed his face.

“I do believe I have something nice to look forward to! Now, tomorrow?”

“Ish likes castles”

“So do I”

“And both Maz and Deb like birds”

“And so?”

“We drive up to collect lad, by way of a certain bridge for a little girl, then we tick off Beaumaris castle, and another Maz request at a certain railway station”

“Clan fair twiddly bits?”

“That’s the one. Then Deb has some birding spots for Maz. She’s offered to fit all of us in her minibus for the day. Time for Maz to have some more of her own moments, I believe”

Neil left us to our own devices the next day, which disappointed LC, but not before he had taken a whole series of shots of the ‘Secret Bridge’. I parked the car next to the tents, with the farmer’s express permission, and after striking our son’s little shelter, we were off down the A5 in a rather comfy fifteen-seat bus, the ‘we’ in question being our family, Deb and Frank, Gemma and Marty, and a very quiet Clara.

“Where are the rest off to, Deb?”

“Cathy and Nell are shepherding them round the Horseshoe. Should mean a quiet night’s kip this evening”

“They’ll be shattered after yesterday!”

“Yup. That’s the point. And before you ask, those two leading them round, you will never guess where their lads proposed to them”

“Go on…”

“Middle of some rock climb. White Horse Dreams or some such”

“A Dream of White Horses?”

“That’s the one”

I started to describe the climb to the others, as Deb muttered, “Typical bloody climbers”, telling them of seals in the water looking up at the climbers, and once again LC blindsided me.

“What’s a seal?”

Maz piped up, describing the sea lions and fur seals of Esperance, and Debbie harrumphed.

“Fur seals are not seals. They’re in the same family as sea lions. External ears and rotatable back feet”

Ish started laughing, and I waited for him to calm down before asking what had tickled him.

“Just thinking, Dad. Mum’ll be doing her usual ‘bird name, bird name, bird name’---"

“I don’t do that! Er… do I?”

“Yes, Mum, you do. Anyway, I was imagining Debbie and her muttering away: name, correction, name, correction. Not saying who would be doing the correcting, though. Anyway, where are we going, Nana?”

“Don’t you bloody start as well! Bad enough with the girls. We’re off to Biwmaris Castle first, then a certain railway station. You seen castles, Carolyn?”

“Yes. Where princesses live”

“Be a bit draughty for them there, love. Anyway, next place isa lesson in what happens when you bug--- er, mess about with mobile dune systems. Good place for SEOs and warblers, plus some goof orchids. After that, a little bit of very productive wetlands and then South Stack for all sorts of seabirds, including chough, puffins and peregrines. Oh, and seals in the water, if we’re lucky”

Maz called over to the front passenger seat.

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“Do you fancy divorcing Deb so that I can marry her?”

She let the laughter die down before asking what exactly an ‘SEO’ was.

“Short-eared owl, Maz. Hunt in daylight, they do. Oh, and I’m taking the suspension bridge rather than the Britannia”

She was as good as her word, parking up at the Antelope so the newbies could get some decent pictures of the structure and the Straits. She asked me to hang back for a quiet word, as Frank led the others over the road.

“Just wanted to say thanks for yesterday, Mike. It was… I still hold Pat to me, yeah? Still raw, and warm, both at once. Hearing how you saw her, that… It brought back so many wonderful memories”

“When did you first meet her?”

“Bloody long time ago, Mike. Nineteen seventy six, at the camp site. Then again, after Mam and Dad… after it was just me, I found her again, and then she met my first girl, Kim. All of this, apart from the castle and that silly station sign, it’s all stuff she showed me. Me and Kim together, as well”

She paused, watching as the others sought just the right angle for their photos.

“You were up at the Wall, as well, I hear. Little temple. Ish was quite eloquent about it”

“Ah. Yes. I have a little warning about that”

She turned a harder face to me.

“What have they done to it?”

“Nothing, Deb. It’s Neil, to be honest. I just need to give you a heads up”

“He’s autistic, isn’t he?”

I nodded, slowly.

“Borderline Asperger’s, he says. It was Neil who showed us the temple. It was a favourite place of him and his wife”

“The one… Chaser? Arsehole in a wankpanzer? Nigel something?”

“That’s the one. When Neil took us to the temple, it was the first time he’d felt able to go there since he lost his wife. He’s planning to take her back there, he says, so she… so she can dance on the wind”

Another sharp look.

“That’s what one of Carl’s brothers said about my Mam and Dad. That’s where I let them go”

“That’s the thing, Deb. Neil and Maddy were there when you did”

“Oh… and?”

“He’s likely to put his foot squarely in it, the way je is at times. He simply wants to offer you some pro photos of the place. I didn’t know if you’d find that offensive, or intrusive, and I’d rather you punched me than him”

“Ha! You two, you and him, you’re too soppy for words, sometimes. Tell him… No. He has a website?”

“Yes, and a whole section of pics from there”

“Right. I’ll order some, but what would be… sorry. Memories”

I took her into a hug, and her tears into my shirt, until she came back to the there and then.

“Mam, she was terminal, and Dad… We had a place, a car park, where we would overnight, and the views at sunset and rise were magical/ We’d share breakfasts with people doing the Pennine Way, and there were owls, and that was where they went to sleep.. No more details, okay, but if Neil has any shots of that bit, he has a customer. Thanks for the tact, Mike. Sorry for the weeping, but I suspect we understand each other, me, you, Maz and Neil himself. Frank’s not been to see that particular elephant. My eyes red?”

“Not too bad, Deb”

“They’ll have to do. Let’s get this lot rounded up, and on the road. Lots to see”

Once again, those words punched themselves into my soul: not just me.

The castle was a hit with our children, LC had to count all the letters on the station sign and tell Kawan how may there were, and to my surprise it was Clara who explained the situation at Newborough rather than Debbie.

It’s a simple thing, in essence: new boss shows up, this one of the Norman persuasion, and decides he like the ‘pretty water meadows’ as a site for his great big castle, just needing the eviction of everyone already living there. Hence, the New Borough, which was inconveniently forested. Once al the trees were down, and the houses built, they discovered that said trees had been securing a mobile dune system, which was indeed now fully mobile, and it promptly mobilised itself to the point of burying the new dwellings.

It’s now a nature reserve, rather than just another tacky golf course filled with florid fat tossers . We had a walk across the grassy lumps and bumps to the sea, with its view of the whole of Snowdonia, just about, Clara naming each peak for Ish and LC, Maz and Deb swapping murmured bird names, while the rest of us just sat at the edge of the beach soaking in the peace.

“DAD!”

“Um, yes, love?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh. That’s a bunny rabbit”

“Like Ish’s Bunbun?”

“Yes, that’s it”

“It looks silly”

And back to her castle building. She had a point, I suppose.

Maz got her other treats at Malltraeth and south Stack, as well as a surprise chambered cairn, LC got to paddle in a very cold Irish Sea and build her first ever sandcastle, with a bear in residence rather than a princess, and there were indeed seals for her to go with the rabbits on the dunes. The only thing she lacked was someone specific to hold her hand, as everyone else’s was occupied.

It was a very, very good day, but the sea at home was an awful lot warmer than said Irish Sea would ever be.

Deb dropped us off at the camp site, where a limping Alun was trying to sort out brews for some very, very tired younger people, and four of us headed back to the car.

Five of us, as it turned out, for Clara was there, sleeping bag in hand along with a small holdall. It was Maz who turned to me, Maz who explained, as it was Maz who had been having her own conversation with Debbie in between correcting bird names.

“It’s not sharing a bed, love. And it’s a public sleeping shelf. These two have less than a week left, and after that we’ll be on the other side of the world. Time to let them have a bit of personal time, don’t you think? Now, where are we climbing tomorrow?”

We ate in the pub again, as neither of us wanted to wrestle with the influx of paying guests for the cooking facilities, and Neil was on his last night with us before heading home. Our two girls came over from Bangor, but just for the evening, and there was a very obvious bit of silent communication between them as they clocked our (bunk)house guest.

I had slipped back for a quiet talk with Maz on the way downhill, surprised at her surge of decisiveness.

“It’s simple, Mike. He’s our boy, and, well, I wasn’t exactly permitted much agency in that place, no power to make decisions. I did as I was told, or I got hurt. Simple as. Nothing at all will come out of this, most likely, but he gets to make choices when he can. We’re here for advice and picking up pieces, but he gets what I didn’t have”

“And how do you think it will go?”

“No real idea, but admit it: you’d love another guest to show Perth off to, ey?”

Leave it for now, Rhodes.

Enfys closed the menu.

“I know what they have by heart. What are you doing tomorrow, Uncle Mike?”

“Not sure, Enfys. I was thinking of the Slabs, but that’s all multi pitch, and there’s the descent. Maz and Ish are both competent, but trad stuff is about being sneaky, with runners and that”

“I can solve that. I’ve had a cancellation for tomorrow”

“Guiding?”

“Yes. Introduction to climbing, so there’s a fair few no-shows among the bookings”

“How much does that cost you?”

Alys laughed.

“My beloved here is far from stupid. Sliding scale fees, Mike, in advance. They tell us a month or more in advance that they can’t make it, we just keep a ten percent deposit. They do it less than a week before, we keep the lot”

Enfys turned to stare at her lover.

“We? I wasn’t aware you were helping with things like carrying gear on that slog up to the Cromlech!”

“Dearest wifey, all I will say is joint account, what’s yours is mine, and so on. Game, set and whatsits, and I will have the pork chops. Oh: if you are going out tomorrow, want to kip at your olds’ place? I can pick you up in the evening

“That would make sense, love. Maz, the Slabs are a lot higher than the paces you’ve already been, but the descent is a sod, because you have to go up almost as far again before you hit the descent path. There’s one bad step on it, a bulge with some very polished foot jams, but we can always lower Carolyn. What routes, Uncle Mike?”

“Cliché stuff, love. Hope and Charity will take a big chunk of the day. I’d like to do Tennis Shoe, but that finish is too big a reach for the little one. Nowhere safe to stand for combined tactics, unlike the Twin Cracks”

“Climbing, Dad? Now?”

“No, love. Tomorrow”

Ish looked up from his own menu perusal, or rather the discussion he was having with someone I was now subtitling as ‘his girlfriend’.

“Pardon me if I am getting suspicious, Dad, but what nasty little surprises are you cooking up?”

“None, really. The Twin Cracks are simply a very polished bit on a very good and popular route. First ascent was an on-sight by a woman, Maz”

I turned back to the lad.

“It’s a long route, son, over four hundred feet, and there’s one bit, a pocketed slab after the Twin Cracks, that needs a bit of thought about runner placement. Climbing’s straightforward, but I am….”

Once again, where had that come from?

“I am prioritising keeping all of my family, Ish”

That got through, as he simply nodded, wordless.

“Mr Rhodes?”

“Clara?”

“Nana gave me some money for you. to pay for meals and stuff. Do you… would you like it now?”

“How old ae you, love? Don’t worry; it’s not a trick question”

“I’m eighteen, coming up to nineteen”

“Then, once we’ve eaten, I know what Ish is like, and I am much the same. We will probably end up wanting some crisps or that. You keep it, and maybe you can spot us a cuppa tomorrow. There’s a little kiosk at the car park”

“Oh. You don’t want the money?”

“You’re a guest, love. Right: let’s have the food orders”

She turned out to be good company once we’d fought past the shyness, and once the subject of rugby came up, they were both away in a flow of conversation interspersed with a list of rugby union players Gemma had fancied and a detailed account of why ‘footy’ was superior to all other ball games.

“There’s catching, Clara. Got to be able to jump for that, get really high. It’s like something I want to try on the rock, yeah?”

Enfys nearly spat out her drink.

“Ish ? I remember what a nutter you were on the zip wires. Please promise me you will NOT be trying dynos tomorrow!”

I saw Maz twitch, and tried to match the power of her Mum-stare, but there could be no real contest. Clara, possibly sensing something divisive, chipped in with, “Where do you climb, Enfys?”

“Oh, everywhere, really, round here. Steph’n’Geoff introduced me to gritstone”

“JAMS! HAND AND FIST!”

“Yes, love. They also showed me winter climbing”

Alys snorted then, reaching across to wiggle her wife’s nose. Enfys sighed.

“Yeah, yeah. Collapsed snow hole in the Cairngorms; roof sort of collapsed my nose when it came down. Good partner; managed to dig us back out”

Clara was fascinated.

“And you still do it?”

“Oh, yes. Anyway, favourite places to climb: I suspect that’s what you meant. Slate quarries. There are some amazing routes”

Alys lifted her wife’s hand to kiss it.

“One she spent ages on, with her Dad, with her name. Rainbow of Recalcitrance. Carolyn, ‘Enfys’ means ‘rainbow’ in Welsh. I made her take her ring off first, in case it got scratched”

Clara was still fascinated.

“Isn’t it all slippery? Slate?”

“Oh yes, and rain is a real problem, but it’s technique. Holds can be really sharp, so it’s about using the edges of your boots and being very precise. Oh, and runners can be impossible to place, so the quarries are one place where bolts are used, and yes, Ish, I know all about Aussie bolts. Why not the Bus Stop for one day, Uncle Mike, or Serengeti?”

I found myself barking laughter, but the others waited until I could talk rationally.

“Maz, Ish? One of you got that video?”

“Baby Ish!”

“Yes, Carolyn, that one. When we first went to our climbing club…”

We played the video a couple of times, as Clara made comments about muscles and how ‘sweet’ our boy was, and then I explained my humour.

“Just imagine if we had walked in with Carolyn here, after we spend some time on slate. ‘Ey, ey, ey, mate, how old’s littl’un? Six? What’s she climb at? SEVENTEEN?’ That, I think, is the Aussie equivalent of HVS, Enfys. Hard Very Severe, Clara. That’s about five grades above what you did yesterday. Maz?”

“Oh, memories stirred, darling. How quickly that place married us off”

“Ah, they were just a little early, my love”

“Darling, we just have to take our girl here to Espy”

“I have other plans, love”

“And they are?”

“Not for this year. Still doing the research. Anyway, Clara: tell us about you”

A bunbun in headlights, that girl.

“I… well…”

She gathered herself, as I began to regret my bluntness, then smiled around the group.

“I left home, sort of. Kicked out. Met a man, he, well, stupid thing to do. Not for tonight, okay? Ish knows the story”

So do I, love, so do I. Please take us past that part.

“Someone knew a social worker, lovely woman, and they knew Nana Deb, and she just walked into the police station, drove me back to the House, and that was, well, it was like a dream, yeah? And I met Diane as well, the first day. And, well, I know about you and her, so yeah. Right. We have friends there, and they’re such a mixture! I mean, Christmas is in a drag bar, and New Year’s Eve, um… Motorcycle place”

“Clara?”

“Yes, Mister Rhodes?”

“Do these people have things on the back of their jackets? Like coloured patches with a club name?”

She nodded rapidly.

“Yes! That’s them! They’re really kind”

That fitted exactly with Neil’s description of Debbie’s friends in Northumberland: a back-patch club. ‘Really kind’? As long as you were inside the camp looking out, to mangle a metaphor. It also explained an awful lot of Debbie’s approach to life. Move it on, Rhodes.

“But what do YOU do?”

“Oh, I’m at Cardiff Uni, doing English. I want to be a teacher. I was really worried, being in a home, and…”

She waved at her body, and Alys was the other one to reach out for her hand.

“The other girls, they were so good, especially Alicia and Tricia, got me through my GCSEs and then, for my A-levels, there was a woman, a writer, policeman’s wife, Paula she’s called, and she really, really helped. So I’m at Uni, but. Well, when I’m not there I like music”

I swooped.

“What sort?”

“Oh, all sorts, but in the House we get a LOT of folk, so, yes. And I paint”

Maz slipped in her own question.

“What medium, Clara?”

“Watercolour, mostly. I’d like to try oils, but they’re not really practical in a shared room. We have… Nana and Kim, they say it’s like Number Ten, with pictures of all the Prime Ministers up the stairs, so we have all sorts of photos there, like us in the mountains, or at rallies, and in our study room, Nana’s put up some of my paintings. Just landscapes. I don’t think I could do portraits”

She stopped abruptly, and I drew breath in admiration at what she had already achieved. My son just looked smug, as Clara blushed.

“Sorry. I don’t say much, most of the time, but when I do, I gush. What’s Espy?”

Maz explained that one, and the child in Clara gave a delighted squeal when my lover described the arrival of the little blue penguins.

“This is where you had the sea lions and stuff? Oh wow! You are SO lucky!”

Ish was using his own free hand to pull out his phone when Alys stopped him.

“Got my laptop in here, Ish. Clara, I spent my work experience year staying with Mike and Ish, so here are some better photos…”

In the end, Maz declared that we needed to get our own princess and her bear to bed, so we left the youngsters to it and headed off up the hill. To my surprise, Alys and Enfys joined us, with the latter suggesting that two other young folk might appreciate some time of their own.

They came in around an hour after us, and quietly slipped into their bags. They were in separate bags, but when I slipped out for a small hours visit to the loo, they were fast asleep, Ish spooned around his new girl and her hand on his arm.

Time to give them space.

We ate breakfast as a family plus one (plus bear), and I noticed little nudges by Clara to Ish, with the occasional meaningful look towards Maz or myself. I waited until we had done the dishes and cleared everything away before dropping the hint.

“You want a word with me, son?”

He looked down at his feet for a few seconds, then nodded, so I led him outside into the slowly warming day.

“What is it, Ish?”

“Um, Clara, Dad. She says… Look, her staying with us was my idea, and it’s really nice, and… but she thinks you might see her as pushy, and she doesn’t want that. She wanted me to let you know that if it’s awkward, she can always go back with the others”

I settled myself, choosing what I was saying as carefully as I could. I knew far too much about imposter syndrome: who better?

“She’s shy, isn’t she?”

“Dad, she’s… We both are, Dad”

He looked away towards the Glyders, and away from me, before he spoke again.

“Not easy talking to girls, Dad. I wanted, I HAVE wanted to try at school and at college, but, well, I’m no good at it, I know that, and if I said the wrong thing, it would stay with me, stay with everyone I know. Here, it’s different”

He looked up sharply.

“That sounds wrong too, like I’m just playing with her, and, well, not. It’s just… Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t want to sound stupid, but when Mum was… We both know what being lonely is like. Loads of friends around us, but there’s still a big hole. Wants filling. I don’t know where things are going to go, but least I get that thing that Mr Nguyen always talks about, a fair go. Clara’s told me a lot about that man. Sort of defuses any ideas I have, things that might end up hurting her. She’s… Look. I saw you talking with Alicia and her Dad: did they mention someone called Serena?”

“I’ve heard the name”

“Right, then. Alicia went back to her Dad for one Christmas, and Serena went back to her Mum, same deal. Both went really well. Only difference is that while ‘Licia’s Mum cleared off, Serena’s Dad came back, in the small hours. He…”

A much longer pause.

“I’ve been lonely, Dad. Nana Deb’s girls, lots of them, have had much worse. That’s why I want to do the right things around Clara”

I didn’t want to know about Serena, but I simply had to, so I asked, stupidly.

“What happened, son? To this Serena?”

“When he… When her Dad came round that night, he brought what he needed to torch the house. Both Serena and her Mum. I lost mine for six years, but I, we, we got her back”

Another long pause.

“What do I say to Clara, Dad? About her offer?”

“Ah, son…”

I hugged him hard.

“Go and tell her she needs to start filling flasks and getting her boots on. Day’s wasting”

Enfys was waiting for us at Idwal Cottage, her bike properly locked and her riding kit stored in the café, so we were soon over the little wooden bridge and heading for the Kitchen, Maz oohing at the views while our local guide prattled on about synclines and the folding of rock strata. We stopped at the iron gate so that LC could skim some stones across the water and then continued up the rocky path, as I pointed out Bochlwyd Buttress and the Gribin Facet.

“Your Dad did himself an injury on that slope, Enfys”

She laughed out loud.

“Oh, would that have involved crampons and wet grass?”

“Yes”

“I KNEW it was him! All that ‘I knew someone once who…’ rubbish!”

I shared the story, which brought copious laughter as I came to the bit about a short technical axe, neglecting to mention that both myself and Steph had taken very similar slips, and then we were at the foot of the Slabs.

“Anyone need a shave, or to check their make-up, just look at one of the shiny bits as a mirror”

Enfys was indicating the two routes we would do, which start close together, while Ish and I racked our gear. He was going for an alternate lead with Maz, while Enfys led Clara. I would go fist, followed closely behind LC by Enfys, and then Ish. It meant I would miss seeing the fun at the Twin Cracks, but that couldn’t be helped. As is my custom, I strung the first two pitches together, arriving at the huge stance by the Twin Cracks, where there was more than enough room for all six of us. I’m tall enough to be able to set a foot on one of the polished excuses for footholds and ‘extend’ to reach the huge jug formed by the flake, and I suspected Ish would be the same, but as for the others---well.

“Ish?”

“Dad?”

“Next bit is easy, but gear can be thin. Make sure you extend any wires. It’s mostly pockets, so trust your feet”

That pitch can feel a bit way-out-there, but it is safe when taken steadily. I soon arrived at the base of the long corner, and brought LC up, Enfys climbing just beneath her and collecting my gear.

“Who lifted her at the Cracks, love?”

“Nobody, Uncle Mike. She looked at the Cracks, said ‘Jams!’, and her fingers were small enough. Could you shift up the corner a bit so that I can bring Clara up? Just a couple of feet. Just set some higher anchors, then transfer to them one by one”

“Who’s been climbing longest, love?”

“Who’s the professional here, love?”

She spoilt it by giggling, but who cared? I got myself and LC up further, Clara duly appeared and was secured in turn.

“I had forgotten I knew those words, Mr Rhodes! Any more hard bits?”

“Nope, but this part is really nice. Way up in the air, but easy climbing, and the views are sublime”

“Right. Thanks”

Enfys took my rope, and I started to float up what is, for so many people, the best part of the climb, for there are gear placements literally everywhere, the moves are simple and repetitive, and the climber is left to enjoy being four hundred feet or so from the ground with al that entails.

Up; a last savour of the position, and onto the belay ledge to bring up my daughter, who was laughing happily all the way.

“Do it again, Dad? I climbed the Cracks!”

“Not doing this one again, love, but another one, a bit harder. That one’s all sparkly”

Enfys brought Clara, who was clearly blown away, but nicely, and then Ish topped out. It was a little while before Maz got there, though. As we waited, Clara quite casually turned to Ish, said “Thank you”, and kissed him on the lips. That brought a stupendous blush from him, so I muttered something about ‘taking in’, and he then turned his concentration to securing his mother.

“Ish?”

“Yes, Mum?”

“Runners, Ish. Put some in. I was supposed to be leading that last bit, OK?”

I had a sudden flashback of myself on Tennis Shoe, so gave him a bit of a glare.

“But it was so easy, Dad”

“So’s hitting the ground, son. Your Mum’s right. Now, what did you mean you climbed the Cracks, Carolyn?”

Maz laughed and tousled the girls hair through the slots in her helmet.

“Small fingers, darling. They were massive holds to her. Four moves and she was on top of the flake”

Up we went, then, and down the scramble, where I did indeed lower off LC at the bulge, before we settled ourselves at the base of the slabs for lunch, followed by Charity, which I noticed had been upgraded from V Diff to Severe, just as Tennis Shoe had followed my own views of it and been raised to Hard Severe.

Back down again, LC chattering away about sparkles (there’s a lot of quartz on the route, and Maz was much calmer about Ish and his use of runners.

“Yeah, Dad, but that start! I got six feet up, and then I just slid all the way back down. That’s polished! Made me want to get some gear in”

Thank god for that. Climbing as three ropes had eaten almost all of the day, but my crew looked happy with what they had done.

“I have a suggestion, folks”

“What, Dad?”

“An easier route on the Gribin, and then…ice cream”

Enfys simply said, “Slab?”, and I nodded.

“Then straight down to the kiosk”

I was just slinging my rucksack, when the half-expected question arrived, from a typically grubby ‘traditional walker’.

“Been climbing, little lady?”

“Yes! Doing more!”

“Don’t go up too high, though. You toproping the mite?”

I shook my head.

“Nope. She’s seconding me”

“Really? Where?”

“Hope and Charity, so far. We’re off to push her grades tomorrow, cause she’s only managed Severe so far. There’s an HVS she’ll enjoy, a slate one. Anyway, we’re off for another route, and then she and her bear need ice cream”

I waved and set off before he could manage anything coherent, and it was Clara, of all people, who laughingly told me how bad I was. I reached out one-armed to hug her and immediately released her.

“Fancy leading one?”

We walked our ice creams down to the Chapel Rocks once we had finished the long routes for the day, so of course I had to set up a top rope for the ‘problems’. Clara had declined the offer of a go at leading, but she had clearly been hard-bitten by the bug, so we played around on the boulders in question until it was time to head down to Bethesda.

“Enfys?”

“Yes?”

“That slip by the Gribin. There’s another story, from here. An impromptu group of hostellers, both sexes, all in their twenties, yeah?”

“Go on…”

“Well, one of the lads, he has his eye on a particular girl, so he’s out to impress her. That little roof there?”

“I know it, yes. I may already be familiar with this story”

“I’m not, Mr Rhodes”

“Thank you, Clara. Anyway, there he is, tight T-shirt and short shorts”

“Like at the Perving Slab?”

“Exactly. So he’s under the roof, and he’s basically tensing and flexing so it all stands out, his muscle definition, and then he makes that energetic pull around the roof”

“And?”

“And he lets out the loudest of loud farts as he does so. Dreams shattered, oh dear”

“Ish?”

“Yeah?”

“Does your Dad always tell such crap jokes?”

I humphed.

“For an English teacher, oh dear. Anecdotes, woman, not jokes”

Ish snorted happily.

“They’re still crap, Dad”

“Remember one little thing son, he says aptly”

“Which is?”

“Clara will be leaving me with her e-mail address”

“Why?”

“So I can send her some of the photos we’ve taken today”

“And so?”

“And it’s traditional. She’s already seen you as a little kid. Not yet as a baby. And just remember the title of that O’Rourke book: Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut”

“Well, got you there then, cause to have a haircut, good or bad, you need to have some hair”

“Cheeky pup!”

“You’ve trained me well, Dad”

I turned to Maz to get her input, and she was weeping. Ish went straight to his mother, as did LC, so I joined them, for we were a family, and Maz buried her face in my shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry… Just seeing how much I missed, how much they stole from us”

“No need for sorry, love”

“Not just from me, darling! They stole it from all of us. It’s… It’s grief, love, but it’s also joy, and…”

She looked up, eyes screwed up to try and break the flow of tears, and kissed my cheek.

“It’s odd, darling. The loss, yeah? It’s there all the time, but then I see you, together with our son, and, well, pride, joy: I chose this man, we made this other man, look how right I was in my choices… Sorry, Enfys, Clara: still finding my feet again. Sorry”

Enfys joined us in the hug.

“Are we not bloody family, Maz? All of us, ah? What you lot have done for Alys? Amazed at your strength, we are”

“I haven’t done anything for her…”

“Your man and your son, as you said. You shaped them, so no more of that. Now, here’s our plan. Want to join us, Clara? Hugs are good”

“I’m not…”

“Get in and hug, woman. We’re plotting, and I need some of your input”

“What about?”

“I’m off home tonight, but I’ll try and pop out tomorrow, if you’re at the Bus Stop. For now, I think you need to report in, back to Deb. Then back to the bunkhouse, where I will have a menu awaiting, for the Dwr y Mynydd. You eat Chinese food, Clara?”

Maz laughed suddenly, and I pulled back slightly so I could see her face.

“The joke is?”

“Oh, I can’t remember which of them it was, but when we did that video meeting, all those years ago, one of them, Alys or Enfys, looked at me and said ‘Dwr y Mynydd eyes!’. And I suspect the culprit is the one here right now. So we have come full circle!”

That was my wife, in essence. Even when crushed, she was still finding joy behind the darkness.

We filled the old Hafod road as we walked back to car and bike, leaving Enfys to ride back as we drove the short distance to the camp site so that Clara could make her dirty-stop-out report. Gemma was watching as we walked in, her expression dismal, but when Ish took his girl’s hand, her smile could have dimmed the early evening sun.

“She behaved herself, Mike?”

“Impeccably, Deb”

An older girl was looking past Deb.

“What routes? Sorry, I’m Cathy”

“What did we do, Mr Rhodes?”

“Hope and Charity on the Slabs, and Slab on the Gribin”

“Oh! Polished as polished things”

Deb held up a hand.

“Sorry, Cathy, but need to sort something sharpish. You back with us, Clara? Meal portions need adjusting if you are, that’s all”

The girl looked at me, as if for permission, then gave her answer.

“Um, no. Enfys is ordering Chinese for us”

Deb’s smile was warmer than I had seen for ages.

“Just remember what the departure day is, woman. Plans for tomorrow?”

“Mr Rhodes said something about a Bus Stop”

Cathy yelped, then called out “Scott! Nell! Leo!”

When they arrived, Cathy grinned.

“Fancy keeping a clean slate tomorrow? That’s where this lot are going”

She then dropped her grin.

“Sorry, Mr Rhodes. Presumptuous of us. We’ve done a lot, but it’s mostly been in the Lakes, Scotland or the Alps. Never felt the confidence to try slate”

“Hang on… Are you the ones who got engaged halfway across ‘Dream of White Horses’?”

‘Nell’ nodded happily, as Cathy continued.

“What grade do you climb at, Mr Rhodes? Nell and me, we’ve managed E1 so far, at Tremadog”

“Oh, I’m pretty comfortable around E6, but I’m more of a grit climber”

Maz grinned, so much brighter since her spasm on the old road.

“Our child is up to Severe now”

As ‘Scott’ turned to Ish, clearly to ask which climbs, Maz simply carried on.

“No, our other child. Don’t know how she’ll cope on slate, as she likes gritstone---”

“JAMMING! HANDS AND FISTS!”

“---as you can hear”

Cathy mugged at Nell, saying, “Shall we just give up now?”, before laughing happily. I smiled back.

“The plan is to head over to the Bus Stop quarry, which is ideal for newcomers to slate, and then head in for Serengeti, which has some real classics. There’s a superb HVS, for example, with no long reaches”

Leo, who sounded Italian, blanched.

“You’re going to take the little girl up HVS?”

“Knowing her, she’ll take herself up. She’ll have a top and tail rope, though. If you want to meet us there, it would be nice”

“Right.. Clara? What are you wearing on your feet for this?”

“Rock shoes. Enfys found me some from her work place. Better than trainers”

She was suddenly filled with confidence, grinning at Ish before adding, “And my view’s better than at the Perving Slab”

A chorus of “Oh you tart, Clara!” erupted from every girl in earshot, and she blushed, but kept the grin. Time to get moving, Rhodes, and an idea hit me. We arranged a time for a morning rendezvous at the bunkhouse, and I rattled off a quick e-mail from my phone.

Enfys had the menus, I had the credit card, we all had the Chinese, and before we all met the others at the Bunkhouse, we had a video meeting with Keith and Penny, and the office staff who were in at work got to meet Kawan.

It was another superb day, LC managing Equinox, at VS, but I drew the line at Solstice, as it is not just HVS but involves a particularly nasty and sustained layback. We’d started on the relatively easy slab of Jagged Face, which is a balance and small holds affair, going as low as Hard Very difficult or Mild severe, before the far more technical (and vertical) Solstice face.

Leo and Scott each managed the layback on Solstice, after peeling on a toprope, and agreed that they really, REALLY didn’t fancy leading it, but everyone including LC cruised the easier route, Clara requiring quite a bit of advice before managing the finish.. We played on the easier slab for a bit, before Ish belayed me up Massambula, E2 5b, and none of the sods could follow. It was the same with Scarlet Runner, but then that is E4 5c, so not surprising. Enfys had now arrived, so at least I didn’t have to collect my own gear while being lowered off.

“Not your style of climb, Uncle Mike, all that delicate slab stuff”

“Variety is the spice of life, love. Who’s been pissing about with the grades?”

“Where?”

“Had a look at the new guides. Tennis Shoe has gone up from S to HS, Charity from V Diff to Severe, both of which are fair, but who downgraded Seamstress to VS from HVS?”

She just laughed, the heartless sod, so I resolved to keep using the old guidebook. We followed her into the maze that is the Dinorwic quarry, and finally arrived at the amazing feature that is the Seamstress Slab, like an axe head chopped into the Earth.

Scott was looking at it with wide eyes, his hand waving vaguely as he spotted the lines,

“Which one’s Seamstress, Mr Rhodes?”

Sod the new guidebook.

“That crack there son, with the narrow-track step over the overlap. HVS, The crack to the right is a lot harder. E2 5b. That one there… that’s 8a”

“Shit!”

“Bolted, though. I came here once, years ago, and someone had drawn a diagram on a bit of slate, with the words ‘Y Gwaedlyd’ on it. New guide says it’s that bit over there, grades it 7a, and that is an example of what I hate about so-called sport climbing”

“Which is?”

“When I found that piece of slate, I could see chalk on the route. What I couldn’t see were bolts. They’ve been added since. Someone who wanted to do the moves, but didn’t have the courage”

“What’s the name mean?”

“No idea. Enfys?”

“It means ’The one covered in blood’, Scott”

We spent several hours there, everyone but Enfys, Clara and LC leading Seamstress, but everybody successful in climbing it, while Enfys and myself led Seams The Same, with a few failures in both seconding and toproping. All three of the younger women failed, and I didn’t even try with LC, but Maz cruised ut after our sone peeled at the crux.

Different people, different strengths. Enfys was looking twitchy, and when I asked, she just pointed at a line of bolts.

“Heading the Shot, Uncle Mike. I’d like to try it, but I would need a really sound second. It’s been regraded as well”

“To?”

“E5 mumble”

“Sorry?”

“7a… Well, it’s 6b, but there’s a variation, and that pushes up the tech grade”

It was a full digit past my comfort zone, but, well, we wouldn’t be back here for ages, and I would be seconding.

“Okay, then”

This was Enfys as I had never seen her before, standing at the foot of a blank slab, gaze somewhere else, making little practice moves, and then “Climbing!”

She peeled at the crux, almost running down the face as she fell, and then insisted we pull the rope down so she could do it again. More deep breathing, more mental preparation, and this time she cracked it, moving up much faster on the upper slab.

How old and fat was I? How stupid? Sod it.

“Climbing!”

It was bloody hard, but I managed to reach the overlap without peeling, and equally without any idea as to why, and how, I hadn’t come off.

“Where to now, love?”

“Hand traverse left to that groove”

“Call that a groove?”

“It’s all you have”

“I left one of your quickdraws behind. I’d have peeled if I’d tried to recover it”

“No worries. I’ll ab down for it. Now…”

I had to sit at the top for a few minutes, my forearms and calves screaming at me, but I was grinning.

“I’ll wait here till you’re down, love, then take down the belay. Want a back up rope?”

“Please. Never happy with abbing”

I got Ish to attach a second rope to ours, and pulled it up to set up another belay before securing her as she abseiled down the slab to collect her quickdraw, and I then carried everything down the descent path to find Ish grinning.

“First time I’ve ever seen you with disco leg, Dad!”

“Cheeky monkey”

“Oh, not as cheeky as Mum”

“What have you done, my love?”

Maz was twinkling with glee.

“Got it all on video”

“And? I am sure there is more”

“E-mailed it to Chad and Ku”

“They’ll put it up on that website!”

“That, dear husband, is exactly what I suggested”

She was coming back to me. Staggering occasionally, often reaching out for a hand, but slowly learning to walk again.

We finished our time at the quarry with a tour-guide session from Enfys, pointing out the various ridiculously-hard test pieces, including one that started her giggling.

“That one’s called ‘Stack of nude books meets the Stick Man’. The ‘Stick Man’ is a nickname for one of the slate pioneers, and, well… The route’s E4 6a, so I think not for today, ah?”

Leo looked confused.

“This stack, of nude books?”

Enfys laughed, once again.

“The books weren’t nude, they were collections of nudes. I suppose the books WERE nude, in that sense”

Ish called out, “Get to the point!”

“Okay. When our heroes arrived at the crag, there was a pile of magazines by the start. Gentlemen’s magazines. Um, left-handed reading material”

Leo was still puzzled, clearly.

“Why is reading left-handed?”

Nell and Cathy were lost in hilarity, so Scott leant in closer and whispered to him before making a rapid and very graphic motion with his right hand, and the lad’s eyes went wide.

“NO!”

Enfys just replied. “YES!” and then gave an anecdote about her wife’s studies.

“Alys had to do various biome, ecosystem, whatever the word is: she did ecology and conservation, so she had to look at all sorts of different environments. We have an invasive species here; most people don’t understand how destructive it is, cause it looks pretty”

I offered “Rhododendrons?”, and she nodded.

“Anyway, one of the standard research topics for her course is in ways to get rid of them, and she was down near Beddgelert. Bunch of the things had formed a sort of bower, and, little ears?”

I looked across to LC, who was showing Kawan how to draw pictures on bits of slate.

“Fine, love”

“Okay. So there is my beloved, looking into this little space, and there is, as you have guessed, a pile of magazines there. What made her laugh wasn’t the fact that there was a single right-hand rubber dishwashing glove on top of the pile, but that a rather rare fungus was growing next to it, Called Caninis mutinus or something like that”

Clara was chuckling, obviously in full understanding, and Enfys just nodded at her as Cathy asked, “And?”. Enfys simply waved at Clara to deliver the punch line.

“Well, I like mushrooms, and when we go camping, Deb knows some tasty ones, so we have a guidebook at the House. I see Cathy and Nell know what I’m about to deliver”

Two smirking nods.

“So that fungus is part of the stinkhorn family, and its Englishname is what it looks like: dog’s dick”

That broke the silence, as laughter took our group, and then we started the process of packing, delayed only by LC’s demands for ‘just one more, which were allayed by Enfys planting a runner at about fifteen feet in the Seamstress crack so that our daughter could have a little play on the ‘blank’ slate beside it.

“Wife of mine?”

“Husband?”

“What I said about a chalk bag for her sweets? I think she now needs a second one, for her chalk. I suspect we have another Enfys here”

“consider it listed, Mr MBR. Now, what is our plan for the evening? Pub?”

“Sounds good to me”

Enfys confirmed that she would be going home to Bangor, but Cathy was waving her mobile.

“Just checked with Deb. She’s happy to do designated driver tonight, so we’ll be there as well. I’ve also had a cheeky thought: is there room for four tonight in your bunkhouse?”

Enfys pulled her phone out, tapped a key, and then launched into her own language, which had LC fascinated, before confirming that her father had agreed to reserve some shelf space for them. Cathy smiled, which seemed to be her default state.

“Then we are agreed. Enfys, if I give you my addy, could you mail me any vids or pics you’ve got, and I’ll bring my laptop. Ish? You up for that? I’ve already got Clara’s”

My boy surprised me just then, as well as making me proud.

“Need to clear it with Dad, because that is the first time I have ever seen him shake on a climb, and while it’s okay to laugh when we’re like this, it’s not the same with strangers”

Our boy. I shook my head.

“Thanks, son, but it’s actually a good training point. I should have kept that heel lower. I think we should be asking Enfys, really, after that peel”

That woman just laughed out, “Na! Shows them that falling is part of the game, as well as proving that gear works”

So it was back to the bunkhouse, some of us to queue for the shower while others got the use of the Hiatts’ bathroom, and then some quiet time reading or napping before the walk down to the Cow, which was pretty quiet until the arrival of Debbie’s horde, who seemed to gravitate directly to Ish, who received a large number of hugs. Debbie and her husband found seats near me and my girls, however.

“Any issues, Mr Rhodes?”

I shook my head, but with a smile.

“We’ve had our conversations with both of them, Deb. He’s happy, but realistic, and she, well, still bloody waters, there”

“Aye, there are. That’s the thing with so many of them. Everyone locks onto ‘what’ they are instead of ‘who’. That’s part of what I try to give them, space to be a person. Like Gemma, there: has her own reputation now, as a pro chef. My man here found the key to that, didn’t you?”

Frank shrugged.

“Simple, really. Just pointed out to a few idiots that if they were willing to queue to buy what she made, it probably made sense to keep her as sweet as her pastries. Worked, mostly”

Maz asked, “Mostly?”, and he grinned.

“Aye, ‘mostly’. One time, it was almost funny. Someone started the usual stuff, no originality to them at all, is there? When I say ‘almost funny’, there was a couple there, two lads, I mean, and one of them fronted up to the arsehole, and got a smack for his trouble”

Maz looked at me with a wince.

“How could that be funny, Frank?”

“Oh, we have some very regular customers, and a couple were there from Diane’s crew. What’s that phrase they like, love?”

Debbie grinned happily, but also surprisingly ferally at the same time.

“Only the most necessary of force was used in their arrest”

Our burst of laughter was interrupted by a call of “Budge over!” from Pen, as she and Keith appeared, each carrying a folded camping stool.

“If you lot are annexing our bunkhouse, me and Keefy will get a drink out of you, at least. You eaten?”

Maz grinned a welcome, her mood clearly on an upswing.

“Just ordered. Please tell me we’re not planning on hitting the chippy afterwards!”

I noticed a sharp look from Frank towards his wife, but she simply slipped an arm through his for a squeeze. Their business. That was when LC announced that she liked crunchy sausages, which drew Deb’s attention back to the rest of us.

“What are crunchy sausages, Carolyn?”

“They’re like fish”

“How are they like fish?”

“They’re crunchy”

Scott was the one now laughing, and he called out, “She means ‘battered’, Mr Rhodes”

“Ah!”

Nell took over.

“Remember that place in Fort William, darling?”

Her man shuddered.

“Oh, dio mio, I was trying to forget it!”

“Not possible, Leo. Not possible. GEMMA!”

Another bit of wriggling, just as our food arrived, LC on non-crunchy sausages for now, and Gemma settled herself a little away from our table.

“Nell?”

“I wanted your professional opinion, as a chef type person. Leo has already given his as an Italian. That Scottish trip we did years ago?”

“The, er, pointless one?”

Nell actually blushed at that, then grinned.

“Yes, that one. We were trying out Scots food, like you do, and some of it was inspired, like clampi”

The rest of us made a range of uncomprehending noises, and Leo said, “Vongole in tempura. Battered clams, without shells. Like scampi”

“Thank you, love. So we had things like clampi, Cullen skink, lots of salmon dishes, and then… We saw a chip shop when we passed through Glasgow, and they offered deep fried battered Mars bars”

Gemma made a peculiar noise, and Cathy waved at her.

“She won’t even cook doughnuts”

Keith and Penny were chuckling now, and he simply nodded at his wife before saying, “We do believe we know where this is going. Chip shop in Fort Bill? Run by Turkish people?”

Nell nodded.

“You’ll have guessed right, then. So, we look at the sign, and it’s one of those places that does all sorts of fast food: kebabs, chips and pizza, so Leo says—”

“Can we see what the pizza was like. A really stupid thing to do”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you just have to see something, even if it’s impossible to unsee later. We go in, and we ask what the pizza is like, and what they have is those little ‘individual’ cheese, tomato and pepperoni things from a freezer. My husband here, he shrugs and says ’Okay’, and the man takes the pizza and only dips it into the batter tray and drops it into the fish frier”

Gemma looked ill, but Nell was now in full flow.

“And it wasn’t just pizzas they did that with. Black pudding, haggis, meat pies, Scotch pies, all battered and deep-fried. And no, Leo. It isn’t tempura. It’s just thick, thick batter. The Scottish heart disease figures are awful. Which is partly why I am having this mushroom stroganoff. I won’t have chips later”

Dab murmured, “We’ll see…”, and got another blush. Gemma changed the subject abruptly, asking when we were leaving.

“Mid September, love. Maz and I are off work for now, but Ish is back to his studies in October. We still have to, um, smooth off some rough edges before our new flower is planted out”

“You’re coming down to Cardiff, though?”

I nodded.

“Got a lot of people to thank down there, Gem, so yes”

“Where are you staying?”

“No idea as yet”

Deb grunted.

“I have”

“Sorry?”

“Already had an offer for you, if Ish doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor, or a sofa. By ‘floor’, I mean on a camping mat, of course. Or Carolyn here. I mean her on the mat, not Ish on her”

“Where’s this?”

“A number of friends know about you from the news reports, Mike. Some of them worked out that you’d probably stop by, and they’ve offered spare bedrooms and that”

“To strangers?”

“To other victims, Mike. More importantly, to survivors. Obs. I’ll talk more once you have your dates sorted, but accommodation is already there, depending only on those dates. Just let me know, or Di, or Lexie”

Someone obviously took ‘paying it forward’ bloody seriously. Deb smiled, cheekily.

“Of course, there is always the offer of space in the clubhouse, but I somehow doubt that place would be suitable for Di and her mates. Oh, while I remember: I checked out Neil’s website and, well, we spoke. He has offered me a package, and it will be free, and… sorry”

Frank hugged her to him.

“Been said before, Mike, about wounds that don’t heal”

Deb kissed his cheek.

“It was your suggestion, love, and it was a sound one”

“Aye. Just occasionally, I do something right. Anyway, Neil wants to say goodbye to his wife, and as he was there when Deb did that for her Mam and Dad, she’s going to return the honour”

“Yup. Like your accommodation, we just need to agree a suitable date. Make a weekend of it, a long one. We’ll do the… we’ll do what needs doing, and then I’ll take him round some places I need pictures of. Warmer memories”

I settled down to my meal just then, as well as finishing my pint, leaving my half-empty plate for a visit to the bar to get another round, Ish appearing at my shoulder, empty glasses in hand.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“Is it always like this? The teasing? They’re boosting each other, more and more”

I nodded.

“Get used to it, son, but always remember how much worse it could be”

“How could it get worse?”

“You’d get no teasing if you were still on your own. That sort of worse”

“Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. What’s their Nana said about Cardiff? The girls keep asking”

“As I understand it, we’re being offered crashing space. People’s spare rooms, possibly with you camping on a floor, I’m afraid”

“Some of them said about a bike place, Dad”

“Not somewhere Di or Lexie could go, son. Now, what would you like to do tomorrow?”

“Have you asked Mum that?”

He was absolutely right, I realised. The last few days, I had been so locked onto the climbing, I had simply assumed her agreement to whatever plans Enfys and I had cooked up.

“Has she said anything, son?”

“Not like that, Dad, but she has three of her bucket list things, and another bird place. They’re in opposite directions, though”

“Where’s the bird place?”

“Far side of Anglesey. Other ones are a bit south of here”

“They are?”

“That Italian village, the steam train near it and something about a dog’s grave. Got a suggestion, if you want”

“Go on”

“We do one day for the three to the south, and we do it on Clara’s last full day here, please”

“Okay… and the birds?”

“We do that the morning of their folk club day, and then we keep Elsie happy by spending the later part of the day on that easy slab thing by the campsite. She’d complain if we didn’t give her some climbing”

“Right. And tomorrow?”

He grinned.

“Horseshoe. Those girls go on and on about it, and if you talk to Mum…”

I did, on the way back to the bunkhouse, and got a kiss.

“He’s a very wise boy, darling. Debbie told me about Cemlyn, and we can drive there by way of Malltraeth and a side trip to South Stack. Roseate terns!”

Another kiss.

“Portmeirion and Ffestiniog are from very old telly programmes that Alan liked”

“The Prisoner?”

“Yes, and Ivor the Engine”

“I remember that one. You know the dog story isn’t true?”

“Don’t care. It’s a good story, and there’s something else there, something for our little girl”

That intrigued me, but we had a good set of plans, courtesy of our boy, and I slept well. I wasn’t in quite so good a mood in the morning, as getting into the car park at Pen y Pass was a slow business. The day came with a surprise, though, as we slogged our way up to the ridge, LC on a short safety line, and Clara casually announced that she loved the spot.

“Done it several times, I… sorry”

She cast a quick glance at Ish, slightly pink in the cheeks, then continued, with a smile.

“I’ve been along the edge a few times, with Cath and Nell and their husbands, and with Debbie. I love it!”

That eased some of my worries, changing the dynamics considerably, and she proved to be both confident and competent on the narrow sections of the ridge. Maz was ecstatic, even though LC had to be reminded that Kawan didn’t really need to see that bit all the way over there, but stay close to us until we were in the promised café.

We arrived at the top of the very last square pinnacle on Crib Goch, and I released LC to scramble down into the saddle and join Ish and Clara just as Maz turned to look back along the ridge, muttering under her breath.

“What was that, love?”

She turned a stiff smile my way.

“I said ‘Fuck you Suleiman’, darling”

And your bloody mother, my love, but I didn’t say that aloud. Instead, I looked back down into the saddle, where my boy was rather busy with his lips as well as those of our guest, oh dear.

Along the next ridge, which is wider but longer, past the trig point, down to the railway line and then into the café, before the slippery descent on the Watkin Path to the ascent to the fresher-seeming air on top of Lliwedd, and finally another cuppa at the car park., which meant I could put down LC, whose energy reserves had vanished as soon as we had reached the Miners’ Track. My own knees were aching, and for the first time, we had received a little shower of rain just as we came within sight of the last bend of the footpath.

It didn’t last, and we were soon back to fair-weather cumulus set in expanses of blue, and a ride back to Bethesda which left me the only one awake in the car until we were parked outside the little supermarket, where I chivvied them all awake to gather the makings of an evening meal and the next morning’s breakfast.

I was asleep by eight that night. Getting old, Rhodes.

Ish and Clara were off together in the morning by bus, their target a certain record shop, while Maz, LC and I visited Caernarfon for yet another tick for Maz’s list. Pasta and salad that evening, none of it deep-fried, and another sober night. I almost felt virtuous, consoling myself with the fact that we would have music and silliness the following evening. We spent our time relaxing in the bunkhouse, downloading all of our photos, including those taken by LC, and mailing them to everyone we thought needed a smile, or a laugh, or maybe assurance we hadn’t forgotten them. On a hunch, I clicked onto the climbing wall’s website, and yes, there we were.

Among a flurry of bad puns and phrases such as ‘Like father(and mother)…’ we had LC on Equinox, as well as Seamstress, Ish emerging from the exit of Ivy Chimney, a comparable set of videos of Ish, Clara and LC on the Twin Cracks, and several shots of Maz smiling, along with the information that we would be back ‘soon’ and touting for other families to visit the place. My beloved simply laughed, asking if we should try negotiating a fee, while Clara asked if there was any way her own video could be removed.

Ish looked a little puzzled.

“Why, Clar?”

“Cause it makes me look silly, falling off like that”

“It shows you getting up it as well. That’s the point of it, that you didn’t give up, that you worked on it and solved it”

“Yeah, but you and your Dad just reached up!”

“Each of us is nearly two metres tall, Clar. And before you mention my sister, she’s got tiny fingers. You climbed it, made me proud of you. That’s the point. And then you went off and climbed that stuff on slate”

“You sure?”

He reached over the table for her hands.

“I’m sure”

There was another meaning there, it seemed, but they only had a couple of days, so I decided it was best left lying.