‘Yes. I had to push her to say anything. But she said –’ his eyes glaze over as if he’s remembering –‘that she didn’t really trust Ivanna. It turned out she had another man at the same time as she was seeing me, which was not part of my master plan.’
‘Sounds like Marin has good instincts. And in my experience, master plans don’t work out,’ I commiserate. ‘Still, we’ve given up all that now – we are happy celibates who have friends.’
‘That would make a snappy business card,’ says Finn.
‘Definitely going to have some printed up,’ I deadpan back.Having a friend is nice, I think.
‘OK, we have stopped for two minutes.’ He’s looking at his watch, a manly sort of piece of machinery that washalf-divers’ watch,half-‘I am going to haul a submarine up with one hand, while I’m at it’ thing. ‘You can’t stop too often or you seize up.’
‘This is a military exercise, then, is it?’ I say, heavy on the irony.
‘Nearly.’
We set off again slightly more slowly. He keeps his pace slower so that we’re walking together and he talks, explaining about the peaks in the distance, showing areas where his hiker pals go on different days, how it all looks beautiful on a day like today but once the mist comes down and it gets dark, people get lost. Fog can be dreadful, hypothermia can set in. You have to be fully prepared to go out and hike, otherwise you could get the poor rescue helicopter circling the area trying to find you.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of people who get lost up here at weekends,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I panted, ‘I would, I really would. I would never be one of them, though, because I would not be up here in the first place.’
Three hours later, after managing asit-down on a rock where we ate some sandwiches that Finn supplied, because he figured my jar of peanut butter, two spoons and a flask of coffee was not sufficient, we arrived back at our cars.
Every bit of me aches and I feel exhausted but pleased with myself. I did it. I have hiked, high up on top of the mountains in winter. Colour me achieved.
‘Now wasn’t that wonderful?’ he says, stretching.
‘Sure.’ I’ve been dreaming of a hot bath for the past thirtyminutes, boiling hot with possibly some Epsom salts in it and lavender and Iwilllie there for an hour until my limbs melt...
‘Come again next weekend?’
‘Are you mad?’ I say. ‘It will take me three weeks to get over this.’
‘No, it won’t,’ he says fondly. ‘Epsom salts in your bath, you’ll be grand.’
I laugh. ‘Already there,’ I say.
We fist bump and head to our separate cars. He waits until I get in my car and start to drive away, waving me off. He really is very gentlemanly, I think, with a nice warm glow inside me.
11
Marin
It’s true: when your children are teenagers, you never sleep at night when they’re out until they’re home in their beds again. Sleeping implies an inability to leap out of bed and rescue them from the emergency that will surely find them.
Rachel and her best friend, Megan, are out. It’s a Friday night and mymama-radar is on high alert.
I’ve dozed but, suddenly, I am wide awake. Two a.m. The girls insisted they’d be home by one. An hour ago. I grab my phone and dial Rachel’s number. Straight to voicemail. I try Megan. No answer.
She’s never been out this late without it being an overnight. They areeighteen. Kids.
Something’s gone wrong; I feel it.
The bed beside me is empty because Nate is at aschmoozing-client event in the city and though he said he’d be late, did he mean this late? Did the client fall asleep in his soup?
My brain sloughs this off as unimportant – what matters is that I feel,I know, something’s wrong and I need to rescue my daughter.
But who will mind Joey, nine, blissfully asleep in his bedroom, the walls of which are innocently covered with robot posters? I text Rachel, saying that if taxis were a problem, Louise, Megan’s mother, would have to pick them up as I couldn’t leave Joey.
We don’t have a blood pressure machine, but I’m sure I can feel mine increasing silently.
