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The village was almost too chocolate-box Lakeland to be true. Squat white cottages hunkered down, their doors adorned with holly wreaths. Woodsmoke spiralled from the distinctive chunky chimneys, its sweet smell mingling with the damp tang of a winter morning.

The local hotel was strung with fairy lights, as yet unlit. Katie would have been sorely tempted to call in for a hot chocolate but the deserted car park and dark windows told her it wasn’t open yet.

‘I wonder why Dalton didn’t decide to settle here in the village,’ she said, passing a post box set in a cottage wall, a remnant from several monarchs ago. ‘It’s isolated enough and would have been even more difficult to reach back in the day.’

‘Because he didn’t want the cosy trappings of society,’ Ned said. ‘I think the path to Castle Crag must be this way.’ He pointed towards the far end of the valley where the fells rose steeply into mountains that included England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike.

Katie held out her phone and pointed in the opposite direction, back towards the lake. ‘Actually, it’s this way. I downloaded an app with the route last night. It works on GPS so you don’t need signal.’

Ned smiled. ‘Then it’s a good job I asked you to come.’

‘I think I asked you,’ Katie said. ‘But it is a good job we’re together, though I need to be back at the jetty by three …’

‘I hope so. Otherwise it will be dark. Did you know the professionals call that being “benighted”? What a delicious word.’

‘Whatever you call it, I don’t want to be it.’

Katie led the way along the river path from the car park, trying to escape into the simple pleasure of being out in the glorious Lakeland countryside with the burbling of the water and chirping of a robin flitting to and fro across the path.

Even in winter there was colour and life in the landscape. Holly and rowan berries glistened on the trees, orange and green lichen adorned the stone walls, and the fells were covered in russet bracken, waiting to spring into life in a few months. Sweet-faced Herdwick sheep, their shaggy coats daubed with shepherd’s marks, stared at them as they passed by.

Ned spoke little, forging on ahead, eager to reach the cave, but whether that was out of curiosity or eagerness to talk to her, she wasn’t sure. Katie was fighting the eerie feeling that the past year hadn’t happened at all; that this – she and Ned together – was normality.

It would be so easy to slip back into that comforting groove, yet she also knew she couldn’t go backwards. The next few hours were a blank page that she wasn’t certain how to fill. Only by talking and by starting the process could she even begin to find how her – their – story would finally end.

She swallowed hard. What if she never did know where their story was going? What if she was lost forever in a cycle of ‘what-ifs’, never knowing what the right decision was?

Her app beeped at a fork in the trail so she stopped to check the app. ‘We need to take this path up on the left and follow it up the crag for about fifty metres.’

‘Be careful,’ Ned warned. ‘This is a tricky bit apparently.’

‘Apparently?’

‘According to Arlo. I asked him about the route before we came out. I might not remember everything he said, but he definitely mentioned this memorial bench.’

Her stomach lurched. ‘You told him we were both coming to the cave?’

‘Yes. He gave me a pep talk about safety on the fells when I first arrived. Always tell someone where you’re going and what time you expect to be back.’

‘That’s if you’re walking alone,’ Katie said, realising that all her efforts to avoid telling Arlo her plans had failed.

‘Yes, but in his eyes we’re both townies with no clue and, joking apart, I thought it was the sensible thing to do.’

‘It is,’ Katie said, realising that she had no valid reason for keeping a secret from Arlo. ‘This does look steep. Let’s concentrate on getting up to the cave safely.’

She focused on the short scramble. The spasm in her injured leg had settled into a dull ache and she was also breathing hard, unaccustomed to the effort. Walking laps of the London parks, regular physio and gentle sessions at the gym had helped her physical recovery, but a scramble up a steep fell was at the limit of her comfort zone.

There was no way she was going to let Ned know that.

Finally, she allowed him to help her up a final steep step that his long limbs had taken in their stride but her shorter ones found more of a challenge. ‘I need to do more leg work in the gym. In fact, I need to go to the gym more often.’

As she stretched, she felt her thigh spasm sharply. ‘Ow.’

‘Katie?’ Ned looked down at her with concern. ‘Are you OK?’

‘F-fine,’ she grunted. ‘I can manage from here.’ Hauling herself up, Katie stood on the rocky platform at the entrance of the cave where an inscription read ‘DON’T WASTE WORDS’ – or, to be precise, ‘DON’T!! WASTE WORRDS’. She sucked in a few breaths and, as her heart rate returned to normal, gazed at the view. The whole of the lake spread out below: green fields, wooded slopes and fells sprinkled with snow. A thin plume of smoke rose from a farmhouse in the vale and somewhere in the distance she was sure she could hear church bells.

‘Are you really feeling OK?’ Ned asked. ‘I should have realised this might be challenging for you.’