It helps that the room looks as though he might walk back into it any minute, as though he’s just popped out to the shops
or been out for a beer with his mates. There’s a torn and crumpled T-shirt flung over the back of his desk chair. I pick it
up, intending to drop it into the laundry bin. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead, draping the T-shirt across my palms
like a flannel, I cover my face with it, imbibing Olly, breathing him deep inside me. It feels as though I’m doing something
forbidden. Something a mother isn’t supposed to do. Olly’s scent, sweet and sour, sweat and aftershave, envelops me. If Olly
were to walk in on me, he would be horrified. But why should I feel guilty? Just as a baby derives comfort from the smell
of its mother, I need Olly’s scent to reassure me now. I reluctantly leave and close Olly’s bedroom door behind me, taking
the T-shirt with me and scrunching it into a ball. Once in my own room, I look around for a place to put it. I find myself
glancing over my shoulder, as if expecting to be caught out, before settling it carefully under Jack’s pillow, as though I’m
handling a precious talisman rather than a grubby rag. It will be my harmless little secret, something to hug when I wake
at three a.m.
Now what?
I ring my father. “Daddy, it’s me, Hope. Do you fancy a film and something to eat this evening?”
“Not tonight, poppet, I’ve got the boys over for bridge.”
“Good for you.”
“I work on the principle that whiskey and activity are the best antidotes to grief.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I can do. But would you mind if we skipped the film? I’d far rather eat and talk.”
“Me, too, I just thought a film might be a better distraction than me.”
“Nonsense. A good bottle of claret and a proper conversation will cheer us both up.”
“Sorry to be sentimental, Daddy, but I do love you.”
“The feeling’s mutual, you silly girl.”
I put down the phone and turn to Susanna, who’s standing outside my study door, waiting for permission to come in.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, babe,” I say. “Don’t suppose you’d say no to a play in the park?” Susanna wags her tail
and looks up at me with a look of pure devotion. For the moment I’m prepared to overlook the fact that she gazes at anyone
who’s nice to her in exactly the same way. I’ll take my devotion where I find it.
• • •
I think my father’s right about the importance of distraction. With under four weeks to go until the trek, I’m focusing on
building up my strength and stamina.
And shopping.
I never would have thought that a morning in Field & Trek could make my heart beat faster. Not compared, say, to splashing
out at Harvey Nichols in the days when one of the perks of my job was a large clothing allowance. There is just so much gorgeous
kit to choose from. The world of trekking even has its own iconic brands. Fashion, for example, has Prada; trekking has Brasher,
named for the mountaineer’s famous lightweight boot. And while Giorgio Armani favors colors such as taupe and greige, the
Salomon women’s Adventure Trek 7 boot goes one better, featuring a best seller in the fetching color known as swamp.
I have more accessories than Victoria Beckham. I just hope I can breathe at altitude as well as my jacket boasts it can. Also
in my kit are thermals for nights and various layers, from T-shirts to fleeces to waterproofs for days. I have a pair of trousers
that can be transformed into shorts by undoing the horizontal zips located above the knee. A look I doubt will hit the catwalk,
but wonderfully practical when you’re trying to cool down halfway up a mountain in a heat wave. After much deliberation, I’ve
purchased a three-seasons sleeping bag and a roll-up mat, as opposed to a two-seasons or four-seasons bag. It’s like learning
a new language, this secret code of adventure sportswear. I’ve also bought one large rucksack—which will hold everything I
don’t need with me while I’m walking and which our Berber guides will strap to their fleet of mules during the day—and a mini
rucksack to hold my essential day kit, such as water and energy bars. And lipstick. I wonder if all the women on the trek
are as vain as me.
My most prized possession is what I refer to as my miner’s lamp. Battery-operated, it goes round your head like a bandanna.
I can use it for finding my way round the campsite at night if I need to find a rock to pee behind, and for reading when my
tent companion is asleep. So far I’ve not been allocated a tent companion.
Thanks to some arm-twisting of friends and relatives and the generosity of some of the big-name advertisers who used to buy
space in
Jasmine
, I’ve raised about three grand in sponsorship money. Like every novice trekker, I’m more worried about the toilet facilities
than I am about falling into a ravine or not being able to keep up with the rest of the group.
• • •
Outside, way above the clouds, is a vermilion setting sun, offset by an almost full moon. Inside, clogging up the airplane
aisles, is a motley mob of seventy fellow trekkers, mostly strangers to one another, gathered from Cornwall to Fife and ranging
in age, I would estimate, from around twenty to sixtysomething. The mood has changed from uncertainty to excitement, and the
airline staff are having to try to contain the crowd, ordering everyone back to their seats. In half an hour we’ll be touching
down in Casablanca before catching our internal flight for a one-night stopover at a hotel in Ouarzazate, close to where the
trek proper begins in the remote Jebel Sahro, which lies between the Sahara and the High Atlas Mountains. Sally, like the
mother of the bride at a wedding reception, has been combing the aisle, checking that all her guests are comfortable and enjoying
themselves and have had enough to eat.
“Everything okay, Hope?” She stops next to my aisle seat, looking even taller and more willowy than usual. The more attractive
Sally looks, the more uncomfortable I feel.
“Just look at that sunset,” I reply, pointing at the luminous sky through the window. “But I can’t say I’m not nervous.”
“It’s always scary the first time. But you’ll be fine. Even with your recent surgery, you’re well above average fitness. By
the way, you and I are sharing.”
“Sharing?”
“The tent. Not tonight at the hotel but for the duration of the trek.”
I’m hoping I misheard. “But what about Nick?”
“No way. He snores like a warthog, and the altitude only makes it worse. He’s bagged himself one of the single tents. I hope
that’s all right with you.”
Sally flashes one of her sincerest smiles and gives a little toss of her head, causing her streaky blond hair to swing in
a credible approximation of a L’Oréal model in a shampoo ad. It occurs to me that saintly Sally might be one of the most coolly
calculating people I’ve ever met. I don’t buy this snoring business. Sally wants something from me, and this is her way of
making sure she gets it. At first I had naively thought Sally’s loss had conferred on her a kind of impregnable goodness.
What I’m wondering now is whether her pain has simply hardened her, made her tunnel-visioned in her ambition to achieve her
goals. Or maybe she was always that way. What exactly are her goals? Cat’s Place, for sure. But what does she want from me?
And from Jack? If it really is Jack she’s after, then sharing a tent with me in order to find out how much of a rival for
his affections I still am would be sheer cruelty.
This is not at all what I planned, although, come to think of it, not a single thing I’ve done all year has gone according
to how I’ve planned it. So I’m going to have to either plan a whole lot better or give up making plans altogether. My intention
was to focus my energy on the physical challenge ahead, and I was rather hoping that this whole experience would clear my
head, not addle it further. Not a chance, it would seem.
“Sharing with you would be great,” I say, wondering if my hesitance—or rather my hypocrisy—shows, but certainly not about
to have a confrontation at thirty thousand feet. I’d far rather have shared with a complete stranger, one who I could be absolutely
certain wasn’t screwing my husband. “Know thine enemy” is the expression that comes to mind as the seat-belt sign comes on,
and I wonder if perhaps I can’t turn this to my own advantage.
Don’t be such a suspicious cow,
I chide myself a moment later.
As the copilot announces, “Ten minutes to landing,” I close my eyes and hope that coming to Morocco was a good decision.
• • •
Coming to Morocco
was
a good decision. I am elated, exhilarated, and exhausted. And too hyped up to sleep. It’s midnight, and apart from the sonorous
snoring that punctuates the peace of our wilderness settlement, all is still. I have decided to bring my mat and sleeping
bag and miniature pillow out into the open. It must be close to freezing, but I’m layered up against the elements with thermals
and gloves and a warm hat pulled low over my forehead and ears. The sky is so big and the stars so bright that I can’t resist
making my bed outside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the tent I share with Sally. I intend to lie here until the discomfort
of the cold outweighs the pleasure of the cloudless night. Every now and then, among the myriad glittering diamonds, a single
star shoots across the endless sky and makes me catch my breath.
Out here in the wilderness, I don’t feel fifty. I don’t feel any age at all. My age has simply floated away and settled itself
on a distant, snowy peak. For hours at a time I find I am simply able to free my mind of everything other than my surroundings.
I am conscious of the straining of my calves and thighs, a niggling ache in my menopausal hips, and a certain crankiness in
my knees. The balls of my feet are sore and stinging. But none of these physical sensations troubles me. I welcome them, in
fact. It’s a relief to allow my body rather than my mind to drive me on. I’m reveling in this feeling of being fully physically
engaged.
I’m beginning to feel the chill in my sleeping bag under the stars when I’m startled by the sound of crunching stone. I sit
bolt upright with a thumping heart.
“Is that you, Hope?”
I breathe a sigh of relief at the sound of Nick’s voice.
“Thank God,” I whisper. “I thought it was a rattlesnake or something. Sally’s fast asleep, you’d better not disturb her.”
“I wasn’t planning to. I had to get up for a piss, and I spotted a large lump on the ground right outside your tent. Thought
I ought to come and investigate.”
“And the large lump was me.” I giggle. “Want to come and join me for a while before I freeze to death?”
“Is that an invitation to get into your sleeping bag?”
“It most certainly is not.”
“That’s a shame, we could have warmed each other’s toes.”
“How about you going and getting
your
sleeping bag and coming straight back? Have you got any supplies? I’m starving.”
“I have one gross of Tracker bars, six bananas, and a flask of brandy in my rucksack. Will that do?”
“You can hold the bananas. But yes, please, to a Tracker bar and a swig of the hard stuff.”
Nick disappears once more into the darkness. I breathe out a chill mist and smile up at the night sky. How odd it feels to
be tucked up in a sleeping bag like this, on a late-November night in Morocco, inviting this charming man I’ve only recently
met to come and lie next to me, and not caring at all how funny I must look lying here in my woolly hat with a miner’s lamp
strapped around my head.
As soon as I hear the sound of stones crunching again, I switch on my lamp, sending a beam of light in Nick’s direction.
He looks so comical on tiptoes in his long johns, fleece, and bobble hat, with his walking boots untied, his sleeping bag
trailing against the ground, and clutching what must be Tracker bars between his teeth.
“Oh, goody,” I say. “A midnight feast.”
He leans down toward me, proffering the snack bars still lodged in his mouth. I pluck them from his lips, and he sets about
arranging himself. His teeth are chattering.
“Hurry up and get into your sleeping bag,” I say, “before frostbite sets in.”
“Bugger, I forgot my pillow.”
“No worries, you can share mine, even though it’s barely big enough for my own head.”
“We’re going to be knackered tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be worth it.”
Finally, Nick is sorted, but sharing such a tiny pillow is quite impossible.
“How about I have the pillow and you rest your head on my manly chest?” Nick suggests.
“You can’t get pregnant that way, can you?” I ask.
Nick snorts. “I suppose there’s always a first time. You know, you’d look a lot more attractive without that lamp thing on
your head.”
“But I’m not trying to look attractive,” I say, slipping it over my head with a grin. “Now, where’s the brandy?”
For the next few minutes we lie there in companionable silence, my head resting on Nick’s chest, the two of us munching on
our Tracker bars and passing his hip flask to and fro, staring up at the stars. The brandy suffuses my insides with waves
of warmth.
“Life is a mystery to be experienced, not a riddle to be solved,” says Nick, sighing gently.
“Fine words, but easier to say than live by. I’m so glad you and Sally talked me into this.”
“Me, too.” Nick lifts his head and plants a little kiss on the top of my woolly hat.
“Hey, pal, what was that for?”
“For making me forget myself.”
“That’s not me, it’s the mountains.”
“It’s partly the mountains, but it’s you, too.”
“Nick, I’ve been dying to ask you something. Why do you think Sally wanted to share with me?”
“Because I sometimes snore, I suppose. Isn’t that what she told you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe her.”
“But I do snore.”
“That bit I believed, just not the reason. Is Jack still playing third corner of the triangle in your marriage?”
“I don’t know, Hope. Maybe it was all my imagination. He hasn’t been round so much lately, although she’s definitely met up
with him a couple of times that I know of. She makes such a point of telling me, kind of casually throwing it into the conversation.”