Like a kid waiting for Christmas, I was convinced the night would last forever, but morning came faster than I was prepared for.
I jumped awake, heart slamming against my ribcage, not knowing what had woken me.
Grumbling, I rubbed my face and flopped back, but my eyes seemed to be wired open, despite the fact that it was barely light outside, and I found myselfitchingto get out of bed. Goddamn, what had happened to me on this fucking mountain?
You fell in love.
You found a home.
Sweet, right? Man, if I hadn’t felt so good about it, it would’ve been nauseating as hell.
Cynic.
Retired, as it went. It was hard to feel pessimistic about much right then.
I slid out of bed and dressed in the warm clothes I’d brought from Manchester. I’d need a flannel shirt or two if I was going to fit in around here, but as much as I loved Fen, I wasn’t there yet. I was still accepting that butt-ugly boots were now my number one choice of footwear.
Out of habit, I reached for my phone and distractedly swiped at the screen while I stamped into said boots. I hadn’t counted on hearing from Fen and my heart leapt at the message flashed across the screen.
Fen:gave up in Birmingham and parked the rig. getting a taxi back to the depot and driving home to get some kip. see you at sunrise baby x
Sunrise. I glanced at the window. The misty early morning was fast giving way to clear skies, the winter sun powering through the clouds yesterday’s rain had left behind.
I crouched to tie my laces, then hurried outside, still zipping my coat against the bitter wind. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone, save maybe Fen lounging against his Land Rover like a lumberjack god on a magazine cover.
Paddy’s tall frame sprinting across the yard caught me off guard. “All right, mate. Where’s the fire?”
He skidded to a stop, lurching around to face me. His face was ashen. Eyes wide. “Did you hear it? In the night?”
“Hear what?” The warmth in my heart cooled, drowned out by icy dread. “What’s wrong?”
“Landslide. The road’s gone, and…” He stopped and glanced back over his shoulder, panic searing his usually open gaze.
His distress hit me like a ton of bricks, and I closed the distance between us, grabbing his arm and digging my fingers into his flesh like torture devices. “What?What?Goddamn it, just tell me.”
Paddy swallowed hard. “Rama, I can’t see Fen’s house.”
16
Rami
The world stopped. My breath, my heart, my brain, as if everything I was and everything I wanted to be had never existed at all.
I stared at Paddy, terror squeezing my chest. “What do you mean you can’t see his fucking house?”
“Exactly what I said,” Paddy snapped. He wrenched free of my grasp and took off again, heading for the mountain path that led to the treehouse.
I stood frozen, caught between following him and charging back the way he’d come to see for myself what had sucked the blood from his face.
I need to see it.
Heart in my mouth, I ran to the gate and launched myself over it, landing like a cat in the soggy ground on the other side. Mud stuck to my boots like clay, sucking my feet into the quagmire, but nothing could hold me down. I pounded the earth, eating up the distance between my sister’s home and the point on the mountain road where Fen’s cosy house should’ve been visible.
It wasn’t, but denial kept me moving. Paddy was taking the piss. It was a bad joke. The fucking worst. Or he was plain wrong. He had to be. Landslides happened on TV—in movies and on the news in places with better landscapes than this. They didn’t happen on Christmas Mountain.
Theycouldn’t.
The thought carried me to the bend in the road that looked out over the horizon. Then the road disappeared, crumbling down the side of the fell in a mass of brown and grey, broken trees piled high in a messy slag heap below…where Fen’s house had once stood.