Chapter 2
2
One of these days, the old Land Rover was going to give up the ghost.
Andreas wrenched the gear stick into neutral with a grinding noise that pounded into his skull. The car park at the climbing gym and headquarters of the adventure travel company was mercifully flat, otherwise the handbrake wouldn’t have held. The undercarriage seemed rustier every time he dared look at it and the passenger door didn’t open or close properly and now boasted several dents from where he’d slammed it.
The old truck had clocked a lot of miles, usually full of ropes and helmets, straps, carabiners and tents. When Andreas jumped out and yanked the door of the boot open that day, the less-than-fresh scent of sweaty socks and sodden wool reached his nose – odours the old Land Rover was more than familiar with.
Pausing to rub a hand over his gritty eyes and grimy face, he hefted four coils of brightly coloured rope and a pile of slings tied carefully together and kicked the boot closed with one foot. The smell stayed with him as he trudged to the glass doors and he realised with a grimace that it was not only the contents of his rucksack that stank. It was him. The Land Rover was used to that too.
The reception area was more utilitarian than interior designed, with hooks for equipment, chipboard dividers and a wall of metal lockers on one side. The logo of the company – a stylised version of the heartbeat electrogram – hung on a slate-blue wall behind the reception desk with the words ‘Great Heart’ on either side of the spike and ‘Adventures’ below. As soon as he crossed the threshold and dumped the damp equipment in a free corner, the dusty scent of chalk and the calm shouts from the belayers on the floor enveloped him in a familiar greeting.
Either here in wet and windy Weymouth in February or anywhere else in the world, a climbing gym was a kind of spiritual home. Even if he knew no one, there was brotherhood here – and sisterhood. But the gym at Great Heart was almost literally home. His bedsit around the corner from Asda was more of a place to store his clothes than anything else.
The receptionist appeared through the office door as he was heading out for another load of equipment. She jumped when she saw him, but then a broad smile stretched on her lips. ‘Andreas! Gria? di.’
He tugged off his grimy baseball cap, although his hair wasn’t much cleaner. ‘Hoila, Toni.’ It was their little routine of greetings in Tyrolean, although her husband had spoken an Austrian variety, not Andreas’s further chewed southern dialect.
Pressing a kiss to her cheek and then looping his arms around her, he gave her a squeeze, letting go when she poked him, wrinkling her nose.
‘Have you just got back? You don’t need to answer that. I can smell the mountain on you. How was it?’
‘It’s February in Eyri. How do you think it was?’ He’d adjusted to calling the National Park by its Welsh name. As a member of a linguistic minority himself, he’d embraced the change.
‘Any snow?’
He shook his head. ‘But it was arse cold in the tent. Clients were disappointed we only got to carry the crampons.’
‘Not just the clients, I’m guessing.’
He didn’t respond. It did no good bemoaning the absence of real expeditions over the past few years and he knew that fact troubled the founder of Great Heart Adventures – famed mountaineer Willard Coombs – just as much as it disappointed Andreas. At least Andreas also had work as a mountain guide when he was back home in Italy and had been sponsored to open new routes on several six-thousanders over the past few years. Will had got a little old for expeditions even before the bookings had dried up.
Stretching his stiff back, Andreas thought with chagrin that everyone got too old eventually. With his fortieth birthday just passed – here in Weymouth so he could avoid his family and only had to suffer through a pint at the pub with his colleagues to mark the miserable day – he had more and more work to do to stay in shape.
All the more reason why there was nothing in his life except trekking and the gym – exactly the way he wanted it.
‘How’s Cilli? Getting excited for his birthday party?’ Make that work, the gym and his seven-year-old godson, Cillian.
‘His birthday isn’t for six weeks! Don’t dare mention it when you see him, or it’ll be your responsibility when he bounces off the ceiling,’ Toni said with a grimace.
He mimed zipping his lips.
‘But seriously, thanks for offering to help with the party. He wanted to take his friends climbing so much.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he assured her.
‘Your responsibility to Miro, I know, I know,’ Toni said with a sigh. Her hand rose to his arm and clutched him briefly. Neither needed to say that before Cillian’s party, they had to get through another anniversary that rendered the birthday bittersweet, year after year.
‘Andreas!’ In a flurry of bare, muscular arms and blue hair, his colleague, British mountain guide Kira Watling barrelled into him. His stench didn’t seem to bother her the way it had Toni, but then he’d shared a bivouac with Kira on more than one occasion – and a bed on a handful of others. ‘I missed you when you got back from Italy and then you left straight away for Wales!’ She gave him a punch in the arm that actually hurt. ‘You owe me a pint.’
‘I always seem to owe you a pint when I get back.’
‘When you learn to say goodbye, you won’t owe me any more pints.’
He crossed his arms and slanted her a look. ‘I don’t do goodbyes.’
‘ I don’t do goodbyes, ’ Kira imitated in a high-pitched voice, using her fingers as extra mouths. She slapped him on the arm again.
He rubbed his biceps with overdone offence. ‘Now I remember why I always look forward to you welcoming me back, Watling.’
He heard murmurs behind the door Toni had emerged through and peered at it in confusion. ‘Is Will here? I thought he had an appointment with the bank today?’
Toni gave a nod, but her expression turned grave.
‘What?’ He glanced at Kira to find her staring at her rubber climbing shoes.
‘Bookings didn’t pick up as he’d hoped,’ Toni said evenly. God knows, she was the one most affected if the business went under, but only a small swallow hinted at what she must be feeling.
‘But what does that mean? Problems with the bank?’
‘Not any more,’ Kira mumbled, now looking out the window.
‘What are you not telling me?’
‘Will wanted to explain it to you himself,’ Toni began, but Andreas was already stalking in the direction of the office. ‘Andreas, just wait a minute. Will’s found an investor.’
He paused at the door, hearing a female voice. An investor would be better than winding up the business, but if they weren’t turning a profit now, there would have to be changes – for Will, for Kira and the other guides, for Toni .
‘Why would an investor be interested in a struggling business?’ he asked baldly.
Kira grimaced. ‘Will said it would be a kind of merger, to create a new income stream for both businesses.’
‘New… what?’ The word ‘stream’ was supposed to be something beautiful, clear water splashing down from a glacier somewhere in a hidden valley.
‘It’s a wedding planning agency that wants to buy us,’ Toni explained, a wary look on her face.
Andreas opened his mouth to express his disbelief, but his mentor’s voice travelled through the door to the office with the spine-chilling words, ‘No. Absolutely not! That’s out of the question!’
‘When we merge the businesses, it’s the most logical source of cost savings,’ the female voice countered. ‘Cost savings’ sent another shot of indignation through Andreas – even more than the prospect of weddings. The climbing gym made a profit – a small one. And the only costs involved with the travel arm were the staff. ‘We’ve been through the due diligence. I know exactly how much trouble you’re in, Mr Coombs. If I didn’t have a vision for how our agencies could work together, I wouldn’t be offering you anything. We don’t need to double the administration staff for one company.’
‘This is a fine way to start working together, by firing my staff?—’
Andreas had heard enough. He should have been invited to this meeting. Since Miro’s death, he’d looked out for Toni – him and Willard.
When he grasped the handle, Toni stopped him. ‘I’m not sure you should?—’
He shook off her hand. ‘I might not be a permanent employee, but I’ve been here since the beginning.’ And Will would always be his climbing partner – his mentor. Miro would always be his best friend, even though he was gone.
‘That’s not what I?—’
Whatever Toni had been about to say, Andreas ignored it and pushed open the door with a little too much force. ‘If Toni goes, I go!’ he blurted out.
‘Andreas.’ Will’s even voice cut through the haze and a familiar weathered, knuckly hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. ‘You’re back.’
‘You should have told me about this meeting.’
‘Why? So you could rush back from Wales and get a speeding ticket? Or perhaps so you could shower first. This is Reshma Bakshi, by the way, of I Do Destinations, a wedding planning agency.’
‘Mr Hinterdorfer.’ He turned to find a small Asian woman with a bright smile and a few streaks of grey in her bob, holding her hand out to him.
Suddenly conscious of the grime under his fingernails and the stench of sweat, mould and soil that he’d brought into the room, he shook her hand gingerly – and that’s when the other woman in the room stood from her place at the table. Andreas looked up and froze.
His vision tunnelled. He distantly heard Will continuing: ‘…and I believe you already know Sophie-Leigh,’ but her name had been echoing in his skull long before Will had uttered it. Sophie … He’d been entirely unprepared for the punch to the gut.
She looked the same – no, some things in her features were still painfully familiar. Her narrow lips that thinned to nothing when she was concentrating, but whispered softly over his skin when she kissed him. Her rounded jaw where he’d enjoyed smoothing his thumb absently while she fell asleep against his shoulder. The ticklish spot on her neck.
But her face was a little more drawn. She wore a few more pounds around her hips. The difference between twenty-six and thirty-four was noticeable, but it didn’t stop the sensation of hurtling through a wormhole straight into the past.
His gaze lifted to her eyes – sapphire blue and ringed with thick lashes which he knew were darkened with mascara and not their natural colour – and at her piercing look, he crash-landed on the last time he’d seen her, when he’d laughed in her face and behaved like the arsehole he’d been eight years ago.
Heat rising rapidly up his neck, his chest constricted so much, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to breathe with her eyes on him. She smoothed a hand over her pencil skirt and memories flashed like fireworks in his head: Sophie on the climbing wall, shaking and glistening with sweat as she followed his directives from below; Sophie, her hair mussed and a bright smile on her face for him when they woke up in the tent; Sophie clutching the handles of the raft at the beginning of that first trip, facing her fear, and he’d felt as though his heart had been swept down the rapids too.
Sophie …
Good God, he shouldn’t be seeing her again like this. Will prompted him with a look. The other woman appeared to be judging his sanity – and probably finding it wanting. But Andreas wasn’t sure if any words would even come out when he opened his mouth – certainly nothing that would make sense. So, with an audible swallow, he turned and stalked back out of the room.
Closing the door carefully behind him, he slumped against the wall, his head falling back with a thud. Sophie-Leigh Kirke. Back in Weymouth. Working for a wedding planning agency . Talking about a merger . What the hell was going on?
Gentle pressure on his arm made him pop his eyes open to see Toni standing close.
‘I tried to warn you…’