Chapter 23
23
They left him alone for nearly a week, which was a week longer than he’d expected. The delay was a reprieve, a chance to regroup – and catch up on preparations for Manaslu. Filip Brzezinski had sent him several messages with leads on sponsors that he needed to follow up and the question of a departure date had already been thrown out.
Andreas avoided that one. Whenever he was tempted to bash out an email suggesting they leave before mid-September, his heart raced and the honed panic centre in his brain warned him that he wasn’t acting with a clear head.
A clear head was what he wished for most and couldn’t seem to find.
He had several bookings now the snow was gone from the lower peaks and climbing could begin in earnest. He even had a group of apprentice guides to keep him busy for a day of training that he always enjoyed.
The trainees were fit and capable and straightforward to instruct – as well as fun to challenge – and seeing his experience put to use to teach them about keeping clients safe, about managing risk and facilitating achievements was more satisfying than he’d imagined.
But when they sat together to discuss the ethics of risk and personal responsibility, his brain fired with images of Sophie, imagining how it would feel to push himself to the limit on a desolate ridge in the Himalayas, knowing she was at home worrying about him.
You didn’t exist in real life for me, no matter how much it felt like you did.
Her words had come back to him in unexpected moments since she’d left – since she’d sneaked away, rather than face goodbye, which was supposed to be his modus operandi. He’d rarely wanted to exist in real life. School had been torture and his parents’ hopes for him leading a normal life a noose around his neck.
Instead, he’d found his true self among the peaks, in that altered state of mind, where his peculiar drive was an asset rather than an oddity. But that week, he was still adrift, despite the chance to head up into the thin air.
He returned to the cabin in the forest he called home lost in thought, hanging up ropes and straps in the lean-to before he even noticed the beat-up Fiat 500 parked around the side. While he kept his equipment securely locked, his house rarely was and he pushed open the door to find Caro stretched out on the sofa reading a magazine.
Despite the lurch of discomfort in his chest about why she might be there, he smiled and wrapped her in a hug. She pulled back and eyed him.
‘There really is something up with you.’
‘It’s nice to see you, too, Schwesterherz.’ The endearment ‘sister-heart’ was a little light mocking between them, but that day it tumbled out of his mouth with a sheen of truth that made him uncomfortable.
‘You never mean it when you call me that,’ she said with a roll of her eyes. ‘And for the record, I resent this. I’m ten years younger than you and I’m supposed to be the one without my shit together, but instead, your weird behaviour turns me into the dutiful daughter and I follow Tatta’s bidding and check up on you.’
‘What a surprise he didn’t come himself,’ Andreas mumbled, before pausing in thought. Perhaps he’d learned more at his father’s knee than how to tie knots and place anchors in limestone. ‘Does he really think I’m going to talk to you?’
She shrugged. ‘You don’t have to. I came here. We could just drink beer – and please skip the joke about me being old enough to drink. I just turned thirty and that baby-sister crap is getting old – like you.’
He responded with a grunt and shuffled to the fridge to fetch two bottles of Forst, popping the caps against the countertop. They sipped in silence for several moments, Andreas leaning against the bench and Caro perched on the sofa. His mind wandered, realising he didn’t even know if Caro was seeing someone – or if she wanted to be. Her longest relationship had been a long-distance thing with a woman she’d met on holiday who lived in Hamburg, but the break-up had seemed amicable and he thought Caro had had the occasional boyfriend from the neighbouring villages since then.
As a brother, he probably should have known these things.
‘This place is a bit of a dump, Andreas,’ Caro commented, her doubtful gaze skimming over the chipped laminate and the threadbare rug on the floor. ‘What would Sophie think, if you ever actually brought her here?’
His sister’s use of the hypothetical was conspicuous. ‘She saw my bedsit in Weymouth. It’s worse.’
‘Did you let her think it’s all you can afford?’
‘It is all I can afford,’ he insisted.
‘Only because you have to pay for the privilege of freezing your toes off on some Godforsaken—’ She cut herself off. ‘I mean… Figuratively. It wasn’t supposed to be?—’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, smiling around the neck of the beer bottle as he took a swig. ‘Everyone knows I’m not a whole man any more.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘That’s not funny, you know. You might enjoy taking risks, but we can’t stand it.’
Andreas sighed, the usual steel in his spine softening to putty. Collapsing onto the sofa next to her, he leant his head on the back and stared at the ceiling. ‘I understand better than you think. It tears me in two, sometimes. I want to be who you all need me to be, but it never works.’
‘That’s not all your fault. I know how our parents are, how Mama overreacts and Tatta doesn’t know what to do with his feelings.’ Her head touched down against his shoulder, lightly, as though she was trying not to scare him off. Another day, he might have been spooked, but he’d been aching a little all over since leaving the lake – vulnerable, when he’d lived his whole life as though he were impervious to everything, especially love. ‘Is that what worries you about Sophie? That you’re not who she wants you to be?’
‘I’m not who she needs.’
Caro lifted her head to give a frustrated huff. ‘I hope you didn’t say something like that to her. You can’t tell her what she needs like a patronising cabbage head. She knows well enough herself!’
He ignored the insult. ‘You’re right. I suggested we keep it going and she said no.’
Caro blinked, once, twice – slowly. ‘Keep what going? Sophie told us you weren’t in a relationship.’
Pressing his lips together as though sucking on a lemon, he sifted through his thoughts and feelings, searching for an answer.
‘Did you mean you suggested you get together for real? Build a relationship? Because that might have been the most intelligent thing you’ve ever done, Bruderherz,’ she said, her tone heavy with sarcasm.
‘I didn’t suggest that,’ he admitted.
‘Ah, I see it all now. You told her you wanted to keep having sex and when she said no because she loves you too much to keep her heart out of it like you do, everything went to shit.’
‘That’s not—’ He couldn’t get any further. His heart hammered as Caro’s words rang in his ears. That wasn’t what Sophie had meant, was it? ‘She doesn’t love me,’ he insisted, barely even convincing himself. ‘Maybe she did back then?—’
‘But she could, Andreas,’ Caro interrupted. Her words pried the chasm in his chest a little further open. ‘Give things a chance between the two of you – a real chance, with time and compromises and planning – and she could! But you already screwed things up once, so she’s not going to go there again unless you take the first step.’
He waited a few breaths for his heart to settle back into rhythm. ‘How do I do that?’ He’d meant the question to come out belligerently sceptical, but instead, he sounded desperate. ‘I’m leaving for another expedition in a few months.’
‘You are planning to come back down, aren’t you?’ Caro said, crossing her arms.
‘Of course!’
‘Then it’s simple. When you go, you kiss her goodbye and when you get back, you kiss her hello. At least that seems to be what other people do about occasional absences.’
He shoved her with his elbow. ‘You know what I mean. I have to have complete focus on the mountain. If I’m worrying about what’s happening…’
‘Do you think she’ll run off with someone else?’
‘No! I mean, not if…’
‘Not if you’ve actually admitted that shrivelled-up organ in your chest has always belonged to her – such as it is.’
His second shove was more pointed and she yelped and scowled at him. But although her words annoyed him just as much as she’d intended them to, her description also made his throat close and the air in the cabin suddenly feel too thin.
His gaze swerved to the chest of drawers just visible beyond the room divider, to the top drawer that housed his socks and that unassuming little box from a gemstone trader in Islamabad. He knew why he’d taken on her bet and it hadn’t been recklessness.
Caro studied him warily and recoiled at whatever she saw in his expression. ‘If this is about to get emotional, I should go. I am a Hinterdorfer, after all. I gave you the kick in the arse you needed, so I’m out of here.’ She drained the last drops from her beer bottle and hauled herself off the sofa. ‘Say hi to Sophie for me, when you see her.’
When you see her…
He barely acknowledged Caro’s departure. He reached for his laptop on the coffee table and powered it up. Navigating to the email from Brzezinski, he started a laborious reply with his two-finger typing.
With a faint smile, he thought of Sophie and her stylus and he knew he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t predict or control the future. He’d screwed up so badly with Sophie that he was only inviting further heartache.
But they’d made a bet. They weren’t finished – yet.