Chapter 10
Liz needed air. She exited the dining hall, striding through the reception area and out into the cool bite of the evening. The night was pricked with stars and colder than she’d expected. She zipped her fleece to her chin and pushed her hands into her pockets. Took a deep breath.
She shouldn’t have been surprised that Maggie was having doubts.
That was vintage Maggie. Liz had tried to help her prepare for the hike: she’d sent a training schedule, forwarded links to fitness videos, said she’d look after Phoebe on weekends if she wanted to train—but with Maggie there was always an excuse.
She rolled back her shoulders, trying to shake off the tension.
Then she remembered the cigarettes zipped into her fleece pocket.
She’d bought them en route to Helena’s. Too risky to buy cigarettes in the village where her patients lived.
You couldn’t be a doctor and smoke. It was like being a vegetarian butcher.
She turned the pack in her hand, flicked open the cardboard lid, and lifted them to her nose. Her eyes closed; the honeyed, malted smell of tobacco drew her back to her teenage years, when she’d smoke out of Joni’s bedroom window while Joni’s gran watched Countdown in the living room.
Pressing a cigarette between her lips, she thumbed the lighter. The flare of flame was dazzling in the darkness. She inhaled, the hot sting of smoke filling her throat.
Smoking felt illicit, a little kick of rebellion. Habitually, Liz was a rule follower, a law abider, a studier-for-exams, a seeing-things-through-till-the-end sort of person—and that was exactly why she needed the occasional cigarette.
She took another drag, glancing back through the glass wall of the lodge into the dining hall.
The place had filled up, with a three-deep queue to reach the bar.
Music thrummed at the glass. She could just make out Maggie and Helena at their table, heads together.
She knew they would be talking about her; she’d always been on the outside of their unit.
It didn’t affect her when Joni was with them—everything was in balance then—but as three, the dynamic was off.
Liz took another draw of her cigarette, studying the peaks of the mountains, which cut black shadows against the charcoal night.
They looked foreboding, impervious to her small worries.
Tomorrow they should be hiking out into all that wilderness.
She wanted it. Wanted the burn in her thighs, the exhaustion, the physical toil and endurance.
Walking had saved her over the past few months.
Emotions that felt stuck and stagnant released as she moved, energy shifting.
Homo sapiens had always walked—even before there was language, they’d walked.
It was a simple, fundamental need of their species: walk.
So why did everyone outsource it: cars, electric bikes, escalators, lifts?
She liked reminding her patients of the incredible mechanics of the human foot: twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, and over a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments—all working in structural harmony to enable us to walk.
Tomorrow morning, that was what she, Helena, and Maggie should be doing. She couldn’t let Maggie derail this. She needed it.
Liz ground out her cigarette, the smoke tasting acrid, as a flare of headlights crested the hill above the lodge. She squinted into the glare, wondering who would be arriving at this hour.
A taxi came to a stop outside the lodge.
The rear passenger door opened, and a backpack was tossed from it.
Then a pair of slender, tanned legs stepped out.
They were stuffed into black Doc Martens.
Liz’s gaze lifted, seeing the back of a woman leaning into the cab to pay her driver.
She slammed the door shut, and the taxi took off.
The red taillights illuminated the figure in a cloud of dust as she turned. Denim shorts, the loose slouch of a leather jacket, dark hair piled on top of her head, kohl smoked around huge eyes.
Liz blinked. Her hands rose to her mouth.
She shook her head, not believing what she was seeing.
Then her face broke into a grin. “Joni!”