Chapter 18
Morning sunlight beamed through the lodge window. Maggie and Helena stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at Maggie’s backpack, which lay prone on her single bed. It was enormous. Bloated. Bone-compressingly heavy.
Hands on hips, Helena said, “You can barely lift it. How are you planning on hiking with it?” Helena was dressed in black, slim-fit hiking trousers; red merino wool socks that matched her lipstick; and a moisture-wicking long-sleeved top. Somehow she’d managed to make hiking gear look fashionable.
“I’ve read Wild. I was thinking there’d be blisters and sweat, but ultimately I’d triumph over adversity.”
“Cheryl Strayed walked solo for two months through desert and mountain snow. We’re going for four days. You need to ditch five kilos before we leave this room.”
Helena was right. She was right about most things. Even though she had never climbed a mountain, or slept in a tent, she researched, she asked intelligent questions, spoke to the right people, bought the right gear. She got shit done.
Maggie began pulling items out of the backpack.
“You gave me half of this stuff.” Parcels had kept arriving at her address, Helena telling her she’d ordered two of something by mistake.
Two down sleeping bags? Really? They both knew that Helena had sent her these things because Maggie didn’t have the spare money to kit herself out for this trip.
“Yes, the useful half,” Helena said, picking up a pair of pink binoculars. “Taking up bird-watching?”
“What if we need to see something in the distance?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A path? The best route?”
“We’re following a trail. We have a map. Liz has a compass.” She lifted the binoculars to her face, squinted. “Are these Phoebe’s?”
“Maybe . . . ,” Maggie admitted. She was a terrible packer.
Belongings made her feel secure. She was one of those people who always carried a huge handbag without ever quite knowing what was in it.
She didn’t trust people who strode about with small, practical handbags.
Too much efficiency. Too much disciplined decision-making.
She liked it when someone asked, “Do you have any hand cream?” and she’d dig around for a few moments, finally emerging with a tube of something she’d not seen in twelve months. “Yes, I do!”
Focus.
Did she just think that instruction, or had Helena said it?
Maggie so often channeled Helena’s voice that it was hard to tell.
Faced with a difficult decision, she’d ask herself, What would Helena do?
—but now that she was standing next to Helena, it was hard to remember if it was the real or imagined Helena who’d just spoken.
“Maybe these could go?” Maggie said, lifting a tin of Peppa Pig Band-Aids.
Helena eyed them with disdain. “Correct.” Then she plucked a sewing kit from the bed. “What are you planning on doing with this?”
Maggie lifted her shoulders. “Repair something?”
Helena tossed the sewing kit aside. “Next. Do you need a book?”
“I like to read before bed.”
“So do I, but Shantaram is nine hundred thirty pages, and it looks like you’ve only got fifty left. Anyway, Lin resumes his heroin habit and ends up in an underworld opium den. The end.”
Maggie clutched her chest. “Where was the spoiler alert?”
Together they slimmed and cropped, snapping off the end of a bamboo toothbrush, removing the packaging from her stove, setting aside wet wipes and spare T-shirts.
She was allowed two pairs of socks. No pajamas.
Three pairs of knickers. A spare base layer.
It was brutal but Helena was focused and busy—and busy for Helena was happy.
Last night, when Maggie had attempted to talk about the pregnancy test result, Helena had cut her down. “No more questions. No meaningful looks. I’m not open for talking. You’ve had your three minutes of questions.”
“But, Helena—” she’d tried.
“No buts. We’re done. We have a mountain range to cross. That’s what I’m focusing on.”
The conversation had ended.
Now Maggie kept glancing sideways at Helena, wondering how she was feeling; wondering why she’d stopped using contraception; wondering—
“Here,” Helena said, interrupting her thoughts as she handed Maggie her backpack. “Try now.”
Maggie heaved the bag onto her shoulders. It was heavy and cumbersome and still compacted her spine, but she smiled cheerfully as she said, “Can barely tell I’m wearing it.”
They trudged through the entrance of the lodge.
“There you are,” Liz said, smiling briefly. A map in a clear wallet hung from a cord around her neck. Her hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail and her hiking laces were double knotted. “I’m signing the logbook for us,” she said, drawing a pencil across the ledger, noting each of their names.
Liz Wallace
Joni Gold
Helena Hall
Maggie Padden
Under the “Expected Return Date” column, Liz hesitated, the pencil hovering for a moment. She checked the date on her watch, then scribbled down four days from now.
“Did you check the weather?” Helena asked.
“Looks mixed. We’ll probably get a bit of everything. But it’s gorgeous this morning,” Liz said, glancing toward the open doorway.
“Do you think we’ll get rain?” Maggie asked. Hiking in the rain would be miserable.
“Four seasons in a day. That’s what they say,” Liz said cheerfully.
Outside, the sky was pure blue. The mountains rose sharply, their peaks kissed with morning sun. A light breeze lifted from the land, carrying the scent of grass and something faintly earthy.
Joni was sitting on her pack in the shade, shoulders rounded, sunglasses on.
Her dark hair was piled on top of her head, a honey-colored bandanna keeping loose strands from her face.
She was wearing shorts and the same cut-off T-shirt she’d worn last night.
From the pallor of her skin and slump of her shoulders, Maggie wondered if she’d even made it to bed.
“How are you feeling?” Maggie asked, sliding her pack from her shoulders.
“Like I’ve been dug up.”
Helena was eyeing Joni’s backpack. “Looks light. Got everything you need?”
“I stopped at a hiking store en route. Asked the kid behind the desk to pack everything I’d need to survive for four days. Guess we’ll see how he did.”
“I’m going to try Aidan,” Maggie said, slipping her phone from her pocket and stepping apart from the others.
She walked a little way toward the lake until a bar of reception showed, then dialed.
She held the phone to her ear, pacing, as she waited for him to pick up.
She was desperate to hear Phoebe’s voice, to tell her she loved her, to know if she’d slept through the night, to check she didn’t need to come home.
She watched the tread of her boots back and forth, listening to it ring. She waited a full minute. Then another.
Her stomach plunged with disappointment as Aidan failed to pick up. Tears pricked at her lower lids as she thumbed out a text message for him to show Phoebe, filling the screen with heart emojis. MISS YOU! I’LL BE HOME SOON!
“Couldn’t get through?” Joni asked as Maggie trudged back toward her.
She shook her head. “What if Phoebe thinks I’ve forgotten her?”
“She’s the most loved child on earth. And think how proud she’ll be when you get back and tell her that you’ve climbed a mountain.”
Maggie pressed her lips together, nodding. Joni was right. Climb the bloody mountain. That’s all there was to it. Once they were out the other side, she’d be on her way back home, back to Phoebe.
“We need a group photo before we set off,” Liz announced as she exited the lodge. “Let’s stand by the trailhead.”
The others obliged, settling their packs on their shoulders and crossing to the edge of the lake, where the beginning of the trail was marked by a wooden post reading svelle trail.
They crowded close. Maggie tried to reach her arm around Helena’s waist, but the packs were too large, so all four of them gripped hands.
As Liz was angling the phone, jostling everyone closer into position, Maggie became aware of someone watching them.
Erik was standing further along the path, his face drawn, eyes dark. A tired backpack sagged against his shoulders. He was staring at her, a heaviness in his features. There was something unnervingly distant about his gaze. A hollow feeling spread across her insides.
“Mags! Smile!” Liz instructed.
She pulled her gaze back to the screen to see it filled with Helena’s red lips, Liz’s bright smile, Joni’s eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.
The shutter was pressed. The picture of the four of them froze for a beat, Maggie’s expression hesitant, uncertain.
As her friends released her, she turned. She saw the back of Erik’s pack, the lope of his tanned legs stuffed into worn boots. She watched, uneasy, as he disappeared onto the trail they were about to begin.