Chapter 20
Helena was aware of the hot, uncomfortable rub of her heels within her boots. She didn’t even want to think the word, yet there it was popping right into her head, shiny and bloated: blisters.
Oh God, she was going to be that hiker. The one who complains all trip. How much sympathy can reasonably be mustered for someone else’s blisters?
She’d bought her hiking boots over a month ago and had very much planned to break them in.
The problem was, where? She could hardly strap them on and yomp to her Bristol office in her blazer and hiking boots.
The only time she’d put them on was in the evenings in her apartment, effectively meaning she’d broken them in by walking to her fridge to fetch wine.
She was desperate to kick them off, peel away her sweaty socks, and wiggle her toes.
She pictured herself lounging back in a comfy chair, feet freed from their chambers.
But, of course, there would be no comfy chair.
They were wild camping, that’s what Liz kept calling it.
It had sounded faintly romantic when talking about it over dinner in a restaurant that served polenta chips and rosemary-infused sea bass.
She’d never understood the appeal of campsites—paying money to sleep in a tent beside families with whining kids who wake at dawn.
At least wild camping held a sense of adventure and glamour, pitching up somewhere picturesque and empty.
That’s what she’d thought. But now that they were in the middle of nowhere, she was thinking a campsite with a picnic bench, flushable toilet, and coin shower could be adjusted to.
She kept on walking because that was the deal. Put one foot in front of the other and walk.
It was that easy.
It was that hard.
If she could concentrate on the rhythm of her footsteps, then it would be easier to ignore the rub of her boots and the tension in her shoulders.
Harder to ignore her thoughts, though. They kept circling back to the pink cross on the pregnancy test. She recalled the slow, single blink of Maggie’s eyes before she’d turned the test toward Helena, saying, “You are pregnant.”
It felt unreal. A ludicrous fact.
Helena Hall is pregnant.
The statement belonged to a different person’s life. Not hers. Her life was made up of other statements:
Helena Hall likes cocktails.
Helena Hall enjoys mini breaks.
Helena Hall dislikes other people’s children.
And yet, here she was. Pregnant. In Norway. In hiking boots.
Helena Hall has a baby in her belly.
Helena Hall has never changed a nappy.
Helena Hall has no mother to ask: What do I do?
Helena Hall has stopped walking.
Helena Hall finds tears leaking from her eyes.
There was a warm hand on her forearm. Maggie was beside her, face creased with concern. “What is it?”
“I’m just having a small, quiet breakdown. Feel free to walk around me.”
“Right. Get this off you,” Maggie said, unbuckling the chest strap of Helena’s pack and helping her out.
“You know I’ll never get it back on.”
Maggie took off her own pack, and then she stepped forward and hugged Helena, putting her lovely soft body, which smelled of the outdoors and a hint of apricot moisturizer, against Helena’s.
She buried her face in the thick auburn waves of Maggie’s hair. Ever since her mother had died, she’d had to get used to crying and accepting hugs. She was coming to like them. It was as if they hit a release valve, allowing her own tears to flow.
“It will be okay. It will all be okay,” Maggie said soothingly.
When Helena was finished with the releasing, she wiped her face, then reached into her pack for a gold tube of lipstick. Reverently, she removed the lid and breathed in: rose mixed with a hint of vanilla.
Helena and her mother had always worn lipstick.
It was armor. Here I am, world. Do your worst!
Even in the last weeks of her mother’s life, when her muscles wasted and her breathing became labored, she still applied lipstick.
And when she was too ill to do it herself, Helena did it for her.
Lipstick fixed nothing, but it was a way of holding on to a piece of identity when illness stripped away the rest.
Now Helena traced the color over the full curves of her lips.
“She’s back.” Maggie grinned.
“Do you ever look at your life and think: This isn’t the one I’m supposed to be leading?”
Maggie eyed her. “I’m a divorced, single mother, in rented accommodations, receiving benefits. I thought I’d be an artist, with a horde of children, living in a rambling country house, with a husband who adored me, and an art studio in the garden.”
Helena laughed. “But I love your life! You are acing your life!”
Maggie shook her head, although she was smiling.
“You know why I came on this trip?” Helena asked.
“Because you’re scared of saying no to Liz?”
“I came for Mum.”
Maggie’s head tilted to one side.
“Right at the end, you know what she told me? That she regretted not seeing more of the world. She worked so damn hard, Mags. Two jobs. Never wanting me to go without. Bringing up a kid on her own—you know how tough that is—and Mum did it with grace.” Her mother had been a teaching assistant by day and worked a night shift on the weekend at a care home to bring in extra money.
“Just when she was planning her retirement, she goes and gets cancer. Life’s a piss-take, isn’t it?
Do you know, I was going to take her to Barcelona?
We’d been looking at travel brochures, planning a mini break.
I was just waiting for a window with work .
. .” Tears pricked her eyes. “Never wait, Mags.” She lowered her head, a well of grief waiting for her to drown in.
Maggie didn’t rush to fill the silence.
Helena pressed her lips together. Tasted the sheen of her lipstick. Dragged her gaze up. And there was the view: a carpet of green, stretching into a startling vista of mountains, reminding her that life was also beautiful.
She drew in a breath, turning to face Maggie. “Mum asked me if I’d scatter her ashes ‘far and wide.’ ”
Maggie’s eyes crinkled with warmth. “You’ve brought her ashes?”
She eyed her pack. “Some of them. They weigh four kilos and I had to decide between those and rehydrated meals. I went with a bonus mushroom risotto.”
Maggie laughed.
“I’m going to do it when we reach the coast.”
“That is the loveliest,” Maggie said, eyes glistening. She went to say something further—and Helena sensed she was going to use the intimacy of the moment to bring up the pregnancy test result—but Liz had started signaling that they should catch up.
Helena saluted. “Can’t keep Brown Owl waiting,” she said to Maggie, then heaved on her pack.
Side by side, they continued to walk.