. . . a view from the top
I have far too much trust in Noah. So much trust that I seem to have found myself at the back of an air-conditioned coach at six in the morning. I was pulled out of bed, handed a backpack and dragged down the street before I even had time to register what happened.
Now here I am, resting my head against the cool glass of the window as I float in and out of dazed and confused consciousness. My only comfort? The blanket I’ve made out of Noah’s hoodie. Turns out a crochet halter-neck is not the warmest travel attire.
‘Wake up, princess,’ Noah whispers gruffly into my ear.
Joke or not, it sends an awfully telling shiver down my spine. I play it off with a further snuggle into his hoodie, attributing it to the coach’s harsh AC. Then I turn to properly take in his bemused face.
‘You’ve got a little . . . here.’
He reaches over, wiping some drool off the corner of my mouth with his thumb. My skin ignites at the touch and I take a deep breath to hopefully steady any further bodily reactions.
‘What time is it?’ I ask, desperate for a distraction.
‘It’s been three hours,’ he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. ‘We’re actually closer to Salzburg right now.’
‘Then why didn’t we do this in Salzburg?’ I ask.
‘You were a little preoccupied.’ He winks, rising from his seat.
We all unload ourselves from the vehicle, gathering outside as the host hands out paper wristbands.
‘You do mine, I’ll do yours?’
He phrases it like a question, but his hand is already wrapped around my wrist, pulling it towards him.
He sticks his own wristband in his mouth, balancing it between his lips as he pools all his concentration into securing mine as neatly as possible.
Once done, he steps back and sighs, proud of his attempt.
‘Your turn,’ he says, handing me his wristband and holding out his hand.
I try my best, but it’s definitely not as neat as his version. Despite the obvious, he takes his wrist back and smiles at his little wristband with pride.
‘Is everybody ready?’ the guide yells out, silencing the crowd. ‘Okay! I am Jakob, I’ll be your tour guide today. Please follow, stick together, no wandering.’
We dutifully follow the crowd, Noah linking our arms as I attempt to walk as straight as possible, deterred only by the way Noah keeps squeezing me closer. His body tenses in anticipation the longer we walk; by the time the group stops, he can barely keep it together.
‘Top of Hallstatt.’ I read the large sign aloud as we follow the group into a cute yellow building. ‘Is there climbing involved? Because I’m wearing a skirt and—’
‘You’ll be fine,’ he says softly, squeezing me even tighter.
We flash our wristbands at the front desk as we follow the crowd through the turnstiles, out the back and into a new line. I stand on my tiptoes and weave around to try to spot the front of the queue, gasping as I realise what we’re waiting for.
‘Cable cars? I love cable cars!’
He smiles back at me, bemused. ‘You do? That’s rather niche.’
‘They’re such a fun way to explore a new place. How often do you get to fly over somewhere and actually see what’s below?’
We load into a carriage, shuffling onto our bench for two as we wait for the others to fill it around us.
Noah grabs my hand without asking, squeezing it silently as the car breaks free and starts to climb its way up the track.
The view is better than I could have imagined.
I catch my breath at the sight of the stretching, glass-like river bordered by tall, sweeping trees.
Snow-capped mountains paint the background, reflecting against the water and completing the picture-perfect spread around us.
The further we climb, the smaller the houses become, outlined by winding roads and placed in bright patches of green.
Eventually the traces of civilisation die out.
We enter the forest, hugged by bright-green trees to our sides and a seemingly endless expanse of foliage below us.
He gestures to the left as soon as we exit, directing me to a wide set of stone steps, and I follow silently, biting my tongue to stop myself from complaining about having to climb after he explicitly told me that I would not be doing that.
But I quickly realise that I’m being dramatic and it’s three half-hearted flights at most. I catch my breath as we cross a bridge and are spat out at a long skywalk, towering over the whole town beneath us.
It’s a living contradiction – all so small from here, yet unbelievably grand; a bigger picture that can only be understood from this place right now.
‘Okay, wow,’ I sigh. ‘I see why you wanted to . . .’
I turn, but Noah is long gone. I spot his figure all the way at the narrowest point, looking out at the view beneath us. As I get closer, I see his stance is far more rigid and fixed than usual. His face is taut as he chews on his bottom lip and stares out melancholically.
‘Hey, you okay?’ I ask.
He doesn’t turn to face me. Just keeps on looking at the glistening lake below.
‘It really is breathtaking,’ he says.
‘Yeah. Thanks for bringing me here,’ I reply.
He stays still, eyes on the lake while my stomach stirs. I can’t take my eyes off him as he sighs and runs his hands through his hair. It’s like he’s flipped a switch and shed everything I’ve come to recognise him for.
‘This was the one place that I absolutely had to visit on this trip,’ he says, abnormally still.
‘My aunt Lisa – she went backpacking around Europe when she was a couple of years younger than I am now. A few months in, she was broke and homesick and stopped in this little town for a single day. She got the cheapest room in the cheapest hotel so she could sit down and plan her early route home. But the receptionist insisted that she couldn’t leave Hallstatt without visiting the skywalk.
She was already over her trip but she did it anyway, and she said it was one of the best decisions of her life. ’
I follow his gaze out at the lake. A bird dips close to it, feet skating on the top and sending a cascade of ripples across the water’s skin.
‘I see why she said that,’ I say.
He chews on his lip before continuing. ‘She described this view to me regularly when I was growing up. The trees, the lake, the way the buildings look so small. I feel like this place has been painted so vividly that I’ve already been here thousands of times.
But no description compares to the real thing.
She warned me it wouldn’t and she was absolutely right, as always. ’
His hand softly traces the railing in front of him.
‘She was stood right here when she realised that she needed to capture the moment. Up until that point, all of her travel photos had been of the scenery, the crowds, but never of her. But looking at this view, feeling the way she felt, she had to be in this one. She tapped a random man on the shoulder, asked him to take her picture, they ended up talking the whole way back down the mountain and he convinced her to keep pushing on with her trip. Fast forward five years and they were engaged. Another two and he was legally my uncle Steve.’
I smile. ‘That’s adorable.’
He nods. ‘A love story for the ages.’
He still doesn’t look anywhere but out in front of him. It’s making my stomach knot.
‘Give me your phone,’ I say, desperate to break the tension. ‘We should recreate the photo; you can send it to her.’
His gaze dips from the view, down to his feet. It’s the first time his eyeline’s broken since he got up here. I watch his thumbs twiddle and his breath falter as he continues to stare at his shoes.
‘She passed away just over a year ago.’ He swallows. ‘Breast cancer.’
My heart drops. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s always the first thing people say.
Then they follow it with a slew of pity and act like it’s my first time ever experiencing sadness.
And I get it, because no one’s good at dealing with grief.
It’s a horrible, soul-destroying thing. Which is why it’s usually easier to keep the story to myself, avoid all the awkwardness and keep things light. ’
I look closely at his features, gripped tightly in frustration, and feel a wave of that same feeling wash through me.
‘I get it,’ I say lightly. ‘I was four when my mum died. Too young to really remember the pain. But I do remember going through primary school as the kid with the dead mum. That wasn’t great.’
He turns his head to meet me face to face for the first time since we got up here, eyes glistening with the tears he is holding back. It forces a lump straight into my throat.
The thing about grief is, no matter how long it’s been, how many happy memories you’ve experienced since, the feeling never really goes away, it just goes a little dormant from time to time.
All it takes is one thought, one familiar smell or movie you watched together or place you visited, and everything rushes back.
It hits you like a tidal wave and wrecks your life just as viscerally as it did the first time.
You never get over those feelings. You’re never just ‘healed’. It’s a cycle you battle with every day.
‘I can only imagine,’ he says softly.
‘Yeah, it sucked,’ I sigh. ‘But what sucks more is being too young to have any real memories of her. Sara and Paige have these cute stories and special moments that she’s able to live on through.
All of mine are built from tales they’ve passed on to me.
’ I pause, gathering breath again. ‘Tell me something about your aunt.’
He hesitates at first, looking into my eyes with so much sorrow that I almost retract my request. But then I see his lip twitch and his eyes light up as a memory flashes through his head in real time.
You can never bring someone back, but you can help them live on as part of you.
Listening to stories about how my mum smiled, how she laughed, what she stood for, was enough to make me feel like I had more years with her than I did.
I love watching the way Sara, Paige and my dad spring to life when they recount the times that they all spent together.
Bittersweet as it is, it’s enough to make all of the reliving worth it.
‘She was this beacon of joy. Always the happiest person in the room, even when she got sick. She saw everything in life as an adventure and if you were in her presence, she’d take you along with her.
When she found out that I was gonna be the one taking her to chemo, she turned that into an adventure in itself.
Every session she’d bring a different picture she’d taken from her year of backpacking, and she’d recount her time in that city in jam-packed unadulterated detail.
’ He pauses to laugh. ‘It made me realise that I’d travelled obviously – but I’d never travelled the way that she had.
Boozy holidays with the boys are not quite the same as hiking up random mountains and jumping on ferries with strangers. ’
‘So that’s your real story?’ I ask. He stares back at me, confused. ‘Your story – remember, the day that we met? You said, “Nobody solo-travels for this long without some sort of story.” ’
He chuckles softly at my awful imitation of him.
‘I suppose that is my real story, yeah. But the thing about my friends and finding a stable relationship was true too,’ he says.
‘I actually promised her I would do this, you know, towards the end. She left me money for it in her will and everything. It got eaten up by legal fees and funeral costs, but the intent was there.’
‘That was really sweet of her,’ I say.
His lips curve into the tiniest of smiles that settles my stomach ever so slightly. ‘Yeah, the gesture meant the world to me – you could tell she really thought out her will. She left me the money, her travel photos and her engagement ring. Told me to hold on to it for my great love story.’
‘The diamond ring from the café,’ I say.
He nods solemnly, instinctively reaching for his pocket. ‘I carry it everywhere.’
I reach for the finger that ring once sat on, running my nails over its old placement. I cannot believe Noah trusted me to have a piece of his life, of his heart, sitting right there on my finger for so long.
‘She would have loved you.’ He glances over, meeting my eyes once again. ‘You’re the exact kind of person she was drawn to.’
‘Really?’ I ask in disbelief.
‘Yeah, for sure. You’re like, another ball of sunshine. The two of you together could have blinded everyone.’ His smile grows a little wider before he quickly pulls it back. ‘Can I tell you something that might come across creepy and definitely feels like an overshare?’
I nod back tepidly. What a way to begin. He takes a deep breath, looking out nervously to the horizon.
‘The day we met in that station was a rough one for me. It was, erm, well, it was the first anniversary of her death. I was in bits – wanted nothing more than to turn around and go home, had the tickets back to London loaded and everything. After spending all morning inside, I forced myself on a walk and tried to get some fresh air. I reached the fountain, looked up and asked her for a sign. Twenty minutes later, I found you.’
My mouth falls slightly open, pulled by the weight of his words.
‘You’ve made this trip so much easier, Amorie. It’s like, I don’t know, she sent you my way,’ he says.
There’s no way to quantify how much it hits me and there’s no such reaction that would do it justice. I know how much Noah means to me at this point, but I had no clue it was so mutual.
I don’t know how long I am silent, but it’s seemingly too long. His face quickly morphs from its shyness to abject horror.
‘Sorry, that was a lot. Too much actually – way too much to put onto someone else. Forget I said that,’ he says quickly, panicking.
He holds his hand to his hair, staring back at the water as his breath quickens. I reach for him, grab his arm and bring his palm into mine, squeezing it softly and encouraging him to look back my way.
‘Noah, chill,’ I say. ‘Honestly, I’m touched that I could help you feel connected to her. Thank you for sharing.’
He lets out a sigh of relief, his whole body softening limb by tightly constricted limb. ‘Thank you for coming with me today. I don’t think I had it in me to do this alone.’
‘Anytime.’ I smile softly, before pulling out my phone. ‘Now let’s get that pic of you anyway. Honour her memory.’