Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Ajolt of panic hit Rosie, and she stood up, looking around. The wind hit her sideways as she left the shelter of her rock, knocking the breath out of her. Where was the path down? She opened her maps app, hunched over her phone, but there was no reception.
Attempting to swallow down her fear, Rosie put on her backpack, collected the walking pole and climbed the short distance to the cairn, looking for the most obvious path leading away from it.
She spotted a well-beaten track, and with a sigh of relief set off downhill, astonished at the speed at which everything had changed.
The mist was thickening fast and brought with it a cold that numbed her hands and face.
The fierce wind threatened to bowl her over.
But the puffer jacket and the effort of walking were keeping her warm, and she was glad of Ant’s spiky stick as she carefully made her way down the rocky path, hoping she’d soon be out of the cloud.
There was a faint thumping on the track behind her, and a runner (what the hell?) emerged out of the mist and overtook her, calling, ‘Hi! You okay there?’ He turned round and ran on the spot.
‘I’m fine!’ she shouted, raising her voice against the wind. ‘This is the way down to Grasmere, right?’
‘Yep,’ he called, ‘down here then right at the fork. Don’t stop for a picnic, there’s serious weather coming!’
Coming? This wasn’t ‘serious weather’?
Great. Rosie had no idea how far it was to the road, but she must surely be getting close. ‘Ninety minutes round trip,’ Veronica had said yesterday. Rosie had already done an hour or more of that.
‘Thanks,’ she called. ‘Full speed ahead!’
And then it started to rain. ‘Oh, that’s just perfect,’ she muttered, and stopped to put on Ant’s magical rain poncho. The moment she flipped the thing out of its hood, the wind snatched it from her hand and off it flew, disappearing into the mist like a dementor.
There was a moment of despair – how much does the universe hate me right now?
– but she calmed herself, turned her back to the wind, fished again in the backpack and very carefully unzipped and put on the second poncho, which flapped and snapped in protest as she flailed about, trying to locate the neck and armholes.
Then she tackled the waterproof trousers, sitting down to put them on for fear of overbalancing. Man, but this wind was insane.
As she did up the pack again, she noticed the little torch, and thought about Ant. The ‘old woman’ whose insistence on her safety kit had turned out to be a blessing. Madison had called him ‘sweet’. He was. Mr Hill was far too serious, but he was kind and thoughtful, and probably just shy.
His major failing, however, was that he hadn’t warned Rosie of the most dangerous Cumbrian hazard of them all – his business partner.
Her waterproofs sorted, she picked up her pole. Onwards.
Some while later, Rosie reached ‘the fork’. And then, a little further on, another fork. The runner hadn’t mentioned a second fork, or distances. She tried her maps app again – still no reception. She turned right, as that path was the wider of the two.
Low-key panic was roiling in her stomach. This experience, this environment, this weather – it was so alien to her she may as well have been on Mars. And she was alone. The sensible people were long gone from Loughrigg.
The team should be back with Ashley by now and would have discovered her absence.
What would they do? Call out mountain rescue?
And then she’d feel really, really stupid, as they found her ten minutes from the road, and everyone would laugh behind her back at the dumb southerner in her silly pink clothes.
Onwards.
At last, to her relief, she came down out of the mist.
But then the thunder started.
That’s just taking the piss.
Rosie needed to move faster. The sky was now a disturbing shade of dark purple, and there was no shelter here, other than the occasional tree. But solitary trees were not recommended in a thunderstorm.
A little further on, her luck changed as she spotted a huge, gaping hole in the mountainside. She remembered Ashley mentioning ‘an interesting cave on the way down’. A slate mine? This must be it, and this must also mean she was going the right way.
The storm was intensifying, thunder rumbling and echoing around the mountains.
Lightning flashed in the gloom, and she made her way towards the cavern’s shelter as the rain grew heavier, beating down on her hood, clattering on her waterproofs and backpack.
Ferocious gusts of wind buffeted her, and she broke into a run.
Rain was pouring off the cave entrance like a waterfall, and as she reached the huge, dark space inside, she saw its floor was flooded, and that there were stepping stones around the edge and across the middle.
Seriously?
She stopped and checked her phone. Still no reception; it was just gone four o’clock. As long as the storm eased within the hour, which it surely would, there was plenty of time to cover the last part of the walk, down to the road. No problem. She just hoped the others weren’t too worried.
She scanned the cavern, looking for a spot to wait out the storm. Rain was blowing into the entrance – she needed to move further back. Steadying herself with her stick, she picked her way carefully across the boulders beside the water.
She was about to hop between rocks when there was a blinding flash, and a deafening clap of thunder exploded overhead.
Amplified by the cavern, it was as if a bomb had gone off, and Rosie shrieked in fear, wobbled wildly, dropped her stick and lost her balance.
She attempted the jump, but the momentum wasn’t enough, and as thunder reverberated around the cave her boot slid down the side of the rock and her foot twisted.
Pain shot through her ankle and she fell, cracking her knee.
‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ she gasped, slumped awkwardly in the space between the boulders, waiting for the pain to subside.
But it didn’t. And when she tried to get up, she knew she was in trouble.
She pushed down her woolly sock, her face screwed up with pain.
The ankle was already swelling, and when she tried to move it, the agony was intense.
Her knee was throbbing, but she hoped it was only bruised.
Rosie was stuck. Wedged between two boulders in a cave, in a thunderstorm. Alone. Injured and in pain. And no one knew she was here.
Theory proved: bad things do come in threes.
Rosie knew she needed to keep calm, assess her situation and decide on the best course of action. She knew this, yes, but first she’d have a good cry.
‘Worst … day … EVER,’ she sobbed, as her ankle throbbed and thunder ricocheted around the mountains. First the moment of realisation about Dale, then the weather bomb, and now this. The culmination of the worst week of her life.
The tears helped, taking some of her panic and self-pity with them as they ran down her face and dripped onto the poncho. Her sobs quietened to sniffs, and then she took an enormous breath in, exhaled slowly, and wiped the remaining tears away.
Onward.
First, she should make herself as comfortable as possible, in case she was in for a long wait.
She managed to retrieve her stick and used it to push herself up onto her good leg.
With a series of small hops and bum shuffles she made it to a flat rock by the pool and sat down, her good leg dangling over the side, her injured ankle elevated.
Next, she checked the time again: 4.20pm.
Her battery was at 20 per cent, so she set the phone to power save and zipped it into her backpack.
As she did, she spotted Ant’s torch and took it out.
For such a tiny thing, it had an incredibly strong, bright beam.
There was a setting where it flashed, presumably for emergencies.
This was an emergency. She switched it to flash mode and put it beside her on the rock, facing the cave entrance.
Hydration and sustenance. She took a few gulps of water, unwrapped one of the remaining energy bars and ate it slowly, while further assessing her situation.
The thunder had subsided to the occasional rumble, and the lightning flashes were further apart. Beyond the cave entrance, the rain was still heavy, but not as squally. The wind seemed to have dropped.
She pulled down her sock to take another look at her ankle. It was horribly puffy. She attempted to move it, but a red-hot burst of pain put a stop to that. Damn.
Time passed. Rosie picked up the torch and shone it around the cavern. Now that the storm was retreating, it was quiet in here. Water dripping into the pool from the roof high above was loud in the silence.
She replaced the torch, positioning its flashing beam towards daylight.
What was that?
Rosie squinted at the entrance, as the sound came again.
Woof!