LITMIR.BIZ

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      Jen went to the door and called out, ‘Molly? Your dad’s going.’ He stood up at once, kicking the stool so the magazines slid to the floor.

      ‘I’ve got to get to the cash and carry,’ she said, unseeingly heaping them into a pile again.

      Molly came down the stairs. She went straight to Al and clung on, her arms around his waist and her head against his chest.

      He lifted one springy curl and let it wind around his little finger. ‘Okay,’ he murmured.

      ‘I’ll miss you.’

      ‘I’ll be back soon, you know that.’

      He kissed the top of her head and held her close.

      ‘Promise?’

      ‘In June.’

      Reluctantly she disengaged herself, reminding him again of her much younger self. ‘Phone me.’

      ‘Of course.’

      It was Jen who walked with him to the front door. Molly had always been tactful about allowing them their private farewells. Jen turned her cheek up, allowed him to kiss it, then opened the door. Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. ‘Good luck,’ she said. He nodded and walked swiftly away to his car.

      Jen stood in the empty hallway. She walked five steps towards the kitchen and stopped, with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. Then she swung round and ran back again, fumbling with the lock and pulling the door open so hard that it crashed on its hinges.

      The step was slippery. Al had neatly closed the gate behind him. When she reached it she saw the Audi already 200 yards away. With her hands on the iron spears of the gate she called his name, but he was never going to hear. Within five seconds he was round the bend and out of sight.

      Jen unclasped her hands. She wiped the wet palms on her jeans and walked slowly back into the kitchen. Molly was sitting on the sofa, her arms protectively around her knees, her eyes wide with alarm.

      ‘It was always waiting,’ Jen cried at her. ‘All I ever did was wait for him.’

      Alyn drove westwards, towards Tyn-y-Caeau and the few last-minute arrangements that were still to be made before he flew to Nepal. For ten miles he sat with his shoulders stiff and his arms rigid, then he saw the bald head of Glyder Fawr against the gunmetal sky. He let his arms sag and he rounded his spine against the support of the seat to relieve the ache in his back.

      He knew these mountains so well. Tryfan and Crib Goch and Snowdon. The Devil’s Kitchen and the Buttress, jagged black rock and scree slope. The sight and the thought of them never failed to promise liberation.

      Al began to whistle. A low, tuneless note of anticipation. He was going to climb Everest. Once it was done, that would be the time to decide whether or not it had to be the last mountain. In the meantime there was a job to do, to take other people up there and bring them down safely. If Al had been given a choice, the thing he would have wished for above anything else, he would be doing it with Spider. Fast and light and free.

      ‘Yeah, we can do it,’ he heard Spider’s drawl in his head. ‘We can knock this one off, it’s only Everest.’

      But Spider wasn’t here and this was now a job, the responsibility of it to be finely balanced against his own ambitions. He needed the money, just as he had told Molly. Everyone had to live and he wasn’t young enough any more to scrape by from hand to mouth, like in the old days. And thinking about it, setting it against the other possibilities, whether it might be selling local maps to tourists or helping Jen in her business or sitting in an office somewhere, Al knew that it was a job he was happy to do. Even proud to be doing.

      He went on whistling as he drove.

       Three

      The Bell A-Star helicopter rattled along the river valley between the fir trees and rocked down to the landing pad beyond the lodges, as neatly as a foot slipping into a shoe. Finch’s eldest brother James stood at the window of the biggest lodge, watching the rotors darkening from a blur to whipping blades and then stopping altogether.

      ‘They’re back, Kitty,’ he remarked to his wife. She put aside her book, stood up and limped to join him at the window. One of her knees was tightly bandaged. The door of the chopper opened and the pilot jumped down, still wearing his helmet.

      ‘Ralf was flying.’

      The man put out his hand and Finch took it as she emerged, shaking her head and laughing as she landed beside him. A second man wearing flying overalls scrambled out in her wake. He lifted two pairs of skis out of the basket mounted on the fuselage and handed them over in exchange for the pilot’s helmet. Then he climbed back into the machine. Once the couple were out of range the blades whirled into life again and the helicopter lifted and flew away.

      Finch and Ralf came towards the lodge. His free arm was round her shoulders and she looked up into his face as they walked, and laughed again.

      ‘They look very happy,’ Kitty said. She raised her eyebrows smilingly at James.

      ‘They’re in love, aren’t they?’ James answered.

      A minute later the door swept open and Finch and Ralf came in, bringing the outdoors scent of cold air. They were bright-eyed and rosy with the exhilaration of a day’s skiing, and they hopped and held on to each other as they eased off their ski boots and unzipped their outer clothes.

      ‘Tea’s here,’ James called from beside the log fire.

      Finch came straight to Kitty. ‘How’s the knee? Have you been icing it, like I said?’

      Kitty had fallen the previous day and twisted a ligament. James had stayed behind to keep her company, and Finch and Ralf had had the day and the helicopter with its pilot and the blue-white slopes of the Monashee mountains all to themselves. Kitty sat down with a little wince and hauled her leg up on to the sofa cushions for Finch to manipulate the swollen knee.

      ‘With a bag of frozen peas, just like you told me. Twenty minutes at a time. It’s much better.’

      ‘Good. Mm. I don’t think you’ve torn anything. But it might be worth getting an MRI scan, just the same.’

      Ralf Hahn stood at Finch’s shoulder. The heli-ski operation was his and he had built it into a successful business catering for rich skiers from all over the world. He was Austrian, a big weather-beaten blond from Zell am See who had been skiing since he learned to walk. He and Finch had been lovers for nearly two years.

      ‘You are sure you are all right, Kitty? Frozen peas is all very well. But I can fly you down to the hospital, you know, twenty minutes only …’

      Kitty laughed, basking in their concern. ‘What for? We’ve got the best doctor right here.’

      ‘Where?’ Finch demanded, looking around, protecting real modesty with an assumed version.

      James put another log on the fire and they sat down in front of it. There was a basket of fresh-baked bread and three different kinds of cake; Ralf’s chef was well qualified and the lodge food was ambitious.

      Finch stretched herself with pleasure and rested her feet in ski socks on the stone hearth. ‘The best moment of the day.’ She sighed.

      ‘Is that so?’ Ralf teased her.

      ‘Well, almost,’ she amended after a second. Kitty looked from one face to the other.

      When tea was finished Ralf said he must spend an hour in his office. Finch walked between the lodges to his cabin. The light was fading and the fir trees were black cut-outs weighted with swathes of spring snow. The last helicopter, a big twelve-seater, had just brought in a cargo of skiers and their guides. They crossed to their rooms and the main lodge, calling out to each other and to Finch. Yellow lights were showing in the windows of the pretty log buildings.

      In

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