LITMIR.BIZ

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eh?’

      In truth, Harri didn’t quite know what to say. She was tired: her whole body ached from only an hour’s sleep the night before and her eye sockets felt as if she’d been punched repeatedly in the face by a crazed boxer. Added to which, telltale shivers in her bones were heralding the unwanted onslaught of a cold following her late-night soaking by the postbox.

      All night long she had wrangled with her thoughts, her mind abuzz with worry upon worry as she cursed her spontaneity, finally succumbing to sleep curled up on her sofa under a travel rug (which, like its owner, had never actually travelled much further than her armchair).

      Harri wasn’t sure Mrs Bincham would understand (after all, this was the woman who thought an aphrodisiac was a flower, and the giant Egyptian statues in the Valley of the Kings were known as sphincters), but she found herself trying to explain it all anyway. Ethel listened calmly, nodding sagely every now and again as she munched a square of Chocolate Crispy Bakewell, her dentures clicking rhythmically as Harri recounted the events of the past few weeks.

      ‘I don’t know, Mrs B. Part of me still believes this could work for Alex, but since I actually posted the letter I can’t shake the thought of what might happen if it doesn’t. There’s nothing I can do about it either way now: I just have to get on with it, I suppose.’

      ‘I completely get you, chick. It’s very simple, really: you’ve got the Big F at work here.’

      Given her current sleep-deprived mind, Harri blocked out the many possibilities appearing before her and asked the obvious question. ‘The Big F?’

      Mrs Bincham peered carefully over her right and left shoulders as if checking for unwanted spies. ‘Fate, Harriet. You’ve trusted the situation to fate so’s you’re no longer in control. It’s only natural you should be a bit jumpy while you’re waiting to see what’s in store for you. I mean, anything could happen next – good or bad.’

      ‘You think so?’

      ‘I know so, chick. I’ve a feeling about this. My mother always said I was psycho, you know. Swore it blind till the day she popped off. “Your gran was a psycho, your Auntie Lav was a psycho and now the Gift’s passed to you, our Eth,” she used to say to me.’

      ‘Don’t you mean “psychic” . . . ?’

      ‘Now, I’ve never held much with all that mumbo-jumbo rubbish, to tell the truth. But every now and again I get my feeling and I have to say, stuff happens, like.’

      Although Mrs Bincham was smiling, Harri didn’t exactly feel reassured. ‘So what do I do now?’

      Mrs Bincham’s grin broadened. ‘Nothing you can do, our kid. Just got to sit it out, I s’pose. So you have another bit of Chocolate Crispy Bakewell while you’re waiting and I’m sure that’ll take your mind off it, eh?’

      Harri surrendered to the inevitable and reached into the Tupperware box.

      She should have been used to the Big F by now – although she had never really thought about it in that way before. She had become accustomed to the strange mix of joys and sorrows that twisted and twirled her from one event to the next, often unannounced. It was just life.

      She remembered her grandma once saying: ‘Life is like a wild pony – you can never tame it. But if you grab its mane and hold on with all your might, it will be the most thrilling ride you’ll ever have.’ Grandma Langton had lived in a tiny cottage on the edge of Dartmoor, where Harri and her parents would visit during the summer holidays. As a little girl, Harri had liked nothing better than to hold tightly on to Grandma’s hand as they battled against the elements to climb the hill behind the cottage and gaze out across the windswept moor to where the wild ponies grazed. Even as a small child, she’d appreciated and envied the beautiful creatures’ freedom, walking and cantering wherever they pleased. The thought of jumping on one of their backs and taking off across the wildly undulating moor towards distant hills was at once impossibly exciting and ridiculously scary, but Harri longed to be as carefree as they appeared to be. As for Grandma, her own ‘thrilling ride’ had come to an abrupt halt when Harri was eleven – life throwing her from its back for the last time.

      Life, or fate – or whatever you chose to call it – had certainly taken Harri for more than one breathless ride over her twenty-eight years – although it had to be said that most had been brutally scary rather than exhilarating. Losing one parent to cancer was bad enough; losing both was cruel in the extreme, not least because her mother’s malignant tumour was diagnosed while her father was enduring his last weeks of life. As Dad lay on the sofa in the family home, too weak to move, but still somehow able to smile and joke (which he accomplished with aplomb right up until he finally succumbed to unconsciousness), Mum made two sets of funeral arrangements – one for him, one for her – sitting at the kitchen table making copious lists for Harri ‘for when the time arrives’.

      Dad’s cancer had taken him slowly, a long-drawn-out process over nearly six years, which crumpled the once strong and vital six-foot-three former rugby player into a pitiful heap of skin and bone arranged painfully across the old Dralon settee in the living room. In contrast, Mum’s illness took hold at lightning speed: five and a half months from the diagnosis to her funeral at St Mary’s, Stone Yardley’s parish church. Five months after burying her husband, Mum went to join him and Harri was alone in the world. Of course, she had friends. Viv and Stella rallied round, cooking meals (Viv) and getting her out of the house to go shopping or for walks (Stella), whilst Auntie Rosemary came to stay for three months, helping Harri to put the family home on the market and, eventually, find the tiny, ivy-covered cottage that was to become her own, bought with the money left to her by her parents.

      Her father’s illness meant that holidays were spent near to home or at least a major hospital: the Lake District was about the furthest they dared travel and this was only because they had family living in Kendal, should an emergency arise. Towards the end, Langton family holidays became more like sofa transfers: Dad carefully transported from home in their old red Volvo to a different living room three hours away – the only difference being the mountain views from the window.

      When Harri met Rob, just over a year later, she found herself returning to the Lake District for summer holidays. Rob viewed camping as ‘the purest form of holidaying’. Understanding Rob’s long-held passion for all things outdoors was part and parcel of loving him, as far as Harri was concerned. His father had been a scout master for years so Rob and his brother, Mark, spent weekends and holidays under canvas from an early age. When his father died five years ago, following the pursuits he had learned from him took on a whole new significance for Rob. It was almost as if being outdoors brought him closer to his father’s memory. Watching him pitch a tent, knot guy ropes and make a fire was strangely comforting for Harri – Rob’s capability and protectiveness made her feel safe.

      ‘If he’s so fond of camping, why don’t you go to one of these new glamping sites, with yurts and wood-burning stoves?’ Stella suggested during one of their many coffee-shop outings. ‘Or do it somewhere warm, like France?’

      ‘It just wouldn’t be his sort of thing,’ Harri replied, stirring her cappuccino with a wooden stirrer. ‘And actually, that’s OK.

      It’s just part of who he is – like me with my travel book addiction. I don’t feel I have to like everything he likes and neither does he with me. We’re settled and secure enough with each other to be able to have different interests. When we go camping it’s like he feels he’s fending for us, I think. It’s that whole “protective caveman” instinct.’

      Stella’s eyes lit up. ‘I have to admit, it’s quite sexy when guys get like that – all rugged and strong.’

      ‘Oh yes. I have no complaints there,’ Harri agreed as they clinked coffee cups in a mutual toast.

      ‘So I bet your beloved likes that Ray Mears bloke, doesn’t he?’

      Oh, yes. To say Rob worshipped at the well-worn survival boots of Ray would be putting it mildly. When his father was alive, Rob had taken him

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