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She’d abandoned the bike in a deserted car park and started to walk, lured by the promise of fresh air, blue sky and the absence of festivities.
Up here on the fells it hadn’t seemed like Christmas. Up here, she hadn’t felt like the only person on the planet who was surviving Christmas Day on her own. Up here it had just seemed like any other normal day.
Except that her life had reached crisis point.
But the time for reflection had passed and more immediate problems were now pressing in on her. Like finding the car park again. If she were to stand any chance of finding her way down the mountain, she was going to have to leave immediately.
She stood up and stamped the snow off her tr
ainers, realising how totally inadequate they were.
How could she have been so irresponsible?
The answer, of course, was that she hadn’t been thinking about anything except her problems, but problems had a way of shifting around and she knew that her immediate problem was one of basic survival.
Trying to identify the way she’d come, she walked for a few minutes and then realised that she could no longer see the ground directly in front of her. She couldn’t work out which way was up and which was down. The path had vanished and beneath her feet lay a lethal, snowy carpet. A treacherous covering that concealed the way home.
The temperature was dropping, she was lost and she had no means of contacting anyone. No one knew where she was.
Suddenly understanding the seriousness of her situation, her heart lurched with fear and her mouth dried. Panic gripped her with tight, merciless fingers and for a moment she found it hard to think.
The weather was deteriorating by the minute and she knew absolutely nothing about surviving in freezing, wilderness conditions.
If she walked without knowing where she was going, there was every chance she could walk over a precipice, to her death.
But staying still wasn’t an option either. She had no equipment, nothing with which to create warmth or shelter.
Part of her just wanted to sit down and give up. But something stirred inside her. Something that reminded her that giving up wasn’t an option. Dying wasn’t an option. She had to live.
She’d just have to find a way down. Somehow.
She was going to survive.
And once she’d done that, she was going to totally rethink her life.
Jake Blackwell trudged steadily up the path, noting the change in the weather with a faint smile of amusement. Mountains. A bit like women, he thought to himself as he shifted the pack on his back—unpredictable of mood and always to be treated with respect.
In many ways he preferred unpredictable, wild weather to sunshine and blue skies. Walking and climbing became more of a challenge, a guessing game, a battle of wits between him and the mountain.
The deep snow crunched under his boots, the air was cold enough to numb the face and in the distance he could hear the peal of bells from the village church.
It was Christmas Day.
He should have felt happy.
When he’d set out, the sun had been shining in a perfect blue sky, he’d just enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner with his oldest and dearest friends and watched their children opening presents and playing happily round a twinkling Christmas tree.
The house had been filled with warmth and joy, not least because Alessandro and Christy had finally patched up the holes in their marriage.
He was pleased for them. Relieved. But as he’d closed the door behind him, leaving them to their happiness, a hollow, empty feeling had gnawed at his insides. There was nothing like Christmas to remind you that you were on your own.
It wasn’t that he was short of prospective candidates. With a total absence of vanity, he was more than aware that there were no end of midwives and female doctors who were interested in ending his bachelor lifestyle. But none of them interested him. At least, not in the long term.
He dated, of course. He was a healthy, single male so no one expected him to live like a monk. But no matter what happened during the twelve months leading up to Christmas, he always seemed to end the year on his own. No woman had ever held his attention for the long term.
Except Christy, and she’d married his best friend and he’d long since trained himself to put thoughts of her out of his head.
Alessandro was an incredibly lucky guy, he mused. Christy was an amazing woman, the children were beautiful—
