Page 28 of Counting Down To You

“Right,” I say, not bothering to ask what snowshoes are. “Okay.”

I don’t go into town to get shoes—or anything else—though. Instead, after downing my coffee, I get on a bus, heading out of town and toward a hiking trail I’ve looked up. I don’t think I can take any more human interaction today. My head hurts, and I keep getting the urge to cry. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m clearly not welcome. I should just leave, go and hide in a cabin somewhere. Leo was right last night—it’s weird, working on a sabbatical away from work. It’s pointless and weird and stupid.

I think of the message from Farah.

I’m proud of you.

Proud of what, though? I haven’t done anything. Cal was the one who engineered this. And Robyn. I wouldn’t be here without either of them.

I get off the bus near a chapel in Très-les-Pierres, pausing to take my headphones out of my coat pocket. My finger hovers over the play button for my audiobook. But I don’t have to do the challenge today—just because I’ve been ticking them off daily so far, there is nothing in the rules to say I have to complete a challenge on the day I open it. Ideally, I need to do it before Christmas, yes, but even then there is some leeway on that for the more difficult ones. So I press play, let Robyn’s voice wash over me as I turn left at the chapel and start along a track, breathing in the cool alpine air.

I looked up this trail before I left the hotel, though the photos were all of green grass and rolling hilltops, not the winter wonderland I am currently making my way into. I follow the instructions to turn right when the track forks. Out here, the path has not been cleared, and my boots crunch over untouched snow. I can see a single line of footprints ahead of me—someone else daring to come this way.

I’m breathing heavily within minutes. I haven’t done any exercise in days and am feeling the strain of it, even as the pressure behind my skull eases a little. The path grows steeper, taking me upward through a forest on the side of the mountain, tall pine trees looming above me, pockets of earth untouched by snow under the shelter of branches. Cold numbs my fingertips and the end of my nose, but, God, I miss this. How long has it been since I set out somewhere and walked until every part of me aches?

I used to love to hike, before I moved to London. I grew up with the countryside on my doorstep and loved to escape to the hills and walk for miles, getting away from studying or the sound of my dad sniping at my mum. On family holidays—something Mum insisted on once a year, right up to the year my dad left—James and I had gone hiking together, just the two of us. One year we went to the Lake District, and James and I were gone hours, talking about everything and nothing. We were trying to escape the awkward feeling at home, the knowledge that our dad clearly didn’t want to be cooped up with us in a holiday cottage for a week, but neither of us ever directly acknowledged that fact. I remember talking to him about what I should study at university, wondering whether social anthropology was a sensible choice, and what jobs it might lead to.

“What job would you want to do?” he’d asked, the wind messing up his mousy-brown hair. “If you could do anything.”

I rolled my eyes—I was still a teenager, after all. “I hate that question. Like, obviously not everyone can do everything—or anything. There are limits.”

He snorted, giving me a playful shoulder nudge. “Indulge me.”

I opened my arms wide. “This,” I announced, encapsulating the dramatic landscape of the Lake District. “I’d want to be outdoors, in the countryside, walking until my legs hurt.”

His laugh was whisked away by the wind, but I remember the sound of it, more carefree than I’d heard from him in a while. “So you want to be a mountaineer. You know, I can totally see it.”

I grinned. “Yeah. Or, failing that, maybe, like, working for the National Trust or something. Just not an office job. I think I’d hate offices.”

He slung an arm round me, easy and casual. “You and me both.”

But that was back before I’d graduated. Back before I got my recruitment job, and realized that office jobs were not, in fact, all that bad. And back before James left me. Left me, and didn’t come back when I needed him the most.

Robyn’s voice continues in my ears, a soothing backdrop, masking the crunch beneath my boots. Boots that are managing fine, without Lucie’s suggestion of snowshoes. I remember walking with Robyn along the Cornish coastline, wind whipping up sand around us, rain lashing our faces.

“I thought you said this would be fun!” Robyn shouted over the gale, head down as we battled our way along the cliff edge.

“It is fun!” I shouted back, sea spray coating my tongue. “Aren’t you having fun?”

“So much fun!”

I’d dragged Robyn out of the Airbnb we were staying in, determined not to let a bit of rain spoil the holiday. I’d been to Cornwall as a kid and remembered sun and ice cream and seagulls, and a time when my mum and dad seemed genuinely happy to be spending time with one another. It wasn’t quite playing out that way on mine and Robyn’s Easter getaway, though.

But, despite the rain and wind, we’d ended up doubled over on the side of the cliff, laughing. I can’t remember what, exactly, we were laughing about.

Robyn gave me a look as we got back to the Airbnb, soaked, having to wring out our socks. “You do know I hate you for this, right?”

“No you don’t,” I said, flicking water at her. “You love me.”

“Not right now I don’t,” Robyn grumbled.

“Now and always,” I declared. “That was the deal.” And Robyn rolled her eyes but hadn’t quite been able to hide the smile.

There are tears in my eyes as I come to a stop by a small waterfall, water cascading between pockets of snow, hints of green showing in places against the gray rock. I let out a hitched sob, then gulp in the cold air. I don’t know why this morning got to me so much, why it’s made me feel so alone. It shouldn’t matter if anyone here likes me. It doesn’t matter. It’s temporary. I repeat it again in my head but can’t quite convince myself.

Don’t be sad, Al. You’ve still got me.

But I don’t. Because, just like James abandoned me, so did Robyn. So, no, I don’t have Robyn, and I never will again. And, really, that’s why I’m crying. It’s Robyn I’m missing. It’s Robyn I want here with me—not just in spirit, but really here. It was Robyn’s dream to come to the Alps in the first place, not mine. And I feel like I’m not doing it justice, like I’m playing a role I don’t fit.