Page 68 of The Trap by Catherine
There are many stages to an Everest climb; you don’t just start up. On the more popular South Col route, after leaving Base Camp, climbers must brave the Khumbu Icefall, a literal river of ice that’s in the process of melting, where death by ice boulder, avalanche, or sudden crevasse could happen at any moment. If you survive that, you can start making your way up the mountain, stopping at Camp 1 at around 19,500 feet, in a spot known as the Valley of Silence, Camp 2 at 21,500, and Camp 3 at 23,500.
Then the funreallybegins.
Camp 4, at 26,000 feet, is in what is cheerily known as the Death Zone, a place where the human body is just not supposed to be. It’s from here you’ll make your summit attempt. You’ll leave your tent in darkness, around midnight. You’ll ascend in silence, by torchlight, watching the sun rise over the entire world, heading for a piece of rock almost as high as an aeroplane’s cruising altitude.
Parts of this last climb have names—the Balcony, the South Summit, the Hillary Step—but only one of them is honest about what it’s describing.
The Knife Ridge.
Even if you’ve never heard of it, I bet you’ve seen pictures. In fact, I’d be willing to bet you’ve seen one in particular: a piece of snow-capped, jagged rock that looks like a prehistoric creature’s dorsal fin, rising up out of blue sky with a 10,000-foot drop into nothingness on either side of it, topped with a thin but dense line of climbers in their brightly colored, puffed-up down suits. Underneath that photo was almost certainly a story about the commercialization of Everest, the Nepalese government granting too many climbing permits, and potentially lethal human traffic jams.
Is that ringing any bells? No?
Anyway.
That night, after that first time, I felt like I was stuck on the Knife Ridge. I couldn’t move up or down and I was beyond rescue. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. I had only two options: wait there for death to come, or step off the edge and go meet it.
I was going to kill myself.
That was the plan.
As I drove through the dark, I scanned the road ahead for something I could drive into, like a large tree or a brick wall. The tank was half full; with any luck, I’d be engulfed in a fireball. I’d die and ifshehadn’t already, she would too.
She was still in the boot then.
That would solve all my problems, and quickly. But there were no suitable trees or walls, at least none that I saw in time, and after driving for a while I emerged on to a coast road. On the other side of a low wall was nothing but beach. I turned right so the sea was to my left, and soon came to a small car park for beachgoers, empty and dark at that time on a cold January evening. I parked at the far end, away from the road and the ramp leading to the sand, with the boot facing the water. I cut the engine and turned off the lights and took a breath for what felt like the first time in hours.
And I thought,Well, if you’re going to kill yourselfanyway...
Why not wait a little while?
If I did it tomorrow morning, I could go to the party, see Amy and be with her one last time. Enjoy what I now knew was going to be my last night on earth. Say the things that needed saying.
Well, notallthe things. But something better than whatever my last words to her were as it stood. I couldn’t even remember what they were. Probably something like, “Grand, yeah. See you later.”
I couldn’t leave it at that.
So I’d wait until tomorrow when, in the darkness before dawn, I’d slip out of Niamh’s house and come back here. I’d write a note, explaining everything and telling Amy I was sorry and that I reallyhadloved her, because I did.
I do.
And then I’d find somewhere I could drive into the water. An open quay or a pier, something like that.
There was just the little issue, then, of the dying woman in the boot and me looking like Carrie after the prom.
Back then, the gym bag I kept in the boot only had gym gear in it. The bag itself was covered in blood—it had been under her head—but bar some socks, the items inside were still dry: a pair of joggers, a creased T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes. I garrotted her with her bra, then took myself and the bag down to the shore.
On the beach, the night was freezing with a whipping wind that stung my skin. I did what I could to clean myself up without actually going into the water, partly because I couldn’t show up to the party with wet hair and partly because I’d definitely get hypothermia.
Afterward, everything went back in the bag, the bag went back in the boot with her, and I got back behind the wheel—and then I sat there with the engine running and the heater on full until I could feel my hands and feet again.
That took a while.
Afterward, I drove until my phone picked up enough bars of service to call Amy. I told her I was nearly there but had had an absolute nightmare. I said I’d come upon another motorist who’d taken a wrong turn on to a boreen and got themselves well and truly lodged in some mud. I said they’d been standing out on the road, waiting for a passing car, desperate for help. I’d stopped and helped them, and between the two of us we’d managed to get the car out, but I’d got destroyed in the meantime and was now in my gym gear. I joked that Shane, the aforementioned dickhead-in-law, was going to have to lend me something to wear for the evening.
Amy, who sounded like she’d had a couple of glasses of something since last we’d spoken, bought it. She made sure I knew where I was now and where I was supposed to be going, and I told her I’d see her soon.
I remember really wanting to see her, feeling like we’d been apart for months.
