‘Paul . . .’ She felt a tear trickle out of one eye and slowly slide down her cheek and into her ear. ‘How did we get down? I think I tripped—’
‘I carried you. Shush now. Take a minute, then we’ll see if you can get up and walk. We’re at the foot of the mountain, Cat. We made it!’
She closed her eyes again. Opened them. It was no use. She was stuck in reality, and she was going to have to deal with it. She pressed down hard into the muck, pushing herself up so she was sitting, then let Paul take her hands and pull her to her feet. She felt a little wobbly, but when she took a couple of steps, she seemed to be fully intact.
‘You hit your head, Cat. Knocked yourself out cold. You’ll need to take it easy.’
She lifted a hand and ran it across the back of her head. A large egg had already formed. But this was good – an external lump hopefully meant that nothing bad was happening inside. You heard of those people who hit their head then got up like nothing had happened, and twenty-four hours later they were dead from a brain haemorrhage.
Could happen. But it could happen to Paul, too – after that crack that Tristan gave him, and god knows what else had happened when he fell on to the ledge. Both of them might be on borrowed time. So all they could do was make their way back to base and take it from there.
But the dream had galvanised her. She felt bad about Tristan. He was merely collateral damage in a situation that he’d triggered into action. But there was nothing she could do about that now. She had to think this problem through, just like she had done so many times at work. Change of plan, Cat, that’s all. You’ve dealt with this before. You can deal with it now.
She let Paul take her elbow, and allowed herself to lean on him, just a little. Just enough. They hobbled out from the clearing towards the road, and not too far in the distance, thankfully downhill, was the village.
Paul held out an arm, thumb pointed upwards.
It would soon be over.
Forty-Five
SUNDAY MORNING
Paul knew that it was quite normal for people to hitch in the Alps, because of the quiet roads and irregularity of buses, and not something to be wary of like back home, where you might be wary of travelling serial killers. He laughed a bit at his own thought, but it sounded like a cough, so Cat didn’t notice. Besides, it was instinct that made him flag down help. He wasn’t sure that either of them could walk much further at that point.
The truck driver who picked them up had looked concerned, but Cat, somehow, using French skills that he hadn’t been aware that she possessed, had reassured him and he’d dropped them off just outside the village, instead of taking them to the hospital.
They’d discussed this, in the brief moments of them trying to walk down the road to the village. Cat had been insistent that it was police first. That they weren’t in urgent need of medical help. He’d thought her wrong about that but he was far too tired to argue. And he’d meant to ask her, as they climbed out of the truck, about how it was that she spoke such good French when the night before, and all day, she had acted like all she knew were some schoolgirl phrases, rusty from years of underuse.
Ginny had been wittering on about Cat’s time in France as a student while they’d been having lunch, but Paul had barely paid any attention. Perhaps Cat’s recent bang on the head had reset her vocabulary. You heard about those people who woke from comas speaking fluent Mandarin, right?
God, he was tired. He would kill for a comfortable bed and a twenty-four-hour sleep. But they had to stick to Cat’s plan – report the others missing, absolve themselves of any blame. Go home. Would they be able to do all this before their 8 p.m. flight? Twelve hours to go. No chance.
He shook his head, letting out another cough of a laugh. You’re not going to be allowed on that plane, Paul. Let’s face it. Not when they find out what you’ve done.
In the stark normality of the village, everything that had happened on the mountain felt unreal – like it had played out in a movie they’d all watched.
Tristan was dead. He knew that for sure, because he’d killed him. Ginny was also dead.
OK, he didn’t know that last part for sure, but he was under no illusions. Tristan had found her and finished her off. The man was a stone-cold psychopath. That was the difference between them. Paul’s own actions against Tristan had been self-defence. And Cat’s action against Ginny had been a stupid, angry accident. She couldn’t have meant to kill her sister. None of this could really have been her plan, could it? That plan, of course, where he was supposed to be dead, and Tristan was supposed to be alive.