The days in between Esme leaving the hospital alone to Matilda’s funeral had been a mess of hours that stretched endlessly into the distance without meaning or purpose or shape. Esme did things because they needed doing and her thoughts were not of her tasks, only of the new void in her life. Thimble Cottage had always been cosy, but now it was vast and cold, and even though the same welcoming shabby furnishings decorated the rooms and Grandma’s old umbrella still stood in the rack in the hall, and the Christmas cake they’d baked together was still in the tin waiting to be eaten while her cookbooks still propped up the old wedding photo of her and Granddad, it felt like solitary confinement without her grandma in it. People had visited, of course, lots of people from the village. So many, in fact, that Esme tired of trying to smile and be brave for them. She didn’t want to show a stiff upper lip, and she didn’t want endless cups of tea in stilted, awkward silence. Being alone in the cottage was miserable, but it was the only alternative and sometimes, on her lowest days, it was an alternative she welcomed.

She was curled on the sofa now, a cold coffee by her side, looking once again at the travel tickets she’d found in her grandma’s handbag the day she’d died out on the street. Her grandma had booked the trip only moments before she’d collapsed, and with the tickets was a receipt for payment in full and details of the travel party:

Esme had been wondering what to do with the tickets since Matilda’s death. She could have taken them right back to the agent and explained and they would have given her a refund, but somehow that didn’t seem right. Her grandma had clearly meant it as a Christmas gift, a special, once-in-a-lifetime trip for them both and, really, it had been Esme’s idea anyway. She had no doubt that her grandma hadn’t booked the trip because she herself had wanted to go – she’d booked it because Esme had wanted to go. Besides, what would Esme do with the money? She could hardly give it back to her grandma and it wasn’t hers to keep. Matilda’s estate was yet to be settled officially but Esme and her mum had found a will, tucked in a dresser drawer, newly amended to leave Esme a half share of Thimble Cottage and including a clause that said Matilda wished for her to be able to live there as long as she wanted, regardless of only having half ownership. The other half was to pass to Esme’s dad – Matilda’s son – but Esme guessed that with the clause – and her dad would never contest it – the other half was hardly any good at all because he couldn’t do a lot with it unless Esme agreed. Esme’s mum had merely pursed her lips and they’d carried on going through the rest of Matilda’s papers.

In fact, the only aspect of the whole situation that had forced Esme to focus had been the reintroduction of her mum and dad back into her life. It had been meant to happen anyway but it wasn’t meant to be like this. They were talking again but nobody was saying anything of comfort. Now, the blame for Matilda’s heart attack was being laid firmly at Esme’s door – at least, so it seemed to Esme. Nobody said it, but there were comments about unnecessary stress and extra pressure and twice as much work to do, and if Esme hadn’t already been burdened with the weight of her own guilt for the part she’d played in events, then the guilt her parents had now placed upon her would have done the job nicely. It didn’t matter that Esme had done her fair share around the house, that Matilda had enjoyed her company and had said many times she was happier with Esme there than she had been in years, or that the doctor had said at the hospital that Matilda had probably been on a sticky wicket (his words, and not entirely appropriate Esme had thought) for some time, because the truth was Esme had arrived at the cottage and shortly afterwards Matilda had died and any idiot could join the dots and find the connection.

Esme had wanted to ask her mum what to do with the travel tickets but they’d had no time for such trivialities. There were solicitors to instruct, banks to contact, house deeds and insurance documents to find, distant relatives and long-lost friends to inform and a funeral to arrange. Esme had gulped, eyes hot with tears, as her mother had plonked the newspaper in front of her at breakfast one morning, the announcement of Matilda’s death succinct and heartless in bold black type upon the page – because these things had to be done in the proper manner – directions to the funeral service equally precise. Matilda had been a living, breathing person, a wonder of nature, and now she was simply five lines in a newspaper finished by a postcode.

Esme was still looking at the tickets now, chin resting on her hand, and wondering what to do with them once again when the screen of her phone lit up. Warren. Knowing that to read it was a bad idea, she read it anyway.

Esme pushed the phone away, nausea washing over her. It had been inevitable that Warren would find out, but still she’d hoped he wouldn’t. She didn’t know how, but people talked to people and it was constantly surprising how these things got to those you’d really rather they didn’t. Social media, tenuous links, random acquaintances – they all played a part. And Warren would have been keeping an ear to the ground where Esme was concerned, of that she had no doubt. He’d done a good job of cutting Esme’s friends from her life, gradually and stealthily, but he’d made it look like a natural drifting apart. And he had charm by the bucketload – he knew where he could find Esme’s old friends and he’d know just how to tease the right information out of them. He’d already worked out where she’d been living, and she hadn’t been able to figure out how he’d done that either, except knowing that if you really wanted to find out where someone was, there was usually a way. Apparently, Warren had really wanted to know. At least he hadn’t got the exact address and Esme knew this because he’d bombarded her with text messages and calls but he hadn’t actually turned up in person. If he’d got an address, he would have come, circling like a vulture around a dying gazelle.

Her phone bleeped again and she glanced at it to see Warren’s name flash up once more. Why hadn’t she deleted him from her contacts? It would have been the sensible thing to do – delete him, block the number – and yet she’d done neither of those things. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend there was no message waiting to be opened, and she tried to picture her grandma sitting across from her, scolding her for even thinking about a reply. She needed someone to keep her on the straight and narrow and at this point even one of her parents would have done, but soon after the funeral they’d packed their bags and gone home, telling her that they had too much to do to stay and babysit a grown woman and promising to check on her once in a while, but essentially leaving her to fend for herself.

Esme reached for the phone, even as she cursed herself for it. She flicked open the message.

Esme closed her eyes again. Why now, just when she was at her lowest? She’d been doing so well, thinking of him less and less, building her life anew and rediscovering the person she’d been before Warren had walked into the café where she’d worked one fateful day with a cocky smile and chiselled jawline and had left with her phone number.

‘Don’t reply,’ Matilda would have said. ‘Don’t give an inch.’

‘I won’t, Grandma,’ Esme whispered to the empty room. ‘I won’t.’

---

More messages came. Over the following days the bombardment that had almost dried up before Matilda’s death began again. Esme deleted some and some, in moments of weakness, she read. They all promised he’d changed. He wanted to love and support her and it was tempting, an easy path to rebuilding after the earthquake of her grandma’s loss. She didn’t have to do this alone, he said. But she never replied, afraid of where it might lead.

Her thoughts stayed with him though. Had he really been that bad? Had she been the unreasonable one, judging him too harshly for a mistake anyone could have made, the mistake of falling in love with the wrong person at the wrong time? If Esme was really objective about it, the person who ought to be complaining was Warren’s wife, Shelly, because she was the real injured party in all of this. Not that it was Esme’s fault, of course, because she’d been blissfully unaware of Shelly’s existence until the day she’d been out with Warren and someone who was a mutual friend of both Warren and Shelly had rumbled him and the messy truth had finally been revealed.

So now he was telling her he’d left Shelly and he only wanted Esme, to love and protect and keep safe from the rest of the world. It was all he’d ever wanted and for Esme to think anything else broke his heart. Maybe Esme had got him wrong after all? Even as she thought all this, it left her uneasy. Was it right to be glad Shelly had lost? Hadn’t she loved Warren too? Hadn’t he once told her he wanted to be there for her, to love her and keep her safe from the rest of the world? Part of her wanted to talk to Shelly, to find out for herself whether it was true, whether Warren had left her, but she hated herself for such a callous desire.

There was only just over three weeks left until Christmas but there was no tree up in the cottage, no streamers hanging from the ceilings or wreaths of holly at the front door, no rows of cards across the mantelpiece and no lights around the window frames. Esme’s gift to her grandma still lay in the box on Esme’s dressing table and her grandma’s gift to her, the tickets to Lapland, lay next to it. The Christmas cake they’d made together was still untouched in a tin in the pantry alongside the tins and jars of pickles and preserves and cooked meat Matilda had bought as extra in anticipation of more family in their little home than it had seen in a good many years. Whenever Esme’s gaze fell on any of this she was reminded, like a jab to the gut knocking the air from her, that it was almost Christmas and yet she had no reason to celebrate and nobody to celebrate with, even if she’d wanted to.

Pulling on her coat, she grabbed Matilda’s old house keys and headed for the front door. The walls were closing in and the house that had once felt like a sanctuary felt more like a mausoleum these days. A walk in her beloved hills and valleys might be just the thing to clear her head and the afternoon was as crisp and bright as any she’d seen in weeks. The cottage door slammed behind her, echoing on the deserted street, and she headed for the road out of the village.

---

The hills were dark masses of green, patches of exposed rock showing the flinty grey of their spines, and the sky was clear and cold, the outlines of distant peaks beginning to glow saffron and pink as dusk crept over them. Out here there was peace like nowhere else Esme knew. As a child, she’d go out walking the hills with her granddad on a Sunday and it was one of her earliest, fondest memories of him hauling her onto his shoulders when her little legs got tired, explaining with endless patience what each craggy outcrop was called and the legend that had given it a name, showing her different plants and looking out for elusive wildlife that Esme could try and photograph with her little instant camera – though not one of them ever turned out any better than a tiny dark blob against a green-grey landscape. He’d loved the hills – they’d been like a piece of his own soul and, by association, Esme had grown to love them too. Now, they gave her peace and room to think, and they made her simultaneously more isolated than ever and yet at one with the world. Here, it was possible to be apart from humanity and yet to be connected, treading in the footsteps of generations of peak dwellers who had walked these hills before her. She’d never really appreciated any of this, just how much the hills meant to her until she’d moved to London. Back then she’d been all wide-eyed and hopeful, fresh from a provincial college and off to university in the big city to change the world. But university had not been all that she’d dreamed it would be, and she’d ended up taking more and more hours at the coffee shop she’d originally worked at part-time to provide an income while studying, until she was working there full-time. Quietly, without ceremony, life at the university ceased and the little job at the coffee shop became a career. Hardly a career at all really: there were no prospects of promotion and certainly no prospects of a raise, but it was steady money and she liked the work. She’d continued to live in the student house she’d shared with three other girls until they graduated. A new group moved in to take their place, and seeing them start where she’d been three years previously only served to make her feel like more of a failure than she had before. By the time the second bunch had all graduated, Esme was living with Warren. At first they had really lived too, drinking every night, out at clubs and pubs and the wildest sex Esme had ever had – anywhere and everywhere whenever the fancy took them. He was so much older than her, so much more experienced, handsome and funny and confidence oozed from him – it was hard not to be awed and completely spellbound. And at least her education, or lack of it, didn’t matter to him. In fact, he always seemed pleased that she was less qualified than he was. He only cared that she was there for him. Esme’s failure at university had been the first hammer blow to the relationship with her parents. They’d been disappointed, even though they’d tried to understand. And then she’d met Warren when things had already been fragile with them, and somehow her relationship with him made things a hundred times worse.

But he was here for her now – his messages proved that – and maybe everyone was doing him a grave disservice by doubting his intentions.

Tucked in her coat pocket, her fingers traced the outline of her mobile phone. She’d heard it ping some time back and hadn’t looked, because she knew it would be another message from Warren. But now she sat on a boulder and took her phone out.

Esme slipped the phone back into her pocket and gazed around at the darkening hills, her breath spiralling into the air. Solitude could be tranquil and beautiful, but it could also be cold and bleak. Suddenly, she was sick and tired of being alone. Hadn’t it only been Shelly keeping them apart before? Hadn’t they had plenty of good times as well as bad? Like the day trip to Brighton where they’d got so drunk they’d skinny-dipped in the sea once dusk had fallen and had laughed so much they’d completely missed their last train home. They’d had to sleep at the station because they’d run out of money for a hotel and they’d snuck into a toilet to have sex and it was scary and exciting and rebellious and it had made Esme feel totally alive in a way she never had before. And the fancy-dress party where he’d gone as Tom Cruise in Top Gun and she’d dressed as Kelly McGillis and he’d sang ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling’ to her on the karaoke and they’d won a booby prize for the cheesiest costumes. Every relationship had ups and downs, didn’t it? He’d made a mistake and he’d strung her and Shelly along but he saw that now – the fact that he was trying to comfort her showed that. What was the point of struggling alone when she didn’t have to? He wanted to make things right, and if he was divorcing Shelly then he was serious about that, wasn’t he? They were meant to be together, because they did both need each other, and, in the end, wasn’t that the only thing that mattered?

Esme took the phone out once more, and this time she sent a reply.