growing spectator crowd pressed them closer together and Hayden slid an arm around behind her to keep the soggiest of them back. Soon enough they were funnelled out of the crowded area to the two ornate stone towers that anchored the bridge to the land at both ends. A production line of safety instructions and advices began there and Shirley busied herself with taking them very seriously and making an endless stream of decisions.
‘Single or tandem?’ the young man in the bright T-shirt asked.
‘Single,’ she said. Just as Hayden said, ‘Tandem.’
She looked at him. He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Do you seriously think you’re going to be able to do this alone?’
She glanced over the edge of the bridge at the sparkle of blue water so very far below. Not as far as in the movies, but far enough to kill you if you got it wrong. There was a couple jumping together as she watched and it wasn’t … intimate … in the way tandem skydives were. They just stood next to each other.
Until they plunged, of course.
She dragged her eyes back to the young man. ‘Tandem. Thank you.’
‘Bob, touch or full immersion?’
‘Uh …’ It was like ordering a pizza. Mozzarella or feta? She glanced at Hayden, lost.
‘You want to get wet?’ he translated.
No. She didn’t want to do this at all, as it turned out. But her mum would have wanted the full splash-down experience. ‘Full immersion?’
Hayden smiled at her uncertainty and murmured, ‘That’s my girl.’
They shuffled forward. Only one station from the one with rubber ropes involved. Oh Lord …
A girl met them this time, even younger than the first and with a heavy Welsh accent. She took them through the safety talk again and outlined the procedure for getting out of the water at the bottom.
‘Relax,’ Hayden murmured in her ear.
Her tight throat translated into a squeaky voice. ‘This place is run by child backpackers …’
He laughed and shuffled her forward, right to the opening on the side of the red iron bridge. It wasn’t glamorous—far from it—but the men doing the tying on at least did look as if they’d been shaving for longer than a year.
Ahead of them a young woman jumped, and then a fifty-something man.
Surely if someone with silver hair could do it then she could do it?
A heavily tattooed arm waved them forward.
Her feet locked to the bridge as surely as if they had been bolted there. ‘I can’t do it.’
Hayden looked back. ‘Yeah, you can. Look how much trouble you’ve gone to getting here.’
She pressed back against the side of the suspension bridge. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this.’
Behind Hayden, the man lowered his arm and started towards them. She instinctively curled her fingers into Hayden’s shirt in case the big guy just picked her up and threw her over. His arms immediately curled around her. ‘What about you just step out there with me. Take a look?’
She’d been looking all this time—what was going to change about it out there? She shook her head.
‘Come on, gorgeous.’ The operator smiled, reaching them. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. You’ve got a fourteen-year-old behind you.’
She turned to check on the veracity of that. Sure enough, a toothy kid smiled back at her.
‘Is this your first time?’ she asked.
He shook his ginger hair. ‘Fourth. It’s cool.’
She looked back to Hayden. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘It’s cool.’
She didn’t want to be cool; she wanted to be alive. Then, right hard on the heels of that thought, came another one—they were doing this in the first place to feel alive. To experience life in all its forms.
Including its terrifying ones.
Her foot peeled off the deck.
‘That’s the way,’ the operator said and whistled for his compatriot, who hung two large white lengths of rubber rope on their bollards.
Hayden curled his fingers through hers and led her forward.
‘Aren’t you scared?’ she whispered up at him.
‘Yep. But I’m not about to let you see that. On principle.’ He winked at her. ‘Anything Shiloh can do, I can do.’
Shiloh. She could do it.
She let herself be shuffled out onto a platform fixed to the side of the bridge and she let the safety lesson wash over her. Something about the little yellow boat that would come for them when they were done and about keeping your feet together.
As she heard the words, someone snapped two thick blue straps around her ankles like fabric handcuffs, forcing them together. Then they did Hayden’s. It meant they could shuffle but not walk out onto the timber dive-boards that got them clear of the bridge. One was skinny, the other wider. For two.
Hands guided her out onto the wide one and Hayden shuffled up next to her.
‘Okay?’ His glance held genuine concern. ‘Ready?’
Her chest tightened so hard she could barely get a word out. ‘No.’
‘To which?’
‘To both.’ The blood rushed past her ears the way the river below them roared down the gorge.
‘Take a second, Shirley,’ he whispered close to her ear. ‘Appreciate where we are.’
She forced her head up, away from the milky-blue water deep below, forced herself to think about where they were and what they were doing. How extraordinary it was. How stunning the landscape was.
‘Look at me …’
She brought her eyes back to his. They were the same blue as the tumbling water below. For one fanciful moment that actually made all this better because falling from a great height into Hayden’s eyes was something she could easily imagine. And not imagine hating.
Her pulse settled just a fraction.
‘This is for your mum,’ he said. He lifted the hand that she hadn’t realised he still had clasped in his. ‘We’re doing this because she couldn’t. And I really can’t imagine a time or a place that we could possibly be closer to her than here, doing this crazy wrong thing. Look around and tell me that gods didn’t carve these mountains, that angels don’t roost amongst those trees.’
She did, and she couldn’t.
‘We’re going to
