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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Alice Keale and Jane Smith 2017
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Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (posed by model)
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Source ISBN: 9780008205256
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008214944
Version: 2016-12-20
Contents
In the spring, Joe and I went on another holiday. To Peru this time, to trek part of the Inca trail. It was a holiday Joe could easily have afforded, but I paid for it all, out of what remained of my savings. And, in any other circumstances, it would have been worth paying almost any amount of money to be able to trek through that amazing landscape of lush valleys and high plateaux, surrounded by spectacular mountain scenery.
Our guide usually walked some distance ahead of us, mostly out of earshot of the endless questions and recriminations that, for me, made walking far more tiring than it would otherwise have been. ‘Many people would give anything to do what we’re doing,’ I thought, as I trudged along the trail beside Joe on what was probably the fourth day, barely noticing the breathtaking beauty of the mountains whose peaks seemed to touch the brilliant blue sky. Then, suddenly, Joe stopped, looked up at the birds that were swooping and calling to each other above our heads and said, ‘I think those are condors.’
It was a simple statement, the sort of thing anyone might have said at the time. But the fact that it was said by Joe was extraordinary. I looked at him as closely as I dared, trying to read the expression on his face, and could feel my chest tighten as I realised that the man I was looking at was the Joe I had fallen in love with, what seemed like a whole lifetime ago. He must have sensed that I was watching him, and when he turned to look at me he smiled and his face relaxed and was handsome again, the way it was in the photographs I’d taken of him on our first holiday together in Barcelona.
For a few minutes I was almost afraid to breathe, in case I broke the spell of the moment and sent us plummeting back into the misery in which we’d spent almost every waking minute of every hour since the discovery. But Joe continued to smile, and while Joe was smiling, the cross-examination stopped and the world around me came back into focus. Having walked for the last few days with my shoulders hunched and my head bowed under the weight of his aggressive questioning, I suddenly noticed the flowers that littered the path at our feet, the sunlight that was reflected off the mirror-like surfaces of distant rivers and lakes, and the sharp, clear outlines of the soaring mountain peaks.
Having wanted to trek the Inca trail for as long as I could remember, all I’d thought about since the day we’d arrived was catching the flight home, where I could at least feel safe knowing that I was in the same country as my family and friends, rather than alone with Joe 6,000 miles away. Now, though, as Joe talked about the things we used to talk about when we first met – what we were going to do with our lives, where we were going to live, how many children we were going to have – I thought that trekking in Peru had done what I’d been unable to do and had brought the real Joe back.
Although it was Joe who wanted to go to Peru when we did, he’d actually trekked the Inca trail before, twice: once with his wife and once with a girlfriend with whom he’d had a relationship that lasted for more
