tent before you’d had a chance to have a decent lie-in. Looked like the tree would do the job, so she parked her car, opened the boot and began setting up camp.
The tent was brand new. As was her sleeping bag. In the end, she’d avoided a possible confrontation with Stuart by treating herself to new kit. For summer camping, cheap festival gear was good enough. It only took her half an hour to get everything set up, and her little camping gas stove (also new) up and running to make a cup of tea. She unfolded a deckchair she’d found in Gran’s shed, set it in the sunshine and sat down to wait for her pot to boil. Behind her, the little stream was chuckling to itself like a giggling child as it bubbled over stones down the valley. Ahead of her was the most amazing view, framed by branches of the oak, across the valley to the fells. She’d need to pull out her detailed map of the area to work out which ones they were, but already she could see an enticing-looking path zigzagging its way up one of them. But that would have to wait – tomorrow she wanted to go to Brackendale. She sighed with contentment. It was shaping up to be a very good week.
It was years since she’d last been camping. Stuart’s style was more suited to package holidays in Ibiza – sunshine, booze and partying. She’d gone along with it because she loved him and loved being with him. And they’d had fun. At least, she’d thought it was fun at the time. Looking back, she wondered why she’d never pushed for them to try a different type of holiday. One that didn’t involve daily hangovers. Would he have agreed? Who knew? If he had, it might have left them with a healthier relationship – one in which they were more of a partnership. She could see it more clearly now they’d been apart a few months – theirs had not been a relationship of equals. She’d always done whatever Stuart wanted, as though she was his pet lapdog. Perhaps it was as well it had finished the way it had, allowing no way back, although she did miss the intimacy. She missed having a best friend, too, and knew it would be ages before she could trust anyone fully again.
She spent the evening lounging outside her tent, cooking a simple meal of pasta with grated cheese, which tasted amazing when accompanied by a glass of Pinot Noir. She read books until the sun went down behind the mountains, took an evening walk around the campsite, called Gran to check she was all right, then put herself to bed early, just as it was getting dark, tired after the long drive north. Maybe the Lake District was already working its magic, as she managed to doze off without crying herself to sleep.
The following morning dawned bright and clear, but despite the shade of the oak the inside of the little tent was stifling hot by eight o’clock. Laura dressed quickly in shorts and a T-shirt, and bought coffee and a bacon butty from the campsite shop. As she ate them she studied her map, and realised the zigzag path she could see going up the fells on the other side of the valley led into Brackendale. It was marked on the map as the Old Corpse Road. ‘Interesting name for a footpath,’ she muttered to herself, making a mental note to google it at the next opportunity. It looked to be about three kilometres to walk, with four hundred metres of ascent, from the campsite to Brackendale, and on a day like this why not walk it rather than drive around? She packed her rucksack with a bottle of water, a hastily made sandwich and some snacks, donned her walking boots and set off.
To begin with her route took her along the lane going further up the valley, past a church with its overgrown graveyard, full of lopsided lichen-clad gravestones. A little further on, a public footpath sign pointed the way to ‘Brackendale via Old Corpse Road’.
The track wound its way between acres of waist-high dried-out bracken, then began the zigzags she could see from the campsite, where heather and outcrops of rock flanked the path. As she climbed higher the temperature seemed to increase as there was no shade and very little breeze. The land smelt dry and dusty. She sat to rest on a flat-topped rock that was just to the side of the path, wondering whether it was natural or had been placed there for some reason. She took a gulp of water from her bottle, wishing she’d brought more than one as she was not at the top of this climb and it was half gone already.
As she walked she found herself thinking about her clients, and wondering how they were getting on without her. Of course the agency would be sending alternative carers, but some clients always told her how much they looked forward to Laura’s visits. Like dear old Bert Williamson, who always had a joke ready for her every time she came. As often as not it’d be one she’d heard before – usually from Bert himself the previous week, as his memory was not the best – but she’d chuckle anyway and tell him he was such a card, as she got him washed, dressed and ready for the day. And lovely Ada, where her morning calls would always include helping the old lady pick out earrings and a necklace to match her outfit for the day. Her job paid poorly but it was so meaningful and worthwhile, and people like Bert and Ada made it enjoyable. The worst moments were when she arrived at a client’s home to find them very sick, and she’d need to call an ambulance and send them off to hospital, knowing there was a strong chance they wouldn’t come home again. Her training had taught her not to get too involved with clients, but sometimes she couldn’t help it.
At last the gradient levelled out and she found herself crossing a rounded hilltop, land that might be boggy in a wet season but currently was formed of hardened mud, with the path winding its way through. The view changed – now she could see a new range of higher hills that must be on the far side of Brackendale looming on the horizon. Eventually the path began to lose height and then suddenly, as it turned a corner, there it was – the whole valley of Brackendale laid out before her. She gasped at the sight. Away over to her right she could just see the dam, and a small lake, not much more than a pond, this side of it. A huge expanse of muddy lake-bed covered the rest of the valley floor, just as she’d seen on the TV news report. Around the edges was a fringe of pebbles, as though normally the reservoir had a bit of pebble beach. The valley sides were lined with trees. She squinted, trying to pick out the ruins of the village amongst the dried mud, but from this height it was difficult to be sure what she was seeing. It would be nice to have a companion, someone to talk to about what they could see, but of course there was no one. Stuart would never have come on this type of holiday. Neither would Martine. With a jolt Laura realised those two were probably well matched after all. She sniffed back the tears that threatened to fall, pushed all thoughts of Stuart out of her mind and picked up her pace on the descent, desperate to get down to the lakeside and start exploring.
The bottom of the track led into a car park, after crossing a stile. There were a number of cars parked there, presumably either hikers or tourists who’d come to see the empty reservoir. An information board beside the car park gave a few sketchy details about the history of the valley and the building of the dam, complete with a grainy photo of what the village of Brackendale Green looked like in the early 1930s. Laura peered closely at this, noting the church, a pub, a bridge over a stream, a group of cottages tightly packed in what was presumably the village centre, and then some more scattered cottages and farm buildings further out. She lifted her head to look at the dried lake-bed, where she could now clearly see the low, broken walls that the TV reporter had pointed out. She tried to map buildings shown on the photo against the ruins but from where she was standing it wasn’t possible. Time to venture onto the dried mud and explore it properly.
She crossed the car park, walked a little way along the lane that would normally hug the shores of the lake, then when she was near to some of the ruins she left the road, crossed the band of pebbles and tentatively set foot on the grey mud. It was rock solid, criss-crossed with cracks from the weeks of sunshine, and smelt a little of rotting vegetation, as any aquatic plants the lake had hosted had long since perished in the dry heat. More confident now that she’d discovered how firm the mud’s surface was, she set out across it to the nearest piece of wall. It was about waist high, with mounds of rubble inside, and a clear doorway. On the opposite side to the door were the remains of a window, complete with some green-glazed tiles on the inside ledge. Laura entered the cottage, and immediately felt the surface beneath her feet change, as though there were only a couple of inches of dried mud on top of a more solid base – stone flags, she presumed.
The next cottage felt different underfoot. She knelt down and rubbed at the
