The Hike(12)

Paul caught up. ‘Are you sure about this, T? Those hikers told us not to veer off the path.’

Tristan stopped and turned. His face was slightly pink from exertion and the harsh, beating sun. ‘They were overreacting. It’s fine. Come on.’ He started walking again. ‘I’m hungry too. And I’d kill for an ice-cold pint. Come on.’

Ginny jogged past Cat and Paul, catching up with Tristan and grabbing his hand. She started chattering away, but Cat couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. For someone who’d had no energy earlier, she seemed to have perked up.

Paul, on the other hand, was completely flagging. ‘This is taking far too long,’ he said, pulling Cat back by the elbow and keeping his voice low. ‘We set off at ten. This is meant to be a five-hour hike. We’re three hours in and we haven’t even had lunch! Why the hell did you go along with his madcap plan of using a bloody paper map, for god’s sake? We’re clearly lost, and he hasn’t a clue how to get us back on track.’

Cat shrugged him off. ‘Calm down, will you? He knows what he’s doing.’ She was trying to sound confident, but she wasn’t so sure anymore. Tristan seemed tense. Why had he chosen to ignore the hikers’ advice about not veering off the safe paths?

Paul shook his head. ‘He clearly doesn’t. But he’ll continue to barge on regardless. This is what he does. Don’t you remember the last time we went away? The weekend that he and Ginny organised that was an absolute bloody disaster?’

Cat remembered it well, but had tried to put it out of her mind. They’d hired a boat and sailed through the Norfolk Broads. Tristan had insisted on being the captain, getting pissy when anyone else tried to have a go. Ginny had done all the shopping, except she’d ordered a load of ridiculous ingredients – truffle butter, some exotic vegetables that no one knew how to cook. And far too much booze. They’d all been starving and blind drunk and it was a wonder none of them had ended up drowning. Both she and Paul had vowed never to travel with Tristan and Ginny again – but then the pandemic had happened, and all that unfolded afterwards.

And this weekend was important. To Cat, if no one else. Once things had returned to normal – or the new normal, at least – Cat’s life had spiralled out of control in ways she’d never imagined. Paul’s work nightmare, then Ginny’s thirtieth, and then, of course, the affair. That was quite unexpected and a lot more fun than she’d imagined. Until the revelation about the money that Ginny had done her out of.

Cat had spent the whole of the pandemic worried about her business, wondering how life would be afterwards – and then as soon as the world opened up, Paul had shown his true colours with his colleague and Ginny had simply done what she’d always done. Thought about herself. Cat was sick of people thinking they could walk all over her. She was sick of being the nice, sensible one.

Hence the showdown that she had been planning ever since.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Cat said, shaking away her thoughts and trying to keep up the pretence that she was having fun. ‘Once we all get fed and watered, we’ll laugh about this bit, and how Tristan clearly can’t read a map, and . . .’

She let the sentence trail off. Paul had already marched off ahead towards the others, leaving her on her own. What was his problem today? As far as he knew, the whole point of this trip was for him and Cat to take their minds off things back home. That’s what she’d told him it was for. But clearly Paul wasn’t able to do that. She knew he was frustrated about his work situation. The only person he could talk to about it was her, and she’d purposely avoided talking about it since she uncovered the truth. It was exhausting. Being here with Ginny was supposed to be fun, but she was nothing but a constant annoyance, like a buzzing fly trapped behind a window.

‘Guys, wait up, will you?’ Her dawdling had left her far behind them now, and she was finding it harder here to walk faster, with the uneven grassy mounds and the larger loose stones that lay hidden in the brush. How had they all gotten so far ahead of her?

She started power-walking, using her arms to propel herself faster. Her breath had quickened, and she was starting to feel a bit light-headed. ‘Ginny!’ She raised her voice as much as she could while she was struggling to catch her breath. It came as a surprise that she felt like this. She considered herself fit. Fitter than Ginny, certainly. But then Ginny hadn’t been left behind and forced to practically run across the hillside. Plus, Ginny was fuelled by sugar.

Cat finally caught up. ‘Gins . . .’ She was panting, hands on her thighs as she leaned forward, trying to slow her breathing. ‘Ginny . . . can I have some of those sweets? And a drink of something. I’m struggling here.’

‘Oh, damn. I finished the sweets.’ Ginny dropped her rucksack on the ground. ‘There’s still drinks though, hang on.’ She rummaged in the bag and pulled out a can of drink. ‘Only Diet Coke left. That do you?’

Cat grabbed it and popped it open, then drank greedily. The liquid burned down her throat. She paused for a second, then drank more. They were all staring at her. ‘I could’ve done with something sugary.’

Ginny shrugged. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think you did sugar these days.’

Cat had got her breath back, but she was shaking now – a mixture of hunger and rage. ‘The sweets were meant as an energy boost for the hike.’ She glared at her sister. ‘For all of us.’