Jennifer was starting to worry. To come this far and not to make the summit was unthinkable. The mountains had always been her home, and as a young woman she could walk anywhere she wanted to in these hills, whenever she wanted to. She could hear the thump thump thump of her heart and the rasp of her own breathing as she crested the ridge. Sheets of rain and wind battered her relentlessly, and swirling cloud obscured her view of the final top. She kept blinking away the streams that ran into each of her eyes. Her wind-burnt face contorted in a look of concern. There was dull twinge in her breast bone that told her she had seriously overdone things. This place could be the death of her yet. After she had finished the chemotherapy they told her to get some fresh air and only moderate exercise, she didn’t think this was quite what they had in mind.

Tom had looked concerned that morning as he waved her off in the car. He knew better than to try and persuade her not to go. He had been her rock these past few months, but one of his finest qualities was knowing when to say nothing. She knew he was worried about her, this was just something she had to do, something she needed to do. She wasn’t going to let this illness turn her into a victim. She’d been a fighter all her life, it was all she knew, and she was too old to change now.

The glassy, bluish-green, rocks were slick with moisture under her hands, as she hauled herself upward for what had to be the final time that day. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to go much further. Fingers numb and white from the pressure, her boots scrabbled for grip on the steeply sloping outcrop of slate. The muscles of her arms screamed with fatigue. At last she found a toe-hold on a tiny crack and launched herself over the top.

She lay full stretch for a moment, turning face up to the gloomy, darkening, sky. Mouth open wide, catching raindrops, she took huge gulps of air desperately trying fill her aching lungs. She had done it ! She had only gone and bloody done it !

The last time she had climbed this mountain she had been a much younger, fitter, woman, with a younger and fitter husband by her side ! They had laughed and joked on the climb that day, a hot June day as she recalled. They’d both sweated hard getting to the top, not like today. Back then she’d been a young bride, kids all yet to come. Back then she’d had a fine auburn head of hair. Back then she hadn’t had a body scarred by the surgeon’s knife.

She wasn’t a youngster any more and she knew it. Illness or no illness, tomorrow she would feel every step of today in all her joints. She couldn’t say how long she lay there, gasping like a codfish on the deck of a trawler. Eventually she pushed herself awkwardly into a sitting position, legs dangling in a thousand of feet of wet mountain air, leaning back against the last of the rocky pinnacle. Her hair was growing-in again after the chemo, only it had come back a fine grey fuzz. Now the fine growth was plastered to her skull and rivulets ran ignored down her flushed face, some down the neck of her fleece and some joining the cascade down the front of her jacket. Only now, as her breathing returned to normal, and her heartbeat slowed (perhaps she wasn’t going to die here today after all) did she allow herself to savour the view.

Below her, the clouds she had climbed through buffeted against the mountain face in an angry turmoil, hiding the ground from view. Now and then she caught a glimpse of the valley floor in the gaps in the grey shroud. Against all the background of green, she could just make out the white mare’s tail of the waterfall. When the clouds parted briefly, she could even see a tiny hint of the road she drove in on, way off in the distance. In every other direction the uniform nothing-ness caused spots to dance before her eyes as she strained to define anything about her surroundings. Pure, featureless, unformed grey as far as the eye could see, or in this case couldn’t see.

Smiling wryly to herself she thought, Well, it’s a bloody good job I didn’t climb up here to see the view!

End