Dead Man Walking

‘It’s alright,’ Tara said. ‘Sorry about the bitch.’

Tara Cook and Jane Dawson were able to converse like this, one minute at each other’s throats, the next offering consolation, because they were close enough to be sisters, having grown up together in Wilmslow.

Jane was now a sales assistant at Catwalk, a clothing retailer whose branded products were strictly mid-range, while Tara had a bar job but was also studying for her PhD at Manchester Met. Money was tight for the both of them and, wanting to get away for a bit, it had been Tara’s idea that they visit Cumbria.

‘Let’s just put everything on hold for a few days,’ she’d said enthusiastically. ‘Let’s go camping in the Lakes. We both love it and it will do us a world of good.’

It was true, they did both love it. As children they’d holidayed in the Lake District many times with their respective families. But on those occasions, they’d stayed at hotels, rented cottages, or bed and breakfast accommodation. More to the point, they’d travelled up here in June, July or August – not November. Even so, Jane had thought the idea a good one.

‘Let’s do it,’ she’d said.

It hadn’t been difficult arranging it, given it was the off-season, and they’d been able to sort everything out that same evening. It was going to be great, Tara said.

It scarcely felt that way now: lost, frozen and well over a thousand feet up, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the ground was indeed sloping upward again. It had been difficult enough coping with loose, ice-slippery stones, and clumps of spiky mountain grass – so much so that they hadn’t initially noticed the shallow upward incline – but now it was steepening sharply. In addition, the fog seemed to be thickening, which was hardly helped by the clouds of soapy breath billowing from their lungs. Even walking shoulder-to-shoulder, they were only aware of each other as featureless phantoms.

‘Look Tara,’ Jane said, unconsciously lowering her voice. ‘We need to get real about this. We’re in pretty serious trouble here.’

‘I know …’

And Tara did, though perhaps only now was it really dawning on her. When you were down in the Lake District’s lower country on a bright summer’s morning, taking tea and crumpets in whitewashed villages, it seemed such a benign environment. The stories you heard about people getting lost on the fells and dying from exposure surely applied to another time and another place.

And yet suddenly, bewilderingly, that time was now and that place was here.

The oft-quoted phrase, ‘how did we get into this mess’, occurred to her with shocking force. It felt as if they’d led themselves blindfolded, for several hours, to this apparent point of no return.

‘Well if we’re not going to camp, we have to keep moving,’ Tara said, doing her best to stay upbeat. ‘That’ll help us stay warm.’

‘And will wear us down,’ Jane argued, seemingly unaware she was contradicting her own position of a few minutes earlier. ‘Reduce our ability to resist the cold. I can barely feel my hands and feet as it is.’

Tara knew what she meant. It was just before twelve o’clock now, but the temperature would continue to drop until well into the early hours.

‘Can’t feel our hands and feet, can’t see our hands and feet more like,’ she mused. ‘We’re disappearing by inches.’

‘Not funny, Tara, Jesus!’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘At least the slope’s levelling off.’

Thankfully, the gradient had flattened out again, and a second later they walked into a dry-stone wall. It came to roughly chest-height on Tara, higher still on Jane, and yet the fog was so impenetrable they blundered into it with enough force to induce pain and surprise. Tara switched her phone on. It created a minor capsule of dim aquamarine light around them, and shimmered over the smooth, neatly stacked stones. The wall led away to left and right, quickly vanishing.

Tara switched the light off again, plunging them back into darkness.

The wall wouldn’t be difficult to scale, though both of them were aching and bone-weary, but at least it was a solid fixture, and it broke the surreal monotony of this place – not that it was something to actually be reassured by. Hundreds of miles of dry-stone walls snaked across the Lake District National Park, through the lower valleys, up the teetering fell-sides, across the desolate tops of ridges and plateaux. Sure, it was a sign that civilisation wasn’t too far away – as the crow flew, or if you were on horseback. Not so much if you were a tired, and increasingly cold and disoriented foot-slogger.

‘So do we climb over it and keep going?’ Tara wondered.

‘Why?’ Jane asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why climb over it? Why not follow it?’

‘It won’t lead to a farmhouse, or anything like that.’

‘At least we’ll know we aren’t walking in fucking circles.’

‘Jane …’ Tara tried to remain patient. It served no purpose to stand here sniping at each other in the murk. ‘Look … people don’t walk around in circles, okay? Not in real life. That only happens in the movies.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ … we’re lost in the middle of nowhere, and you’re giving me Halliwell’s fucking Film Guide.’

‘Jane, come on …’

‘I’ve got a film for you, Tara. The Shining. Remember that … when he got lost, and in the morning he was dead, covered in ice?’

‘That was up in the mountains.’

‘We’re in the fucking mountains!’

‘Not in Colorado.’

‘Look, Tara … below zero is below zero, whether it speaks with a Yank accent or Cumbrian.’

‘Jane, panicking won’t help.’

‘I’ll tell you what … let’s get over this blessed wall. We have to do something soon, or I’m going to smack you one.’

Jane’s voice had taken on a new, shrill intensity. Tara imagined that, were she to switch her phone on again, she’d see eyes like polished marbles straining from her friend’s long, boyish face; the skin stretched like shiny parchment over those unattractive, hard-angled bones.

That was when they heard the whistling.

Or rather, Tara heard it.

‘Wait, shhh!’ she said, fumbling at Jane’s arm.

‘Don’t shush me, Tara!’

‘No, listen.’

Because she was in such a state that she’d grab at any straw, no matter how slender, Jane allowed her friend to speak. But of course, she heard nothing herself.

‘Yeah, great … the silence that signifies impending doom.’

‘No, I heard something.’

‘What?’

‘Listen!’