Page 3 of The Vanishing Place
But Mum was already gone.
2025
Isle of Skye, Scotland
“This is beyondhumiliating,” Effie shouted as she struggled to stand in the gale-force winds. She pulled at the hood of her jacket, trying to shield her face, but the rain stung her cheeks.
“No,” Blair shouted back, their bodies huddled together. “What would be humiliating would be dying on the side of this bloody mountain because you’re too stubborn to ask for help.”
“We can get down ourselves. You can lean on me.”
“No! We absolutely cannot.” Blair dug her fingers into Effie’s arm, clinging to her, as a gust of wind threatened to topple them. “There’s no way I’m walking out on this ankle. The rocks are like ice, and it’s going to start getting bloody cold and dark.”
“I can get—”
“We need to call mountain rescue.”
“Iammountain rescue,” yelled Effie, her words diluted to a whisper by the elements.
“Right now…” Blair said as she lowered them to a crouched position on the wet ground, “what you are is a stubborn idiot who’s about to watch her best friend freeze to death with a sprained ankle. Or, quite possibly, get blown down the Dubh Slabs to end up as a puddle of flesh and bones at the bottom.”
“I would never let that—”
“Thenphonethem.”
Blair gestured with her gloved hand, and the small plastic buckle caught the side of Effie’s eye. The tender area of cold skin screamed on impact, but she blinked it away.
“I can’t.” She glanced down as water dripped from her hair. “I’d never live it down. Keith would rib me about it forever and—”
“For Christ’s sake, Effie. Listen to yourself.” Blair rubbed furiously at her arms. “We could die. This isn’t some game. This is our fucking lives.”
“Greg will be on call,” Effie murmured, without meeting her friend’s eyes.
“So?” Blair’s mascara had started to leak down her face. “That’s great.”
“We broke up last night.”
Blair shuffled across the wet rocky ground, guarding her left foot, until they were snuggled together. Then she put a drenched arm around Effie.
“You need to phone them,” she said again, but her voice was softer.
Effie looked out at where the Cuillin Ridge should have been. But there was nothing to see but gray and cloud and lashing rain. On a good day, she could have named every point from Loch Coruisk to the end of the curved mountain range—a route she’d completed a number of times. She’d once run the Black Cuillin stretch—all twenty-two summits and eleven Munros of it—in just four hours and three minutes, barely an hour off the world record.
“I know,” said Effie.
“Oh, thank god.” Blair exhaled. Then she buried her face into Effie’s chest. “Cos there’s no way I’d have the energy to fight you on it.”
“Well…” Effie managed a smile. “I’m fully intending to tell Keith that you did—that you resorted to blackmail and forced my hand.”
“Whatever gets me into a helicopter and off this fucking mountain with my fingers and toes still attached.”
Effie sat for a moment, feeling the weight of her friend against her, then she pulled her phone from her pocket and cocooned it between her ear and hood.
“It was just bad luck, you know.” Blair reached out and took Effie’s hand. “Bad luck and shitty Scottish weather.”
“Thanks, Bee.”
Effie closed her eyes and held 2 for the mountain rescue team, a team she’d been a part of for eight years. As it rang, she prayed it wouldn’t be Greg who picked up. The last thing he’d said to her, as she’d stormed from his flat, was that she’d end up dying alone on the side of some mountain. And as she’d slammed the door, she hadn’t hated the idea.
