‘Joni?’ she called into the still air.

  She pushed on, her muscles stiff and unyielding. She felt unrested and dehydrated – she’d rather have been in the cabin, stoking the fire, opening a sachet of coffee while the kettle boiled, waking up gradually and forming a plan for the day.

  Not this.

  She rubbed her eyelids with a knuckle. They felt dry and irritated from the wood-smoke and … had she been crying in her sleep? There was a raw puffiness to them, and she’d woken with a heavy feeling, Patrick deeply on her mind. This wasn’t the time to pick through the carcass of her marriage. She needed to find Joni. Help her. Think of a way to get them all safely off the mountain.

  She strode on, knees complaining, feeling rock and earth turn beneath her boots.

  She rounded a large boulder marked with a red T-marker, the sight faintly reassuring. If they could support Maggie, perhaps it was possible for them to follow the trail down before the next nightfall.

  In the distance, Liz noticed a pinnacle jutting from the mountainside, a platform of rock suspended from its edge. And there – standing on top, was Joni. With a rush of pleasure, she realised that this was it – the pinnacle from their school project!

  Then an icy coolness flooded her body as she absorbed the scene. Joni was standing at the edge, her head tilted downward as she assessed the drop beneath her feet. One moment’s lapse in concentration – that was all it’d take.

  Liz wanted to call out – tell her to step back – but she couldn’t risk startling her.

  Then, suddenly, Joni moved, taking something from her pocket and turning it through her fingers. Then she raised her hand and let the object slip from her grasp, dropping it over the side of the pinnacle into the emptiness.

  58

  JONI

  Joni stepped away from the edge. As she turned, she saw Liz was coming towards her, cheeks pink, hair loose around her face, her expression tight with worry.

  Liz stopped, not placing a foot on the rock. She reached out a hand. ‘You’re too close to the edge!’

  Yes, Joni thought. She stared at Liz’s proffered hand, aware of the empty drop at her back and Liz there in front of her. Her heart squeezed tight. Liz. Liz. Liz. Always coming after her.

  She stepped away from the edge, taking Liz’s hand, letting herself be drawn into the warmth of her embrace.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Liz asked, holding Joni by the tops of her arms, and looking right at her.

  Liz’s skin was so fresh, her eyes sparkling. Joni wondered what it’d be like to live in her world. To have two children who orbit you. To have a husband who grows the vegetables he serves you for dinner. To have a job where you make a difference in people’s lives. To have a home to return to, filled with people you love. Liz’s life had been built on level, fertile ground, and all good things would grow.

  Into Joni’s silence, Liz said, ‘Please, talk to me.’

  Oh Liz, she thought. She could picture her in the GP surgery, hands on the desk, listening so intently, a V of concentration squeezed between her brows as she searched for a solution.

  Liz wanted to solve everyone’s problems – but some people couldn’t be fixed.

  ‘I want you to know,’ Joni said, ‘that I love you. I know I can be a shit friend and that my life is chaotic, and I don’t manage things well, but I do love you.’

  Liz held her tight. ‘I know you do.’

  ‘I took the cocaine from your pocket,’ Joni said quietly.

  She nodded. ‘It’s okay—’

  ‘But I didn’t snort it. Look,’ Joni said, turning and pointing. She’d thrown the coke off the edge in what was meant to be a symbolic gesture of her starting fresh, getting clean. Disappointingly, the bag had caught on a ledge about twenty metres down, but still, it was the gesture that was important.

  Liz’s face broke into a smile. ‘Well done!’

  She loved Liz for that – her honest, open praise. It would always feel an impossible feat for Joni to juggle two worlds – the band and music and touring and drugs, with Liz, Maggie and Helena’s settled, full lives. But all Joni knew was that she wanted to try.

  ‘I want to sort myself out. Get clean. Get clear-headed again. Have some time out. Start making good decisions, y’know?’

  Liz nodded. ‘You’ve just started.’

  She smiled, the gloom lifting a fraction.

  Liz turned towards the view. ‘We’re at our spot. The geography project.’

  ‘I know!’ Joni said, hooking an arm around Liz’s waist.

  ‘The hike might not have worked out as we’d hoped. But we are here. I’m proud of that.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  Together, they absorbed the soaring view. The mist had started drawing in closer, thick bands of it partially obscuring the river below. It seemed to rise, cold and dense, curling over the mountain face.

  Joni realised that – in the time she’d been up here – the visibility had decreased rapidly. ‘I don’t like the look of that mist. It’s thickening into fog. What’s our plan for getting down the mountain? You think Maggie can hike out of here?’

  ‘Unless we find a phone signal, she hasn’t got a choice,’ Liz said.

  ‘Could Erik help? Do we trust him?’

  Liz shrugged her shoulders uncertainly.

  Joni slipped her phone from her pocket but, turning it on, the battery symbol flashed to red. One per cent remaining – and still not a bar of signal.

  ‘Let’s check the map quickly. See how far the lodge is,’ Liz said.

  She passed the phone to Liz, who went to open the map, but her thumb knocked the icon beside it: Messages.

  Liz went to swipe back – but hesitated.

  ‘Patrick?’ she said.

  Joni’s attention snapped to the screen. ‘What?’

  ‘What was Patrick messaging you about …’ she peered at the screen, eyeing the time stamp, ‘… three days ago?’

  Her blood ran cool. ‘Oh. He was … just saying he’d heard I’d joined the hike.’

  Liz was watching her, a small crease between her brows deepening. ‘But I’ve not spoken to him. He doesn’t know that.’

  Joni’s mouth turned dry.

  She could see Liz about to click on the message.

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Don’t?’ Liz said, bemused. ‘Don’t look at a message my husband sent you?’

  ‘It’s … just …’

  Liz was staring at her, head tipped to one side.

  ‘Please, Liz. Don’t.’

  It was too late. Liz had already opened the message and begun to read.

  Joni felt the blood drain from her face. She went completely still, frozen with dread. She watched Liz reading the messages on her phone – a dozen tiny missives that should’ve been deleted, but that she’d wanted to keep – to give her what? Proof it had happened?

  Now she saw how stupid she’d been.

  Patrick Wallace. Her first crush at school with his easy, slow smile that took over his face. A laugh that tipped his head back when it rumbled out. A way of listening, really listening, with his whole body.

  She had seen the way Patrick looked at her – but Liz was besotted with him. Liz had spent so many hours talking about Patrick, that when Joni finally talked to him herself, she already knew that his favourite band was Green Day, that he liked to run and skate, that he was happiest outdoors.

  The summer she and Liz turned eighteen, Liz’s older brother threw a party – and Patrick was there. He’d been searching for Joni all evening and found her in the garden, smoking alone. They’d hung out and she remembered he had smelt so clean and fresh – of toothpaste and soap and good laundry detergent. She knew that you don’t poach your best friend’s crush. She knew it. But when he leaned towards her, his hand so light on the base of her spine, all her reservation melted beneath the heat of her desire.

  Afterwards, Maggie had found Joni in tears.

  When Joni explained, saying she didn’t know what to do, Maggie had squeezed her hand and said, ‘You’re going travelling next month. There’ll be hundreds of guys.’

  Maggie was right. There were. Patrick was just a boy – and there were so many more out there. It shamed her that she’d needed someone else to tell her to do the right thing.

  So she had left, gone travelling.

  And when she’d returned, two years later, Liz and Patrick had been a couple.

  She used to watch the two of them together and think: This is right. They fit. Patrick with his toothpaste smile, and Liz with her good sleep habits and focus and work.

  But occasionally, when she and Patrick were alone, there was something there – an energy that she didn’t want to name. She pretended to herself there wasn’t. And for years it was fine. He and Liz married and had the twins, and she could see the pride and adoration in his face when he looked at their family. He loved Liz with every fibre of his being, and so Joni snuffed out that flame with other men, her music, the bright lights of fame.

  Until, one day, she realised it was still burning.

  Liz had finished reading the messages. She looked up.

  Her expression wasn’t steely or furious. She looked scared.

  59

  LIZ

  Liz could hear nothing but the rush of blood in her ears. She had read each of the messages, eyes widening, as words like Dublin … hotel room … Liz can never find out … danced across the screen.

  She blinked. Shook her head.

  No.

  Please … Oh god. No!

  Patrick had known Joni for almost as long as he’d known Liz. He respected Joni, made her laugh, was protective of her, would stand up for her – but Liz had always told herself that he wasn’t attracted to her.

  Why had she chosen to believe that? Last summer a women’s magazine had crowned Joni ‘The Sexiest Woman on the Planet’. She and Patrick had laughed about the article in the kitchen while making quesadillas.

  Now she lifted her gaze to Joni, whose face was white, lips dry.

  ‘Dublin,’ Liz whispered, understanding. ‘When I went back to the hotel with a migraine, you two …’ she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  She remembered being backstage, her migraine already sending lights dancing in front of her eyes, as she’d told Joni she couldn’t come to the after-party. Joni had looked crestfallen, so Liz had said, ‘Patrick will party with you!’ She’d offered him up like a consolation prize.

  Patrick had turned to Liz, ‘Sure you don’t want me to come back with you?’

  ‘I’ll get a taxi. Stay! Party! Please. You can tell me all about it tomorrow.’

  It hadn’t taken Patrick much persuasion. He’d always liked to party. She was happy for him to roll in late, then wake hungover and affectionate the morning after. So she had sent the two of them off, Joni glimmering in her gown and stage make-up, Patrick so solid and handsome at her side. And she – stupid, naïve Liz – had taken a taxi back to the hotel, with no idea that she was holding a lit match to her marriage.

  60

  JONI

  A deep pressure was building in Joni’s chest. Liz was standing in front of her, and behind there was nothing but cloud, air, and a sheer, plummeting drop.

  Liz’s voice was thin, ragged with emotion. ‘Did you have sex with Patrick?’

  Joni swallowed repetitively, eyes down. She noticed the goosebumps on her bare legs; that one of her laces had come undone. Wind licked at her neck.

  Dublin. That gig had been a beacon, knowing Liz and Patrick would be there. She’d been losing her head on that tour. She needed them. Backstage, after the gig, when Liz said she had a migraine, had to go, Joni thought she’d buckle with disappointment. Everything was spinning out of control – her life, her thoughts, the drugs; all of it. Liz was her anchor.

  And then Liz had said, ‘Patrick will party with you!’ and Joni had gripped his arm like a lifeline.

  She’d taken Patrick to the after-party, introducing him to the band, proud to say, ‘This is one of my oldest friends, Patrick Wallace.’ Her manager, Kai, who she was already sleeping with, tried to extract her to do a line of coke, but she wanted a clear head. She wanted to be with Patrick and enjoy his company. So she’d told Kai no.

  ‘I didn’t think you could say no,’ Kai had whispered without breaking his smile. ‘I’ll put a line on your bedside table for later.’

  That’s when she knew she needed to leave the party. ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ she’d said to Patrick, taking him by the hand.

  So they’d found themselves in a dark hotel bar, where no one would recognise her, on cold leather sofas, drinking Guinness. She’d left in her sequined gown, so he’d wrapped his big coat around her shoulders, and she had breathed in that clean soaped smell of his and Liz’s home. It had smelt like safety and she’d curled into it, bare feet tucked beneath her.

  ‘How are you, Joni?’ he’d asked in the quiet of the bar, and the way he’d said it, looking her right in the eye, it was as if he saw exactly how she was.

  She’d talked with honesty about the exhaustion of touring, how her songwriting was drying up, that she wasn’t happy. He’d held her hands in his. As they’d talked, she’d become aware of the heat in their fingers, connected, palm to palm. Patrick had looked down at their linked hands. Swallowed. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, very slowly, ‘that I should be holding your hand.’

  She felt an electric charge so strong that she couldn’t stop herself from leaning into it – into him. They kissed.

  It was an explosion. Like the best hit of any drug she’d taken, the feeling of it lighting up her whole body, electric and delicious and soft and vibrant and so utterly, utterly addictive that her body ached and quivered with its demand for more – because she never wanted the gloriousness of that feeling to end.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ Patrick said. He tucked his hands under his arms, as if he needed to physically clamp them down. ‘I can’t—’

  ‘I know,’ she said, because she did. Liz and Patrick were the two people on earth Joni loved the most, and she couldn’t lose either of them.

  And yet, somehow those thoughts were obliterated by the richness of desire and need and wanting … and without thought, there was only body, and their bodies were leaning in, kissing, and she knew he wanted her. And it was the best high of her life. And if there was one thing Joni Gold liked, it was to get fucking high.

  They were already in a hotel. All they needed was a room. Who says no when the drink is poured and already on its way to your lips?

  Now Joni expelled an audible breath.

  Liz was staring at her, waiting for her question to be answered: Did you have sex with Patrick?

  61

  LIZ

  ‘Yes,’ Joni admitted at last. ‘I did.’

  Liz covered her face with her hands. Her chest felt like it was caving in.

  Joni was talking, apologising, but Liz wasn’t listening, because all she could picture was Joni fucking her husband.

  Her brain lurched. The trial separation: it was my idea. I wanted it. Suggested it. She had thought it was on her terms. That it was a good idea. She had diagnosed a problem in their marriage, so she’d put on her GP hat and – after much talking, because good communication was part of their strength – she’d suggested a trial separation.

  When he’d said it sounded like a good idea, she’d experienced a deep, profound ache in her heart, as if something were tearing.

  She told herself that it would be fine. It could be a good thing, in fact, because once they were apart, he’d be forced to imagine his life without her – and then they could come back together stronger, prepared to fight.

  But now everything looked different.

  Joni Gold.

  On their first night at the lodge, she’d come across Joni on the phone down by the lake. She’d been speaking in a low voice, and when she’d seen Liz, her face had paled and she’d whispered to the caller, ‘I need to go.’

  She’d told Liz it was Kai.

  But it had been Patrick.

  Liz started to shake. She could feel a tingling in her fingertips. She suddenly felt deeply exposed, separated physically from her family. She’d left them – and a wolf had got in.

  She imagined Joni sitting at her breakfast bar, the twins grinning at her, Patrick smiling by the stove, waiting for the coffee to brew.

  ‘What do you want? My husband? My family?’

  ‘No! I’d never do that to you!’

  ‘Yet you’d sleep with Patrick! Send him messages when we’re on a trial separation!’

  Joni pressed her teeth into her lower lip.

  ‘Of all the men, Joni. Of all the men!’ Throughout their school years, Liz had watched in awe as the boys gravitated towards Joni. She radiated magnetism with her infectious, deep laugh, and the way she’d say something completely surprising that caught you off guard, or how she dressed without a care for what anyone thought. Liz was familiar with the feeling of being passed over, so when Patrick kissed her – chose her! – Liz realised that the other boys no longer mattered because she had Patrick.

  Liz said, ‘You can have anyone you want, Joni. Anyone! Why Patrick?’

  Joni took a breath. ‘I thought I was in love with him.’

  ‘Love?’ Liz hissed through her teeth. ‘Don’t you dare use that word! It’s not some song, Joni! This is my life!’

  Liz took a step closer to her. A visceral, muscular rage made her body quiver. She saw the whites of Joni’s eyes, the way she widened them with the shock of realising how near the edge she was.

  Liz thought of her husband, of her children, of how their family would be ripped apart. Red-hot fury heated her blood. Her hands shook as she raised them.

  Her fingers gripped the fabric of Joni’s coat. Her rage turned blinding-white and, in that moment, there were no thoughts, just a soaring, scorching fury, and she leaned in.

  THE SEARCH

  Leif stands with his hiking boots planted on the pinnacle edge. The wind snakes around his bare calves, pushes down the neckline of his T-shirt, cooling the sweat on his back.