Vanessa and Robert are on holiday. It is New Year's Eve and Vanessa is driving over the fell road. Robert is explaining to her what will happen in the event of a major radiation leak at the nearby power station. Vanessa doesn't want to think about accidents or the threat of terrorist attacks. She prefers to imagine instead the glacial ice-sheets which covered these mountains for millions of years. She thinks of the slow-moving ice carving down through the valleys. She imagines clear skies and a world covered with virgin snow, a pristine version of the landscape through which they are driving.
‘It's still there,' announces Robert, who has been looking back at the power station through the rear window of the car. ‘Yes,' says Vanessa. She is trying to make her voice sound conversational but it sounds accusing. She forces herself to smile so that he will give her the benefit of the doubt. On another occasion she might not have bothered and he would have sulked, forcing her to ask what the matter was. She would resist, knowing full well what she was doing, wanting him to fight her, though she knows he won't. But this is neither the time nor the place and she lets it drop. She repeats to herself the names of rocks: calcareous, gneiss, feldspar. The words sound hard, unyielding, comforting.
A few scarlet-marked sheep scatter from the road onto the gorse-covered bank. There are yellow flowers on the gorse which she knows blooms every day of the year; ‘Like hope' her mother used to say. Vanessa has been living with Robert for six years. She is 29. Recently she has taken to thinking a lot about herself. What once seemed distant concerns have taken on a real urgency. She cannot see herself with Robert for the rest of her life. She wants to break out but she doesn't yet know where to. In the earlier days of living together they laughed over friends and relatives getting married. They congratulated themselves on their freedom. Each of them had a career. How was it possible to make a commitment so young? After a time they ceased to talk about it. Now the fact they have not married seems to demand correction.
'How long before we get to the car park?' Vanessa asks. Robert says it's not too far. Around the next bend they see the sign and Vanessa pulls off the road and stops with the nose of the car pointing towards mountains. There is a lake behind them, a long curve of metallic blue. The power station has passed from sight.
She had felt the wind buffeting the car while she was driving but the violence of it almost knocks her over as she gets out to put on her walking boots. She turns round to see Robert chasing his hat down the road. He play-acts for her benefit and she laughs. Robert looks pleased as he comes back up the road towards her, his hat now firmly secured on his head.
From the car park they cross a narrow brook and take the path up the valley in front of them. Robert has traced out a route along the dotted footpaths marked on the Ordnance Survey map. His square back and shoulders move ahead. Vanessa's boots squelch in the half-frozen mud. They climb in silence, following the trail along the side of the lower hillslope. There are footprints in the mud but once the car park has passed from view she cannot see any other forms of human life, only the white, drifted snow. Across the valley Vanessa occasionally mistakes a rock for a human figure. She thinks how difficult it would be to find someone if they were lost up here. She is glad she is wearing her bright yellow waterproof. Robert has on only an old, brown flying jacket. From the air he would be indistinguishable from the boulders littering the hillside, she thinks.
She picks her way unsteadily over the wet ground, trying to follow Robert in the placing of a foot here or there. Several times they have to stop while Robert finds a way through a particularly boggy section of the path. Vanessa watches him. When they first knew each other he used to go climbing. But friends moved away and he got out of the habit. Now he rarely even goes out.
