White. Rosie Thomas

worked for a year in Asia and had travelled like a nomad. And once she had come back to live in Vancouver there had been the regular mountaineering expeditions. Except for Clare, they accepted that that was the way Finch lived.

      Angus said, ‘We all liked Ralf, you know. We’d have been glad if you had chosen him, but as you didn’t – well, that’s fine too.’

      From down the table Kitty silently signalled her apology to Finch for unleashing all this.

      ‘You’ve got plenty of time, darling,’ Clare said. ‘You go and climb Everest …’

      ‘I’m not going all the way. I’m only supporting the serious mountaineers.’

      ‘Do you think we believe that?’ Caleb laughed.

      ‘… and then come home. And after that, maybe you’ll be ready.’

      Suzy: For the serious business of life.

      And Finch thought she heard her friend saying that straight.

      Maybe, she silently rejoined. Maybe I can only find that out by going.

      There was, after all, some buried instinct stirring in her, making her dream at the deepest level of something that the rest of her life appeared to deny. If there had not been, then she would not have chosen to join this expedition, this particular one of so many.

      ‘Who is taking you to the airport tomorrow?’ Angus was asking. ‘Your mother and I would like to, you know that.’

      ‘Dennis is,’ Finch said firmly. ‘We will have some last-minute things to settle. Patients, management, bits of business.’

      Dennis Frame was Finch’s medical partner. She had known him since high school and after Suzy he was her closest friend.

      ‘I was, in fact, the very last child in the world to be named Dennis,’ he said, but he refused to answer to Den or Denny. He was tolerant, slightly introspective, and gay. Finch greatly admired him. With the help of two other physicians, he would look after Finch’s patients in her absence.

      The evening was coming to an end. Caleb’s and Jessy’s son had slept through the dinner but now he had woken up and was starting to cry. Tanya said she had an early start in the morning and James was flying to Toronto. They moved from their seats and crossed the spaces of the room to embrace and exchange the shorthand assurances of families. Write. Phone. All the news. Mail me.

      This was Finch’s matrix. She felt restricted by it when it was tight around her, like tonight, but she knew when she stood back she would see the firm knitted strands of it and value it in theory.

      All eight of them came out to the driveway to wave her off. The air smelled of rain and salt.

      ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Will you forgive me?’ Kitty whispered.

      ‘I’m pleased you did. It saved me having to bring it up.’

      Each of the boys hugged her and warned her to be careful. Their concern made her feel like the little girl again, trying to demonstrate that she could run as far and jump as high as they could.

      Tanya and Jessica kissed her, wishing her luck in clear incomprehension of why she would want to go at all.

      Clare and Angus took her hands and wrapped her in their arms, and tried not to repeat all the things they had said already.

      At last, Finch climbed into her car. Her family stood solid against the yellow lights of the house, waving her off. She drove back to the city, to the apartment that already seemed unaired and deserted. There were a few books, some cushions and candles that had mostly been given to her as presents, but otherwise the rooms were almost featureless, as if she were just staying a night or two on her way to somewhere else. Finch didn’t want to copy the grand architectural effects of her parents’ home, and if she had given her own taste free rein she would probably have cosied her rooms with knitted afghans and pot plants and patchwork quilts. She left them altogether unadorned for simplicity’s sake.

      It was after midnight. She stepped past the neat pyramid of her expedition baggage and stopped with her back to the hallway. Her shoulders drooped and she pushed out her clenched fists in a long cat-stretch of relief and abandonment. The boats were burned, completely incinerated, and she was actually going.

      She had a job to do, a team to fit in with and the biggest challenge of her life waiting to be met. Now that it was happening she felt relieved and ready for it. What would come, would come. She clicked off the lights and went into her bedroom.

      Sam sat at his computer in his apartment in Seattle. It was late, gone midnight, and the enclosing pool of light from his desk lamp and the broad darkness beyond it heightened his sense of isolation. From beyond the window he could just hear the city night sounds – a distant police or ambulance siren and the steady beat of rain. A humdrum March evening, seeming to contain his whole life in its lustreless boundaries.

      He tapped the keys and gave a sniff of satisfaction as the links led him to the site he was searching for. He tapped again and leaned back to wait for the information to download. The teeming other-world of netborne data no longer fascinated him as it had once done. And as he stared at the screen he asked himself bleakly, what does interest you, truly and deeply? Name one thing. Was it this he was searching the Net for?

      An hour ago Frannie had come to look in on him, standing in the doorway in her kimono with her fingers knitted around a cup of herbal tea. ‘Are you coming to bed?’

      He had glanced at her over the monitor. ‘Not yet.’

      She had shrugged and drifted away.

      The website home page was titled ‘The Mountain People’, the logo outlined against a snow peak and a blazing blue sky. Quite well designed, he noted automatically, and clicked on one of the options, ‘Everest and Himalaya’. And there, within a minute, it was. Details of the imminent Everest expedition. Sam scrolled more impatiently now. There were pictures of previous years’ teams, smiling faces and Sherpas in padded jackets. Then individual mugshots of the expedition director and his Base Camp manager, and two tough-looking men posing on mountains with racks of climbing hardware cinched round their waists and ice axes in their hands. This year’s guides, he noted, accompanied by impressive accounts of their previous experience that he didn’t bother to read.

      Here. Here was what he was searching for.

      Dr Finch Buchanan, medical officer and climber.

      Her picture had been taken against a plain blue background, not some conquered peak. She was wearing a white shirt that showed a V of suntanned throat and she was looking slightly aside from the camera, straight-faced and pensive. She was thirty-two, an expert skier and regular mountaineer. She had trained at UBC, worked in Baluchistan for UNESCO, now lived in Vancouver where she was a general medical practitioner. Previous experience included ascents of Aconcagua in Argentina and McKinley, where she had also been medical officer. In the course of her climbing career she had developed a strong interest in high-altitude medicine.

      That was all. Sam read and reread the brief details, as if the extra attention might extract some more subtle and satisfying information. He even touched the tip of his finger to the screen, to the strands of dark hair, but encountered only the glass, faintly gritty with dust. The dates of the trip blinked at him, with the invitation to follow the progress of the climb over the following weeks via daily reports and regular updates from Base Camp. She must already be on her way to Nepal, Sam calculated.

      There had been a total of perhaps five hours from the moment she had blown with the storm into one airport, then disappeared into the press of another. He had been thinking about her for another fifty. Sam swivelled in his chair, eyeing the over-familiar clutter on his desk and trying to reason why. Not just because of the way she looked, or her cool manner, or the glimpse of her vulnerability in her fear of flying, although all of these had played their part. It was more that there had been a sense of purpose about her. He saw it and envied it. She looked through him to a bigger view and the vista put light in her face and tightened the strings that held her body together.