Celebrity Shopper (36 page)

She was just reaching the end of the chorus when she thought she saw it. Just the merest flicker, but still – and there it was again.

She was still singing, but her mind was on this little flicker of light.

She was screwing up her eyes to concentrate on it. She didn’t want to lose it.

Maybe it was a car headlight, way in the distance; maybe someone was in the car park looking for them?

If that was a headlight in the car park, they didn’t have far to go.

But maybe it was a cottage window?

She didn’t like that thought so much. If that tiny dot was a cottage window, they were still a mile or two away from it. Every step was making her wince and she had been wondering for some time how much further she could go.

For several moments, Annie wasn’t sure whether to mention the light or not, she didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too soon, but then Svetlana blurted out: ‘I see a light.’

‘Yes,’ Annie agreed. ‘I think I see it too. It’s still small and far away, but it is a light, isn’t it?’

‘We need to be careful,’ Morven told them in a faint voice. ‘Parts of the hill drop away really steeply into the valley down here. We need to go very carefully.’

‘Is it a house?’ Svetlana wondered.

Morven shook her head. ‘No one lives round here,’ she told them.

‘Maybe a car?’ Annie offered. But she could see now that it was only one very small flickering light. Not car headlamps.

It was still a good thing though. Light meant there was someone there … didn’t it?

‘I thought I heard something!’ Owen said all of a sudden. ‘Shhhh,’ he ordered Ed. ‘I’m sure I heard something.’

They both stood still and strained their ears to listen.

Apart from the sound of the wind – or the mountains breathing, as Ed liked to call it – they couldn’t hear anything.

‘What did it sound like?’ Ed asked.

‘Ermmm …’ Owen considered. ‘I thought it sounded a bit like … ermmm …’

‘What?’ Ed asked in exasperation.

‘All right, I just thought it sounded like someone was singing the Summer Holiday song – you know. I’ve probably just got it in my head. I was singing it in the car,’ Owen tried to explain. He was feeling stupid. Everything about this was annoying him, especially the fact that he’d burst into tears. Even if Ed had been really nice about it, he still felt embarrassed.

‘Annie!’ Ed was saying more to himself than out loud or to Owen. ‘Maybe it’s Annie, maybe she can’t get that bloody song out of her head either! ANNIE!’ he suddenly shouted without warning at the very top of his voice, ‘ANNIE!’

‘There’s someone there!’ Annie exclaimed, sure now that she had heard something coming from the direction of the light.

‘Yes!’ Morven agreed. ‘I heard something too.’

‘Hello!’ Annie shouted and felt a renewed surge of energy help her on down the hill towards the light.

‘We are here!’ Svetlana shouted, also managing to pick up the pace in her Zagliani slippers.

‘I think it’s a torch!’ Annie exclaimed as the flickering light seemed to turn in their direction. ‘I think someone’s down there with a torch! HELLOOOO!’ she shouted out, causing her head to throb violently.

It must be one of the mountain guides. Finally, someone must have noticed that Morven was missing!

But then Annie heard something which made her heart thud in her chest with joy.

First came the voice she knew so well calling out her name.
Ed was here! He had come to look for them! He was going to help them get Morven off the mountainside.

Then came the second voice, the one which was questioning and a little anxious: ‘Muuum?’ it asked.

Owen! she thought with a ridiculously happy smile.
Owen’s come to get us too.

‘We’re up here!’ she shouted, hoping to speed them up, desperate to see them as soon as possible.

Now the light of the torch was growing closer and clearer; now she could make out the two shapes behind it: one taller, the other a little smaller, following on behind.

‘Ed!’ she shouted. ‘Owen! I can’t believe you’ve come to get us! I can’t believe you’re here.’

‘Whoa!’ Morven urged as she felt herself being carried slightly too enthusiastically downhill. ‘Whoa, there are steep stone slopes round here. I don’t want to fall again.’

Within a few brief minutes, Annie was somehow, without letting go of Morven, in a bear hug. Two sets of arms were around her and she felt as if she was in danger of having the life squeezed out of her.

‘My darlin’s,’ she managed to croak, feeling tears of relief squeeze from the corners of her eyes. ‘It’s very nice to see you.’

Finally, she could feel Owen’s smaller, slighter arms letting go of her, but Ed was still holding tight. It felt as if he didn’t want to lose his grip on her.

‘Of all your ideas,’ he was saying against her ear, ‘of all your daft and crazy ideas, this was the most daft and crazy of them all. I am not going to let you go …’

Ed had thought he was going to say ‘hillwalking’ or ‘rushing off on another daft adventure’. But instead, he ended the sentence there.

‘I’m not ever going to let you go …’ he repeated and that sounded exactly right.

Then Owen remembered what Ed had told him and came out with his own version of it: ‘Ed said once we found you, Mum, that he was going to marry you. Gretna Green,’ he added, ‘I noticed we passed it on the way up from London. It’s like Las Vegas. You can just turn up there and get married. Just like Las Vegas.’

Svetlana gave a little whoop of approval. ‘I be bridesmaid,’ she decided straightaway. ‘Maybe Morven too … We get Morven nice dress. Shame about the foot, but we cut off in the pictures.’

Owen on the hill:

Waterproof anorak (Trespass)
Waterproof trousers (same)
Hiking boots (Timberland)
Torch (Tiso’s)
Swiss Army knife (same)
Total est. cost: £120

‘See you, Mum.’

The babies had eaten the vegetable goo and the yoghurt goo. The babies had each had their bottle of milk. The babies had been played with extensively, exhaustively, until Lana didn’t think she wanted to do another ‘Round and round the garden’ ever again. For as long as she lived.

It was fun though. It was actually lovely to make them laugh at her. But Lana was exhausted. She wanted to lie down on the sofa and watch TV until she fell asleep. This babysitting stint had felt like almost as much work as trying to read her way through
The Romantic Poets
from cover to cover.

Lana was beginning to get just a tiny inkling of why her mum and Ed were so busy and so preoccupied with their twins.

Surely someone should be back
soon
? Lana had to wonder. Surely they weren’t going to leave her to bath the babies and put them to bed? She didn’t know if she could do it. She imagined slippery, soapy babies sliding around the bathtub as she fumbled about for towels, sleep suits and whatever else they might need.

She’d already endured the horror of changing the post supper nappies. How could such small people produce such an enormous amount of waste product? And all at the same time? It had been unbearable, a nightmarish experience. At certain points, when wipes had not been able to contain the situation, when she’d felt
stuff ooze
in behind her fingernail, she’d not been sure if she would be able to pull through. But somehow she’d managed to focus and find her inner strength and afterwards, it was amazing how clean, how fresh and renewed the babies seemed.

It felt as if they were grateful to her. Well, it just couldn’t in any way be pleasant, crawling about with some great, warm, steaming, stinging dump strapped to your bottom.

‘Please, somebody, come home soon,’ Lana said out loud. She was flat out on the sofa now, the babies on top of her, gurgling, pulling at her hair and, in one instance, drooling right into her eye.

For a few minutes, it crossed Lana’s mind to worry but she dismissed the anxiety quickly. No, her family was probably hiding out somewhere warm, laughing at the thought of her coping with the twins.

‘Nana,’ Minnie said, throwing herself down on to Lana’s chest and burrowing up against her.

‘Yes, I’m a good big sister, yes I am.’ Lana stroked the silky hair on Minnie’s head. ‘I’m going to spend lots of time looking after you both.’

Lana looked down and saw that Minnie had snuggled right down on her chest. As Lana’s breath rose and fell, Minnie’s body rose and fell too. Micky was still sitting up, in between Lana’s knees, making funny little sounds to himself and chewing on his fingers with a very drooly mouth.

Lana looked back down at Minnie and could see that her eyes were growing heavy, her lids were sinking and she was about to fall asleep in Lana’s arms.

Lana felt completely charmed.

Owen held the torch and walked beside his mum; the very faint beam of light not providing a great deal in the way of guidance.

With Ed’s help, Svetlana soldiered on under the weight of Morven. Annie had offered to stay in position, but Svetlana had insisted.

‘How far is it to the car park?’ Annie decided to ask.

‘Roughly two miles,’ Ed said. ‘Maybe less,’ he added quickly when this news produced a demoralized sigh from Annie.

‘We only managed two miles! With the DIY Zagliani shoes and everything!’ Annie was horrified. ‘Just two miles!’ she repeated.

‘By the time we get back, you’ll have walked ten whole miles though,’ Ed told her proudly.

Before Annie could even remind herself about how much money this would raise, she felt the ground under her boots turn crunchy.

‘Loose gravel,’ she warned the others; she didn’t want Svetlana in her homemade moccasins to land in any trouble.

All of a sudden Annie pitched violently to the side. She grabbed at the air with her hands and let out a cry which seemed to disappear into a gurgle.

In the darkness, she could make no sense of what was happening, but the rushing in the pit of her stomach let her know she was falling.

Before she could even think about where she might be falling – or why? How far? Or form any sort of question at all – she landed, hard.

In a crumpled heap, in disorientating darkness, at first all she could feel was pain: sharp, piercing pain travelling up through her stomach and into her lungs; low, grumbling pain in her knees, her elbows, her hands and a great burning pain right across both buttocks.

For several stunned moments, Annie didn’t move at all. She didn’t dare to. She waited, trying to gather her thoughts and wondering how the pains were going to develop.

Nothing seemed to be getting worse. Things were bad … but nothing seemed to be deteriorating, which was surely good.

Annie had landed on her bum. That’s why it was so sore. Her increasingly padded derrière had probably saved her from a really bad injury.

She sat up a little, breathed in carefully and realized that the pain in her stomach had a lot to do with being winded and with the video camera which was in her lap.

With growing waves of relief, she wiggled her fingers and her toes, then moved her knees, ankles and elbows. Nothing seemed to be broken. There must be huge grazes on her burning elbows and hands and her bum was going to be black and blue. But nothing was broken.

Now she just had to worry about the next thing: where the bloody hell was she? And how the bloody hell was she supposed to get out?

It was too dark to make sense of her surroundings. Looking up, all she could work out was that it was slightly lighter above her.

Taking a deep breath, she shouted out: ‘Heeeeellooooooo. I’m here. Heeeeellooooooooo!’

For a long, worrying moment, Annie heard nothing in reply. Then finally, from up above came the shout.

‘Annie!’

‘Ed!’ she shouted back.

She looked up and thought she could make out the outline of a head. Then came the beam of light from the torch.

‘Are you OK?’ he called down. ‘Are you hurt?’

She could hear the anxiety in his voice.

‘I don’t think so, I landed on my big bum,’ she called up towards him.

‘Why on earth did you …?’ he began but seemed to think better of the question.

‘Where am I?’ she shouted back.

‘I think you’re in a stream bed. Are you wet?’

Now, come to think of it, yes, she was.

‘Are you safe? You can’t fall any further?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.

She looked up and couldn’t see the outline of Ed’s head or the torchlight any more.

Then, several moments later, they were back in place: ‘Here’s the plan,’ Ed called down. ‘We’ll take Morven down and get help. Morven has to go to hospital and … I’ll need help to get you out.’

Annie considered this. It was what Ed had to do. Get Morven down and then come back for her. It would take at least an hour … maybe more. She would have to sit in a stream on her bruised bottom in the pitch dark for an hour or more.