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Prologue

‘How do you say goodbye to a mountain?’

From her vantage point, Cat York looked across to the three Flatirons, to Bear Peak and Green Mountain. She gazed down the skirts of Flagstaff, patting the snow around her and settling herself in as though she was sitting on the mountain’s lap. ‘It’s like a giant, frozen wedding dress,’ she said. ‘It probably sounds daft, but for the last four years, I’ve privately thought of Flagstaff as my mountain.’

‘There’s a lot of folk round here who think that way,’ Stacey said. ‘You’re allowed to. That’s the beauty of living in Boulder.’

The sun shot through, glancing off the crystal-cracked snow on the trees, the sharp, flat slabs of rust-coloured rock of the Flatirons soaring through all the dazzling white at their awkward angle.

‘When Ben and I first arrived and I was homesick and insecure, I’d walk to Chautauqua Meadow and just sit on my own. It felt like the mountains were a giant arm around my shoulders.’ Cat looked around her with nostalgic gratitude. ‘Then soon enough we met you lot, started hiking and biking the trails and suddenly the mountain showed me its other side. You could say it’s been my therapist’s couch and it’s been my playground. It’s now my most favourite place in the world.’

Stacey looked at Cat, watched her friend cup her gloved hands over her nose and mouth in a futile bid to make her nose look less red and her lips not so blue. ‘This time next week, the only peaks I’ll be seeing are Victorian rooftops,’ Cat said, ‘grimy pigeons will replace bald eagles and there’ll just be puddles in place of Wonderland Lake. Next week will be a whole new year.’

‘Tell me about Clapham,’ Stacey asked, settling into their snow bunker.

‘Well,’ said Cat, ‘it’s a silent “h” for a start.’

They laughed.

‘God,’ Cat groaned, leaning forward and knocking her head against her knees, ‘I’m still not sure we’re doing the right thing – but don’t tell Ben I said so. I can’t tell you about Clapham, I don’t think I’ve ever been.’ She paused and then continued a little plaintively. ‘God, Stacey, I have no job, my two closest friends don’t even live in the city any more and I’m moving to an opposite side of London to where I used to live, where my sisters still live.’

‘It’s exciting,’ Stacey said, ‘and if you don’t like it, you can always come back.’ She tore into a pack of Reese’s with her teeth, her chilled fingers unfit for the task. ‘And there’s some stuff that’s really to look forward to.’

Placated and sustained by the pack of peanut butter, the comfort of chocolate, Cat agreed. ‘I’ve missed my family – by the sound of it, my middle sister Fen is having a tough time at the moment. And it’s going to be a big year for Django – he’ll be seventy-five which will no doubt warrant a celebration of prodigious proportions.’

‘I’d sure like to have met him,’ Stacey said and she laughed a little. ‘I remember when I first met you, I thought you were like, so exotic, because you came to Boulder with your English Rose looks and a history that Brontë couldn’t have made up. You with the mother who ran off with a cowboy, you who were raised by a crazy uncle called Django, you and your sisters brought up in the wilds of Wherever.’

‘Derbyshire’s not wild,’ Cat protested, ‘not our part. Though there are wallabies.’

‘What’s a wallaby?’

‘It’s like a mini kangaroo,’ said Cat. ‘They were kept as pets by the posh folk in eighteenth-century Derbyshire – but some broke free, bred, and now bounce happily across the Dales.’

Stacey took a theatrical intake of breath. ‘So we have you and your sisters, living in the countryside with your hippy dude uncle and a herd of mutant, aristocratic kangaroos because your mom eloped with J. R. Ewing?’ She whistled. ‘You could sell this to Hollywood.’

‘Shut up, Stacey,’ Cat laughed. ‘We’re just a normal family. Django is a very regular bloke – albeit with a colourful dress code and an adventurous take on cuisine. I’m starting to freeze. Let’s go into town and get a hot chocolate. My bum’s numb even in these salopettes.’

‘Weird, though,’ Stacey said thoughtfully.

‘What is? My bottom?’

‘Your butt is cute, honey,’ Stacey assured her, as they hauled each other to their feet. ‘I mean it’s a little weird that your mom runs off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small, right?’

‘Yup.’

‘And you’ve been living pretty close to the Mile High City these last four years, right?’

‘Yup.’

‘But you never looked her up?’

‘Nope.’

‘Never even thought about it? Never went shopping in Denver and thought, Hey, I wonder if that lady over there is my mom?’

Throughout Cat’s life, it had always been her friends who’d been far more intrigued by her family circumstances, her absent mother, than she. ‘But I never knew her. I was a baby. I have no memories of her,’ Cat explained. ‘I’m not even curious. We had Django, my sisters and I – we wanted for nothing. Just because we didn’t have a “conventional” mother or father didn’t mean that we were denied a proper parent.’

Stacey linked arms with Cat. ‘Conventional families are dull, honey – stick with your kooky one.’

‘Oh I’m sticking with my kooky one all right!’ Cat laughed. ‘I love them with all my heart. And now that Ben and I want to start our own, it feels natural to want to be within that fold again.’

At the time, Cat and Ben York had argued about putting the set of three matching suitcases on their wedding list. Cat had denounced them as boring and unsexy and why couldn’t they peruse the linen department one more time. Ben told her that some things in life were, by virtue, boring and unsexy and he pointed out there were only so many Egyptian cotton towels a couple could physically use in a lifetime. Three years later, Ben and Cat are contemplating the same three suitcases: frequently used, gaping open and empty, waiting to be fed the last remaining clothes and belongings. The process is proving to be far more irksome than the packing of the huge crates a few weeks ago, now currently making their passage by sea back to England.

‘Weird to think that this time next week we’ll be back in the UK,’ Ben says.

‘Weird that we both now refer to it as “the UK” rather than “England” or simply “home”,’ says Cat. ‘Stacey and I went for a fantastic walk this morning.’ She looks through their picture windows to the mountains, a huge cottonwood tree in its winter wear with stark, thick boughs boasting sprays of fine, finger-like branches, the big sky, the quality of air so clean it is almost visible. ‘God, it’s stunning here.’

‘Hey,’ says Ben, ‘we’ll have Clapham Common on our new doorstep.’

Cat hurls a pillow at him. He ducks.

‘We can always come back,’ Ben tells her, ‘but for now, it is time to go. We have things to do. That was the point, remember. That’s why we came here in the first place. It’s the things we do now which provide a tangible future for our daydreams. That’s why it’s timely to return to the UK.’

‘Do dreams come true in Clapham?’

Ben hurls the pillow back at Cat. She hugs it close and looks momentarily upset. ‘I don’t even have a job to go back to,’ she says, ‘and not from want of trying. And I’m not pregnant yet – not from want of trying. I feel like I’m just traipsing behind you.’

‘We’re a team,’ Ben states, ‘you and me. I’ve been given a great job which will be big enough for both of us. I’ve taken it – for the both of us – so you can take your time and think about you.’

‘I know,’ Cat smiles sheepishly. ‘But what’ll I do in Clapham all day? Are we packing the pillows?’

‘I don’t know – do furnished flats come with pillows?’

‘I’m not sleeping on pillows used by God knows who,’ Cat protests, though she calculates that three pillows will fill an entire suitcase.

‘You do in hotels,’ Ben reasons, with a frustrated ruffle through his short, silver-flecked hair. ‘It’s not as if we’re going to some boarding house – I told you, the flat is really quite nice. And when I’m up and running, we’ll look for somewhere to buy.’

‘In North London,’ Cat says and Ben decides not to react to the fact that this is emphatically not a question. ‘Pip says she’s worried about Fen.’

‘Your eldest sister worries about everyone,’ Ben says, remembering that, actually, these pillows came with this apartment. He doesn’t comment.

‘But she says that Fen and Matt aren’t getting along. Since the baby.’

‘You’re not your sisters’ keeper,’ Ben says carefully.

‘Oh but I am,’ Cat says, as if she’s offended, as if Ben’s forgotten to understand the closeness between the McCabe girls, ‘we all are. It’s always been that way, it had to be.’

Ben decides to change the subject. He knows that when his wife is emotional, the legend of her family can be detrimentally overplayed. But he knows, too, that once she returns to their fold again, all the normal niggles and familial irritations will surface and Cat will no doubt be glad of Clapham. He wedges socks into spaces in the cases and then crosses to Cat. ‘Your family won’t recognize you,’ he says. ‘They’ll be expecting that blonde girl with the pony-tail they saw last summer – not this auburn pixie. Mind you, they won’t recognize me – you couldn’t call my hair “salt and pepper” any more, it’s just plain grey.’

‘Makes you look very distinguished,’ Cat says, brushing her hand tenderly through Ben’s hair. She tufts at her elfin crop with a beguiling wail. ‘Do you think mine’s too short? I told them to cut it shorter than usual, and colour it stronger than normal because I wouldn’t be coming back for a while. It’s like I forgot that the UK basically invented places like Vidal Sassoon and John Frieda.’

‘You look gorgeous,’ Ben says, ‘really sexy and cute and fuckable.’ He’s behind her, nuzzling the graceful sweep of her neck that her cropped hair has exposed. He fondles her breasts and then takes his hand down to her crotch and cups at it playfully.

‘Dr York!’ Cat says. ‘I have packing to do.’

‘And I want to fuck my wife,’ Ben whispers, with a titillating nip at her ear lobe.

Cat resists theatrically but he catches her wrists and suddenly he’s tonguing her hungrily. ‘Come on, babe. Procreation is top of our list after all, remember.’

‘Making babies is a very serious matter, Dr York,’ says Cat with mock consternation though she is wriggling out of her clothing.

Ben plugs her mouth with a kiss and takes her hand down to his jeans where his hard-on wells at an awkward angle. ‘Well then, we’d better commit ourselves to honing our technique.’

‘You’re the doctor,’ Cat says, dispensing with her knickers. Ben’s hands travel her body, he gorges on the sight of her. He loves her naked when he’s still fully clothed, the tantalizing interference of fabric between him and his wife’s silky skin. She squats down and unbuckles his belt, makes achingly slow progress with the flies of his trousers, easing down his boxer shorts as if it’s the first time she’s done so. She’s on her knees. His cock springs to attention. Her mouth is moist but teasingly just beyond reach.

‘Christ, Cat,’ Ben says hoarsely, clutching her head and bucking his groin to meet her.

‘Blow-jobs don’t make babies,’ Cat tells him artlessly, but she kisses the tip of his cock and follows this with swift, deep sucks that make him groan. She stands and looks up at him. His height has always turned her on and when he dips his face down to kiss hers it darkens his brown eyes. ‘Isn’t there some position that’s meant to facilitate fertility, doctor?’

‘Yes, Mrs York,’ Ben confirms, turning her away from him, running his hand gently up her back, pushing between her shoulder-blades so that she is bent forwards, ‘there is. Just. Like. This.’

He takes her from behind. The sensation is so exquisite that, for a while, they are silent, motionless.

‘Dr York? Are you sure doggy-style is medically proven to assist conception?’

‘No,’ Ben pants as he thrusts into her, his hands at her waist to haul himself in, ‘but I’m quite certain that the sight of your immaculate peach of an arse improves the quality of my load.’