Summer On The Little Cornish Isles: The Starfish Studio (Avon, £7.99) (Image: GETTY)
Stella watched the white clouds race across the blue sky.
The overnight rain had gone and it was a gin-clear afternoon.
Snow dusted the fell tops and pockets of frost sparkled in the sun.
Well, if you had to go, at least it was a lovely day for it.
After she’d first fallen and realised she was a) alive and b)hadn’t been knocked out, relief had flooded her.
Then she’d tried to get up and pain had felled her again.
That must have been half an hour ago.
She’d heard her ankle crack as she’d tripped over a rock trying to capture the perfect shot of the Lakeland fells.
Her broken camera lay down the hill along with the rucksack containing her mobile, survival bag, whistle, water and food: everything that an experienced member of a mountain rescue team should have.
All useless to her unless she could reach them.
She tried shuffling on her bottom but pain shot through her ankle like a blade so she lay back and thought of her mountain rescue colleagues.
They’d be working at their jobs as roofers, nurses, doctors and farmers.
Her son would be at the bank in London, her daughter in lectures with her student friends.
She thought of Jack, too.
Her husband would be shaking his head and asking her what she was doing walking out here in the middle of nowhere on her own.
If he’d been alive, he’d have been out ‘exploring the wilds’ with her even though it wasn’t his thing, just as living in a busy city for 20 years hadn’t been hers.
They’d compromised because they loved each other, then Jack had decided to give up his job and open the guest house with her.
Two weeks before the move, a sudden heart attack had taken him and Stella had been left with two choices: stay put or follow their dream by herself.
She thought she’d got used to her own company over the past five years but now she felt so alone.
How ironic.
She’d chosen the remote valley precisely because she wanted solitude on this special day, delighted to nab the single parking space by the tiny chapel at the head of the dale.
No one would know she’d gone until her guests started returning wondering where their landlady was.
It could be late evening before they raised the alarm.
Wind rattled the bare branches of a tree.
A Herdwick sheep stared at her, then went back to chewing the grass.
Why hadn’t she followed her own rules?
Why did she have to go it alone? Why didn’t she tell someone where she was going?
Because she’d taken this place for granted: the place that had healed her soul after Jack had gone.
She’d grown too comfortable with the soaring fells, rugged crags and dark lakes that reflected the sky like a mirror.
Well, she wasn’t comfortable now.
She had to get off this fell if it killed her.
She had to get to her phone and kit, no matter how much pain she was in.
She hauled herself along the ground, swearing.
It was agony but she was within touching distance.
Got it.
Praying for a signal, she unbuckled the bag.
Damn it.
The phone was shattered, the screen as lifeless as the rock.
Somehow she struggled into the survival bag and when the pain eased, she lay back and looked at the clouds again.
Stay calm.
When the guests get back, they’ll see you aren’t home.
One of them will call the police, eventually.
The sun slipped behind the fell and the shadows merged into darkness.
She had a cracking view of the stars. She pulled the bag higher and tried to count them but kept drifting off. It had been a busy week.
Who knew you could sleep when you were that cold…
Barks shattered the silence. Shapes on the fell scattered, bleating.
She had the whistle on her lips but the dog was on her before she could blow it, tongue lolling, its green jacket glowing in torchlight.
“Over here!” she screamed. “Stella!” The team were brisk and smiling, checking her over and strapping her into a stretcher.
She held back the tears of relief, knowing she could never thank them. “How did you know where I was?” she asked. Her friend, Sue, smiled down.
“We needed emergency cover on the phones at the base tonight.
I called round in person, luckily. Your boots, pack and car had gone.
You always keep them by the door and I realised what today is…. We guessed you’d want to mark it somehow.”
Sue had remembered: it was five years today since Stella had lost Jack. “But why here?” she asked.
“You posted a photo of the chapel on Instagram when you set off? Do you remember?” “No… maybe.”
As she’d left the car, she’d taken a picture and uploaded it. She’d forgotten… the cold and shock, perhaps.
“Your post said it was a lovely day to be out, so when we couldn’t raise you on the phone, we took a chance. Of course, it would have been a bit simpler if you’d actually let someone know where you were going instead of us having to play Sherlock.”
So: it was random luck that she had been found or perhaps her friends having grown to know her so well.
Not that they’d ever say how close she’d come to joining Jack.
“I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?” Sue patted her hand.
“Yes.” “And I’ll never hear the last of it?”
A huge grin. “You’re not wrong.”
Banter flew back and forth as they carried her home by torchlight. Her ankle throbbed like the devil, she’d be in plaster for weeks and she’d never live this down as long as she lived.
But it was a lovely day to be alive.
Summer On The Little Cornish Isles: The Starfish Studio (Avon, £7.99) – the third in Phillipa Ashley’s Little Cornish Isles series, has just been published.