‘Okay, everyone!’ A deep male voice cuts through Kate’s thoughts. It’s Thomas, one of the instructors, standing on an empty oil barrel, waving his hand in the air. ‘If you could all line up we’re ready to go.’

‘I can do this,’ Kate tells herself as she heads towards the ragtag group congregated around her husband.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Phoenix says as she draws closer. ‘It’ll be over before you know it.’

She looks past him to Caroline, chatting animatedly with Geraldine in the centre of the throng. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It will.’

Kate hastens her pace, stepping from one unsteady, swinging plank of wood to another, her palms sore from the rough support ropes. The gap between her and Caroline is widening and she needs to reduce it before they reach the platform. Kate glances behind her to check on Geraldine’s progress but she can’t see her. Geraldine lost her footing on the first obstacle and had to be winched back to the beginning by the instructor. Peter, who was in the queue before Caroline, has also disappeared. He’s making quick work of the course, striding confidently and barking orders to poor Priyanka ahead of him. She’s moving tentatively and slowing him down.

Kate takes another wobbly step, then another. There are only four planks between her and Caroline now and the other woman has paused, gauging the leap between the end of the bridge and the platform. It’s deliberately wide, forcing the participant to jump and Caroline’s shaking so much that the plank she’s standing on is swinging back and forth.

Kate takes another step closer, her gaze flitting to the metal carabiners attaching Caroline to the safety rope. There are two to ensure safety and the instructor was very clear in his briefing: One clip must remain attached at all times.

‘When moving between bridges, walkways and obstacles, unclip one carabiner at a time and attach it to the safety rope before unclipping and re-attaching the second.’ Kate’s witnessed multiple aerial walks and, ninety-nine percent of the time, she’s witnessed the participants carefully following protocol, unclipping and clipping one carabiner at a time. That said, she once watched a man – an overly protective, verging on smothering, sort – try to help his girlfriend out by unclipping her second carabiner at the exact moment she unclipped the first one, leaving her teetering on the edge of a walkway with nothing attaching her to the safety rope. It was only thanks to an instructor screaming up at the man to take his hand off the clip that the woman didn’t plunge to her death.

Lucky indeed.