Dean and I head for the ridge and, with me puffing like some knackered old steam engine, we scramble steadily to the top of a knife-like ridge that splits two valleys. I’m all in favour of pre-breakfast climbing being banned until we reach the top, when the view literally takes my breath away. The sky is banded with red and blue streaks and the sun is just peeping over the horizon, tinting the snow on the Annapurnas the colour of lemon cake frosting. Thick white mist swirls in the valley like big downy, puffball clouds. Eagles wheel above them and there’s not a sound, save an intermittent burst of birdsong. It’s so fabulous that I could cry.

Dean puts his arms round me. ‘Worth the climb, hey?’

‘Yes,’ I sniff emotionally. ‘Well worth it.’

He finds us a suitably comfy rock to sit on and we cuddle together, fending off the cold nip in the air. The sun eases itself higher, slowly, slowly, and the mountains are banded with confetti-pink flashes like a slideshow. There’s a crack of sound like a gunshot.

‘Avalanche,’ Dean says and points to Lamjung where a slab of snow the size of a football pitch loosens itself and slides majestically down the mountain, flowing like water and puffing billows of snowflakes in the air. The golden rays of the sun fan out to highlight peaks and crevasses.

‘I never want to go home,’ I breathe.

‘Lyssa—’ Dean takes my face in his hands and looks at me squarely ‘—I never want you to either.’

Chapter forty-nine

Chapter forty-nine

‘Oh my word.’ Lee looked up and nearly dropped his hammer.

‘What?’ Edie said, feeling herself flush as she came down the stairs. She felt as if she was making a grand entrance in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Archie was busy thrashing hell out of his xylophone and didn’t miss a beat with his little plastic hammer. Lyssa had bought the brightly coloured instrument for him on his last birthday. Only someone without children would think of buying such a nerve-shreddingly noisy toy. Its tinny sound echoed round Edie’s brain and bounced off the fillings in her teeth.

Lee finished bashing the nail into the wall before he turned again. ‘Where did you say you were going?’

‘To lunch,’ Edie said. ‘I’m going out to lunch.’

‘With your mother?’

‘Don’t you listen to anything, Lee?’

‘No,’ Lee said. ‘Tell me again. And speak to me like I’m a five year old. You know that gets me going.’

Edie tutted her annoyance. ‘I’m having lunch with Jake’s friend.’

‘Paul?’

‘Pip. He wanted to talk about Jake and Lyssa. See if I can help with the situation.’

‘I thought they’d split up and that Jake was shacked up with some other bird?’

‘That’s a very succinct assessment,’ she said, bristling.

‘Sounds pretty irreconcilable.’