Please note: this piece contains descriptions of loss that some readers may find upsetting.
Rhona could feel the loose stones of the path digging into the soles of her shoes. If this were nature’s acupressure, she would be sticking to traditional medicine, she thought to herself. The walk to the top of the hill was steeper than she had expected, and her hamstrings groaned with every upwards step. The slightest smir of rain breathed into her face as she continued upwards. It was March, after all. What did she expect, sunshine and rainbows?
‘Why did you decide to go up a hill, of all things? A hill? We’ve never done hills before. You always said they were God’s punishment for vanity? Case in point, your hair already looks like it was done by someone around the back of a bin. And what made you wear those shoes?’
Rhona wished that Mike would pipe down. She bent over and pulled off a loafer, tipping out two tiny stones that had worked their way in.
‘Not much further, they say the view from the top is spectacular.’
‘And what good will that do? If we compliment it enough, does someone come and carry us back down again in a rickshaw?’
‘If you don’t shut up, only one of us will be coming back down, Michael Andrew Broderick!’
The summit of the hill was busy. Tourists, peering down at the city below, were taking selfies. A twenty-something blonde leapt into the air, her boyfriend capturing the pose mid-flight. One for the ‘Gram.
Rhona made her way slightly off the track, feeling the angle of the ground slant beneath her. The wet grass slid under her feet, knocking her backwards. She could feel a friction burn brewing on the heel of her hand.
‘We sitting here then? You styled that one out.’ Said Mike.
‘Seems we are.’
Beneath them Edinburgh stretched out in a grey, midweek malaise. This was no golden hour of long shadows and poetry. They watched as in the distance they could see the maroon tops of corporation buses, taking pensioners to hospital appointments, and keeping the homeless warm as they travelled around the circular routes, sleeping in fits on the back seats.
‘I thought you might have done a boat trip or something? Took me on a jolly to Inchcolm Island? Do you remember when we did that?’
Rhona laughed and rolled her eyes.
‘The student production of Macbeth? I’m surprised I didn’t need counselling to recover.’
‘Remember the witches on the ferry, cackling and doing their best scary faces?’
‘I think they were trying to distract us from the fact that Lady Macbeth was being sick into a carrier bag on the deck.’
‘Why didn’t she puke over the side?’ they both said in unison.
Rhona gasped and snorted.
‘Jinx.’
‘I didn’t think you liked boats anyway?’
‘I suppose not, but it seems like a thing you do?’
A silence covered Rhona like an eiderdown. There were no words to be said. Her body felt paralysed in indecision.
‘You going to do it?’ asked Mike.
‘Not yet.’
She watched as a seagull tried to fly against the strong wind. It remained uneasily suspended and relenting to the unachievable. The breeze changed, and it sank, with a swoop.
‘We HAVE been up a hill before!’ Mike exclaimed.
‘No way, when?’
‘About 1997, couldn’t tell you more than that, I was hammered, we both were. We’d been at the Mission, and then we ended up at the Penny Black, and we went up Calton Hill to watch the sun rise.’
‘And we walked into those two guys who were…’
The laughter exploded from Rhona like a tap full of water and trapped air. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she and Mike had a nocturnal social life, hiding in the corners of goth clubs with sticky floors and a warm fug of cigarette smoke.
‘Were we cool once?’
‘You were, I don’t think I was. You had albums by bands I pretended I knew about, I just wore very pointy shoes and a lot of eye liner.’
‘So did I, Rhona.’
‘Did we get old or something?’
‘One of us did.’
The grass around where Rhona sat pulsated in the wind. She could see her fingers were swollen with the cold against her rings.
‘You’ve got to let me go, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘That’s why you came, isn’t it?’
Rhona reached into her backpack and pulled out an urn.
‘Will you still be around? I mean, will I still be able to speak to you like this?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never been in this position before either? I suppose there’s only one way to find out?'
‘Do you want me to do it?’
‘Aye. Get it over with.’
Rhona unscrewed the lid of the urn and grasped a handful of something that looked like cat litter. She threw it into the wind. It came back on her face.
Y u’ e o t o o in t e nd, n t a st it!
o’ v g t o d it to h e w n, o gain
‘I thought we’d grow old together, have rooms across the corridor in the nursing home, get ourselves thrown out for cheating at whist.’
Rhona threw another handful.
Ju st uck do
Ch it, it
‘I loved you, you know that?’
l e
n e m e
e t g
h o
T
Rhona shook the remains of the urn into the air and watched it swirl and canter against the heavy clouds. There was rain coming. It was time to go.
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