Shadow of the Mountain Read Online Free Page A

scared the other beginners off.’
    ‘I can’t imagine how, Tinkerbell.’ The departing figure raised one finger behind her back. Angus grinned.
    ‘Tinkerbell’s not her real name, is it?’ Geneva asked dubiously.
    ‘Nah, just revenge for calling me Gus. It’s a long-standing joke. Her birth certificate says Tina, apparently, but she’s not a fan.’
    ‘Fair enough. Hey, I’d better get going. I’ll think about signing up,’ she added.
    Angus walked with her to the door. ‘Come on the next trip anyway.’
    She hesitated. ‘I suppose Simon would be there?’
    Angus’s face fell so fast that Geneva nearly laughed. ‘Like, that would be a bad thing,’ she added.
    Angus relaxed. ‘Oh, right. Yeah, he will. He hardly ever misses the chance to excel himself — which is getting increasingly difficult in some of his more specialised fields.’
    A few possibilities sprang into Geneva’s mind. She smiled. ‘See you, then.’
    As she swung onto the bike she looked back. Angus was still in the doorway, leaning sideways against the frame. Lanky rather than skinny she decided. The conversation had been one-sided: she hadn’t even discovered where he went to school. Sliding into the home-going traffic on the expressway, she wondered about the scar.

5.
    T he sun wavered, sliding her face into shadow. Geneva opened her eyes to see if a cloud had appeared in the previously pristine sky.
    ‘Hey, move,’ she said to Stephen. He was standing between her and the pool, the sun behind haloing his dark hair in gold. Ethereal.
    ‘Hope you’re wearing block,’ Stephen said, dropping onto one of the poolside loungers. ‘You know what can happen to that cute little nose of yours.’
    Geneva closed her eyes. ‘I’m going in, in a minute. What made you decide not to go on the trip?’ she asked. He’d been trying to talk her into it for over a week.
    ‘Priorities,’ he said. ‘Had some homework I had to finish.’
    Geneva laughed. ‘This it?’
    There was a creak from his chair and a second later cool water splattered over her as he bombed into the pool. Shrieking , she dived after him.
     
    Summer. It seemed a million miles away. Geneva stared past the leaf-flecked surface of the water but the memory had faded. She sighed and looked around. The pool was badly overduea hefty dose of chlorine, while the loungers, stacked on their sides under the eaves of the pool shed, looked mildewed. They should have been put away inside but no one had got round to it. It didn’t feel like it yet, but in another month it would be spring, then summer would come bounding along after, as predictable as ever. At least some things were predictable.
    Behind the sheds, Geneva heard the rhythmic grumble of her father’s four-wheeler sweeping up the hill as he headed home for the evening; another evening of silence punctuated by the clatter of cutlery and the schizoid waffle of the TV. Her mother used to be fanatical about monitoring TV viewing and always insisted on muting the ads, but these days she sat gazing raptly as if the flickering screen was the sole reason for her existence.
    Geneva wished she could help her parents; that she could somehow break through their mutual silence and shake them into normality. It was as if they’d forgotten how to speak to each other — or in her mother’s case, how to speak at all in anything other than a lifeless, what-does-it-matter-anyway tone.
    Suddenly angry, Geneva slammed into the pool shed and rummaged for the enamel measuring jug. The twenty litre drum of chlorine was still half-full. She unscrewed both its caps and tilted it forward on the bench, the acrid whiff of chemical making her cough and lean away — they used to poison men with this stuff. Chlorine gas — that was what the gasmasks were for in the First World War. They’d done a poem about it in English last year.
    By the time she’d dribbled a litre of chemical around the sides of the swimming pool, Geneva’s mood had lifted.