Pulse

to get married.’
    ‘That’s why we aren’t,’ Cath had replied.
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘No, you don’t.’
    ‘Will you please explain?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because that’s the whole point. If you can’t see, if I have to explain – that’s why we’re not getting married.’
    ‘You’re not being logical.’
    ‘I’m also not getting married.’
    Forget it, forget it, it’s gone. On the one hand, she liked you making the decisions; on the other hand, she found you controlling. On the one hand, she liked living with you; on the other, she didn’t wan’t to go on living with you. On the one hand, she knew you’d be a good father; on the other, she didn’t want to have your children. Logic, right? Forget it.
    ‘Hello.’ He surprised himself. He didn’t say hello to women he didn’t know in the lunch queue. He only said hello to women he didn’t know on walking paths, when you got a nod or a smile or a lifted trekking pole in reply. But – actually, he did know her.
    ‘You’re from the bank.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Lynn.’
    ‘Very good.’
    A small moment of genius, remembering her plastic name-tag through the bullet-proof glass. And she was having the vegetarian lasagne as well. Did she mind … ? No, fine. There was only one free table. And it was just sort of easy. He knew she worked in the bank, she knew he taught at the school. She’d moved to the town a couple of months previously, and no, she hadn’t been up to the Tor yet. Would she be OK in trainers?
    The next Saturday she wore jeans and a sweater; she seemed half-amused, half-alarmed as he got his boots and pack out of the car and pulled on his scarlet mesh-lined Gore-tex jacket.
    ‘You’ll need water.’
    ‘Will I?’
    ‘Unless you don’t mind sharing.’
    She nodded; they set off. As they climbed out of the town, the view broadened to include both her bank and his school. He let her set the pace. She walked easily. He wanted to ask how old she was, whether she went to the gym, and say how she looked taller than when sitting down behind the glass. Instead, he pointed out the ruins of an old slate-works and the rare breed of sheep – Jacobs, were they? – that Jim Henderson had been farming since people down south started wanting lamb that didn’t taste like lamb, and were happy to pay for it.
    Halfway up it began to drizzle, and he grew anxious about her trainers on the wet shale near the top. He stopped, unzipped his pack, and gave her a spare waterproof. She took it as if it was quite normal that he’d brought it. He liked that. She also didn’t ask whose it was, who’d left it behind.
    He passed her the water bottle; she drank and wiped the rim.
    ‘What else have you got in there?’
    ‘Sandwiches, tangerines. Unless you want to turn back.’
    ‘As long as you haven’t got a pair of those awful plastic trousers.’
    ‘No.’
    He did, of course. And not just his own, but a pair of Cath’s he’d brought for her. Something in him, something bold and timid at the same time, wanted to say, ‘Actually, I’m wearing North Cape Coolmax boxers with the single-button fly.’
    After they started sleeping together, he took her to The Great Outdoors. They got her boots – a pair of Brasher Supalites – and, as she stood up in them, walked tentatively to a mirror and back, then did a little tap dance, he thought how incredibly sexy small female feet could look in walking boots. They got her three pairs of ergonomic trekking socks designed to absorb pressure peaks, and she widened her eyes at the idea of socks having a left and a right like shoes. Three pairs of inner socks too. They got her a day-pack, or a day-sack, as the hunky assistant preferred to call it, by which point Geoff felt the fellow beginning to get out of line. He’d shown Lynn how to position the hip belt, tighten the shoulder straps and adjust the top tensioners; now he was patting the pack and juggling it up and down in far too intimate a way.
    ‘And a water bottle,’ Geoff said firmly, to cut all that off.
    They got her a waterproof jacket in a dark green that set off the flame of her hair; then he waited and let Hunk suggest waterproof trousers and get laughed at in reply. At the cash desk he handed over his credit card.
    ‘No, you can’t.’
    ‘I’d like to. I’d really like to.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘I’d like to. Must be your birthday soon. Well, some time in the next twelve months. Got to be.’
    ‘Thank you,’