It started like a normal Sunday. They’d done the same thing all their married life more or less, no matter the weather.

They climbed to the top in the misty rain without speaking, he in front pushing the pace, she behind, her view filled by his backpack and his flopping shorts, the hairless slabs of his calves pushing like overworked pistons to get his bulk up the hill. Even when the kids were small he had done this: pressed on ahead, never looking back. To an observer he was the family leader, their pathfinder and pack-horse. But to her it always felt as if he was trying to get away.

She hated it, how he never looked back.

They sat against the summit cairn, each looking at different counties.

‘Down there,’ he said, ‘down there is the world that keeps us locked up. And up here, this is the window high in the wall where you can see a bit of blue sky.’

She reached into her cagoul and brought out a little jar of cream and rubbed her cracked hands, fingers slipping between fingers. She thought of all those times when at this point she would be unpacking sandwiches, putting hats on heads, checking for blisters on young feet. She looked across at him. His hair poked out under his bobble hat, longer than he’d ever worn it. She wished he'd stop saying these peculiar things.

‘It’s all nonesense,’ he said. ‘The whole system, the whole way we’re expected to live. It’s… it’s toxic.’

‘I suppose you’re right, Ben,’ she said. ‘But whatever it is, this system, it’s served us alright hasn’t it? We’re comfortable. We don’t starve.’

‘Are we comfortable? Exploiting others? Not me. And we are starved. I am. Starved of real things.’

She stood up and moved away. The mist cleared as she came to her feet and she saw quite suddenly all around her sunlit countryside and blue skies. She turned her face into the wind, delighting at its touch. Far below she saw a motorway loaded with traffic which cut the landscape like a giant’s crossing-out.

‘Maybe you should go away for a while,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere wild. Where this system of yours doesn’t operate.’

‘Ha! Where?’

‘I don’t know. There must be places. Just go. I’ll manage.’

‘Everybody manages. We close our eyes, shut our ears. We silence our heart. Well, not anymore. Not me.’

‘Then, what?’

‘Here. I’m staying up here.’

She told everyone afterwards that he slipped. Everyone but the children. She told them the truth. How their father had stood up and walked to the edge of the gully. How he had stood for a while stuffing his hat into his old coat.

How he hadn’t looked back.