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White
Rosie Thomas
‘Terrific stuff . . . a real weepy’ The TimesOne Love. One Chance. Once Sacrifice.For Sam McGrath a brief encounter with a young woman, on a turbulent flight, changes his life. On impulse, crazily attracted to her, her vows to follow her – all the way to Nepal.Finch Buchanan is flying out as doctor to an expedition. But when she reaches the Himalayas she will be reunited with a man she has never been able to forget.Al Hood has made a promise to his daughter. Once he has conquered this last peak, he will leave the mountains behind forever.Everest towers over the group, silent and beautiful. And the passionate relationship between Finch, Al and Sam – two men driven by their own demons, and a woman with a dream of her own – begins to play itself out, with tragic consequences . . .
White
BY ROSIE THOMAS
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2000 by William Heinemann
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2000
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © FEB 2014 ISBN: 9780007560530
Version: 2018-06-20
Contents
Title Page (#uf6745747-31e7-5194-817a-9a1637a825ff)
Copyright (#u557fd3af-f144-5082-82f6-39b15e2ba69a)
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by Rosie Thomas
About the Publisher
One (#ub6dcaaf9-063d-5232-8208-a396ee615d1e)
So many weddings, Finch Buchanan thought.
Weddings under awnings in summer gardens. Weddings in Toronto or New York, out on the coast, in white-walled Presbyterian churches, in flower-decorated homes or smart hotels. One at a ski lodge up in the Cariboo mountains and another at sunset on a Caribbean beach. Long-planned or recklessly impromptu, wherever or however they happened they all seemed the same and this one was no different. Except more so.
This time it was her dearest friend Finch was watching, standing beside an urn of white lilies and stephanotis, and shape-changing from Suzy Shepherd into Mrs Jeffery Sutton of Medford, Oregon. Suzy was about the last of their group to be married, except for Finch herself.
The bride was wearing an ivory satin Donna Karan suit and the groom had been coaxed into navy-blue Armani. As bridesmaid, Finch was wearing a little suit too, hyacinth-blue, of a cut that made her stand with her ankles together and her hands meekly clasped.
I’m too old to be got up as a fucking bridesmaid, she was thinking.
Suzy and Finch were both thirty-two years old. They had been room-mates in their first year at med school at the University of British Columbia and they had gone all the way through training together. Now Suzy was in paediatrics and had moved down to Oregon to be with Jeff, while Finch had stayed on in Vancouver as a medical practitioner. They called each other often, and e-mailed gossip and jokes and medical titbits almost every day, and they met whenever they could. But still Finch missed her friend and ally, and Suzy’s marriage could only move her a further step out of reach.
They were exchanging rings. Watching and blinking away embarrassing tears, Finch was in no doubt that the two of them were happy. They were woozy with it, as dopey as a pair of Suzy’s neonates after a six-ounce feed. Finch didn’t feel envious, exactly; what she did feel was faintly baffled. She had never worked out the secret of connubiality herself. There had been men, of course there had. Both short-term and longer. But lately, not that many.
The short civil ceremony was over. Suzy and Jeff walked arm in arm between the rows of their beaming friends and out under an awning. Beyond it the March rain was ribbed with sleet. A photographer busied around with his Nikon.
After she had kissed her mother and her aunts and her new in-laws, Suzy opened an umbrella to exclude the rest of the audience and whispered to Finch, ‘Jesus, did you see that? I did it. I married someone.’
‘You married Jeff.’
‘Yeah. I love him.’
‘I know you do.’
Suzy laughed, showing the gap between her top front teeth. She didn’t come from orthodontically obsessive stock, which was one of the reasons why Finch had loved her right from the start – for her difference from and indifference to everything Finch herself was accustomed to and thought she valued. The first time they met, Suzy marched into their room on campus, dropped a duffel bag and an armful of supermarket carriers, and eyed the matching luggage and K2 ski bags that two of Finch’s three older brothers had carried up the stairs for her.
‘I suppose you’re some Vancouver princess?’
‘You can suppose whatever you like.’
‘Well, I’m po’ white trash. My mom lives in a rented two-room and I haven’t seen my dad for twelve years.’
It was true. And it was also true that Suzy was by far the cleverest student in their year.
She twirled her umbrella now, sending icy droplets centrifugally spinning. ‘Shit, I’m a married woman. You better lead me straight to the drink, help me get over the shock,’ Mrs Jeffery Sutton said.
The reception was in a new restaurant and bar that had been designed and fitted by Jeff’s company. ‘Like it?’ he asked Finch.
There were snug booths and wood floors and tricksy mirrors and halogen lighting. It wasn’t original but it was well done.
‘Very much,’ Finch said.
‘Well, I guess you don’t need me to introduce you to people,’ Jeff said. His silk tie was already loosened and his top button undone.
‘No.’ Finch smiled. Most of Suzy’s friends who had travelled to Oregon were hers too. ‘Go on, enjoy the party.’
She slid into the nearest booth with her glass of French champagne and found that Taylor Buckaby and his wife were already sitting there. Taylor had dated Suzy for a while, in the very early days, but in the end he had settled for the secretary to the Dean of Faculty who was a svelte blonde. She was a plump blonde now, but otherwise nothing had changed. Taylor was an orthopaedic surgeon. Finch could imagine just how happy he would be among his bone saws and glinting titanium joints.
‘Hello, Taylor, Maddie.’
‘Ah, Finch. Hello there.’
They chatted for a while, about friends and work and the Buckabys’ children.
‘No plans to settle down yourself, Finch?’ Maddie asked.
‘No, none.’
‘Finch goes in for bigger challenges than a husband and kids,’ Taylor explained jovially, puffing out his already rounded cheeks. ‘Last year she went up to Alaska and climbed McKinley.’
Maddie focused her pale-blue eyes. She looked as if she was used to putting away plenty of champagne, or whatever else might be going.
‘Why?’
There were a couple of beats of silence while Finch considered her answer. It was not quite the first time she had heard the question, it was just unusual to encounter such dazed incredulity in the asking. She remembered the temperatures on the mountain of forty below, and the avalanching ice, and the risk of cerebral or pulmonary oedema, and the blade-thin ridge that ran up from 16,000 feet with a drop of 2000 feet on either side of it.
‘Uh …’
She also remembered the easy comradeship and the gallows humour of the group of climbers she had done it with – only by the West Buttress route, ‘The Butt’, nothing fancy. Most sharply of all she recalled the hit of euphoria that had wiped everything else from her mind as she hauled herself to the summit.
‘Because I thought I would enjoy it,’ she said equably. ‘And I did.’
Maddie blinked and ran her tongue over her lipstick. ‘Each to her own, I guess.’
The dancing was starting up. Jeff and Suzy began by spinning slow circles in each other’s arms, to cheers and clapping. Finch sat with the Buckabys for five more minutes, so as not to look as if she wanted to get away from them, then eased herself out of the booth. She ate some sushi from the buffet and had a half-dozen more conversations with people she was pleased to see. After that she danced with Jeff, until Jeff’s father cut in on them. Jim Sutton was a spry seventy-year-old with hands like snow shovels and a seamed brown face from a lifetime’s work in the construction industry. Jeff and Suzy shared the distinction of having travelled a long way from their backgrounds without feeling the need to shake off any of the ties.
Jim did an enthusiastic lindy-hop that left Finch panting for breath. ‘You’re too much for me,’ she protested.
‘C’mon, doc. Gimme one more.’
Finch could see that it was past 6 p.m. and she had a plane to catch. Dennis Frame, her medical partner, was covering her busy clinics for her and she had already taken three days off.
‘Next time.’ She grinned. ‘If I’m lucky.’
She went in search of Suzy and found her in one of the back booths. She had dribbled what looked like mayo down one Donna lapel and seemed set in for a serious night.
‘Hey, you got out of Jim’s clutches with one leap.’
‘Baby, I’ve got to go.’
Suzy frowned. ‘It’s so early. Don’t miss my party.’ It was a routine protest, however. As soon as she had promised to come to the wedding, Finch had warned her that she couldn’t stay long afterwards because she had to work the next day. And Suzy knew of old how exasperatingly rigid her friend could be about time and her professional responsibilities. They were different, but they understood each other and their friendship had rarely faltered.
Finch said, ‘I know, I know. But I’ve got clinics tomorrow, remember? For Dennis’s sake I can’t take too many more days off before the expedition.’
Suzy launched herself out of the booth and locked her arms around her friend. Her face turned serious at the last word.
‘Listen. I want you to take care. I want you to be safe and to come back down from there in one piece. Who’ll be Sutton Junior’s godmother, if you’re not around?’
‘Suze. You’re not?’
Suzy winked. ‘Not quite yet. But I’m planning on it.’
‘Well. That’s great. And I’ll be fine. I’m only the expedition doctor, remember, dosing the d and v, not one of the summit glory boys.’
‘Okay, just so long as you remember that. C’mon, I’ll see you off.’
They weaved their way in and out of the crowd. Suzy stopped short and peeled away towards the bar. ‘Hey, almost forgot.’
She leaned over behind the counter, exposing the tops of her tanned thighs. Jeff caught her and ran his hands over her hips until Suzy straightened up with what she had been searching for grasped in one hand. ‘Later,’ she admonished him. And she held out her bridal bouquet and stuffed it firmly into Finch’s arms.
‘Not me,’ Finch protested. ‘Find someone more deserving. Someone eager for a husband.’
‘There is no one else, kid. You are the last remaining authentic unmarried woman. Pretty soon they’re going to slap a heritage order on you.’
‘You just want me to join the club. You want me to get married because you’ve gone and done it.’
