The Wedding Cake Tree by Melanie Hudson Page A

I had ribbed him about earlier. He removed a large circular nylon sheet from the sack that was also bright orange.
    ‘ Come and sit by my feet,’ he shouted, ‘quickly!’
    He lifted the sheet above his head and tried to control it by holding the edges as it flapped wildly in the gale. He squinted away from the fierceness of the wind. Water dripped from every crevice of his face.
    ‘ It’s a survival sheet. We need to shelter and get you dry.’
    We crouched together and Alasdair pulled the sheet over us. He pushed the edge of the nylon under me so that I was sitting on the sheet rather than on the saturated ground. Our bodies made the framework of the makeshift tent, our heads the tent poles. He grabbed a telescopic walking pole that was strapped to his rucksack, lengthened it and, sticking it firmly into the ground, created another apex. His rucksack made up the fourth corner and also had the sheet tucked underneath it. He rifled through his rucksack and pulled out an entire set of dry clothes – his clothes – and took care they didn’t also become wet.
    ‘ Get that lot off and put these on,’ he ordered.
    I pulled the soaked fleece over my head while Alasdair unfastened and removed my boots. My feet were dry but my fingers were stiff from the biting wind, which made unbuttoning my blouse difficult to the extreme. Alasdair turned away while I struggled to pull his T-shirt over my head. He then gave me my own coat.
    ‘ Get your bum up. I need to pull your trousers off.’
    Under normal circumstances I would have either laughed at such a comment or slapped him, but I was in too much pain, wrestling my injured wrist into a sleeve, to offer any comment. And anyway, Alasdair looked far from pleased.
    ‘ What’s wrong? Why are you wincing?’ he asked.
    ‘ I fell on my wrist.’
    Alasdair took hold of my wrist and manipulated it to assess the damage.
    ‘ Is it broken?’ I tried not to cry.
    ‘ No.’
    Within minutes I was dressed and dry, but still shivering a little from a mixture of cold, shock and the injury.
    ‘ You’ll start to warm up in a minute,’ he said. Taking in my crestfallen expression, he added, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll live.’
    I m anaged a smile. Alasdair delved into his rucksack once more.
    ‘ Ah, here it is, I thought I’d got it with me.’ He unfolded a large green and black scarf.
    ‘ What is it?’
    ‘ A shemagh. It’s from the Middle East, useful piece of kit this. Let’s get it on your head and stop all the heat from escaping.’
    He leant behind me, stretching the survival sheet upwards as he did so, and wound the shemagh around my head just as an Arabian salesman might have done in a Middle-Eastern souk.
    ‘ Let’s get you warm and then we’ll get back to the hotel once the storm has passed. Put your hands under your armpits.’
    He positioned his body so my back was cupped into his chest, and opened his coat so I could benefit from the full warmth of his body. It was like cuddling up to a radiator. The intimacy of our closeness should have been either sexy or embarrassing, but the dankness of the survival tent, combined with the condensation from our breath, the raging closeness of the storm and the fact that I was shaking like a jelly put paid to any possible notion of romance.
    ‘ I will never tease you about that rucksack ever again,’ I joked. Although I couldn’t see his face, I could feel his smile and was relieved he hadn’t remained angry at me for my naivety on the hill.
    ‘ You know what? It’s nothing short of amazing,’ I said, turning my head slightly towards him.
    ‘ What? That you stumbled across a ram in the Yorkshire Dales?’ He knew what I meant.
    ‘ No, that you just happened to stumble across me in the middle of nowhere. Were you out for a walk yourself or were you actually looking for me?’ Similarly, I knew what the answer would be.
    ‘ June came to see me when the rain came in. She’d noticed a nasty squall passing through, had seen