Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [83]
I had a sneaking feeling that I had met the girl of my dreams.
CHAPTER 76
The next night was New Year’s Eve, and I made a secret plan with Shara to meet her outside the back door on the stroke of midnight.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ I suggested.
‘Sure. It’s midnight, minus five degrees, and pitch black, but hey, let’s walk.’ She paused. ‘But not up Loyal,’ she added, smiling.
And so we walked together along a moonlit track.
Twenty yards and then I will make the move to kiss her, I told myself.
But plucking up the courage with a girl this special was harder than I had thought.
Twenty yards became two hundred yards. Then two thousand.
Forty-five minutes later, she suggested that maybe we should turn around and head back to the house.
‘Yes. Good idea.’ I replied.
Do it, Bear, you old woman. Do it now!
And so I did.
A quick kiss on the lips, then a longer lingering one, and then I had to stop. It was sensory overload.
Wow. That was worth the walk, I thought to myself, smiling from ear to ear.
‘Let’s head back,’ I confirmed, still smiling.
I am not sure Shara was quite as impressed by the ‘effort to reward’ ratio – long cold walk to short, hot kiss – but as far as I was concerned the sky and clouds had parted, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic.
I just had a sense that we were meant to be.
I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that?
As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving.
‘I’ll beat you to London,’ I challenged her.
She smiled knowingly. ‘No, you won’t.’ (But I love your spirit.)
She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10 p.m. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked.
She answered in her pyjamas.
‘Damn, you were right,’ I said, laughing. ‘Shall we go for some supper together?’
‘I’m in my pyjamas, Bear.’
‘I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.’
And so she did.
Our first date, and Shara in her pyjamas. Now here was a cool girl.
From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off.
We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends.
Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted.
The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor I cared.
It was heaven just to be together.
Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul.
Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard.
But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.
CHAPTER 77
Meanwhile, by day, the craziness of all the preparation that a three-month-long Everest expedition involves continued.
Mick Crosthwaite, my old Isle of Wight and school buddy, had joined Neil and myself as part of our British Everest team. I had grown up with Mick all through prep school, Eton and the Isle of Wight, and climbed a lot with him over the years.
Physically and mentally, ever since I could remember, Mick had always been superhumanly strong.
Aged nine, he would single-handedly carry and drive the entire rugby scrum, making our prep school team totally unbeatable. After university, he breezed through some of the toughest military courses and hardly broke into a sweat.
Mick has always been a great man to have fighting in your corner, and I was so happy to