After a fairly sleepless night I wasn't really at my best when Gareth pitched up at some unearthly hour of the morning – about 9:30, to be honest – but I got it together to make him coffee and even some breakfast – he'd left his parents place in North Wales considerably earlier still – and we sat companionably enough in the small kitchen of the flat I'd slept in - Debbie and my flat, according to the plans we'd made in London. Not that he commented on her absence, possibly because the journey had been a bit of a hassle – the by now only-just-passable road up the valley being only the last of the weather related problems – and he was just knackered. Or perhaps he just assumed that she was doing something elsewhere – perhaps up at the building site.
Anyway, he didn't ask and I didn't volunteer the information, so after we'd finished eating we set straight to setting up the office, reassembling most of the furniture that we'd brought with us from London, for a start, with gusto. And, working hard and working well together, we got most of the bigger stuff set up within a couple of hours. I made to make an immediate start on configuring the IT side of things but he stopped me and suggested a coffee instead. Well, man after my own heart and all that, so I agreed and – the office coffee maker being in a cardboard box somewhere in the pile – went off to fill a kettle.
When I got back, I found him sitting on one of the desks, talking good humouredly with Rosie. Who greeted me warmly enough, accepted a coffee and then, pleasantries out of the way, said,
"I came over for a reason, though. First is to give you a message from Debbie – after we talked last night." (I saw Gareth give us both a quizzical look but he didn't make any comment.) "I suggested that she take a break for the day, do some thinking and that sort of thing. In return for which, I said I'd come in and help out in her place, if that's OK?"
We both agreed that it was, though I could tell that Gareth was now retrospectively curious about where Debbie had been – this morning and, I guessed, last night, too. Well, he'd find out – or not – soon enough. I didn't really feel like volunteering the information. In any case, Rosie wasn't quite finished yet.
"And," she went on, "seeing as how I'm going to be here and the two of you seem to have done most of the heavy lifting already, I think you should bugger off, too, Dave. Kath suggested that you might like to take a walk round the head of the valley with her and that deranged dog of hers – the ghylls should be pretty impressive after all this rain – say meeting at the Old Hotel about lunchtime?
Again, I could see the curiosity on Gareth's face but he must have picked up on something in Rosie's tone – or perhaps from both of our body language – because he rapidly asserted that he felt this was a bloody good idea, how he'd be happy to work with Rosie, etc etc. I did wonder, briefly, if I was being set up, her but actually I did have a couple of counter arguments. First, the next task we had was to set up the network – more my area than Gareth's – and, second, what with the continuing difficulties on the road, there weren't going to be any buses up the valley.
"Dave," said Gareth, with some force, "I can hook up a PC to an ADSL router, for crissakes – which will give us basic functionality – and as for the more involved stuff, well Naz should be here tomorrow and its more his area than yours..."
Which was true enough, and, when Rosie pointed out that the bus that had got stuck in the valley last night was currently doing a shuttle up and down the bits of the road it could get to, my fate was effectively sealed. OK, I did wonder quite what Kath was so keen to see me about, given the length of conversation we'd had the previous night, but – hell, I'd dragged everyone up here largely because I liked these mountains, so ... why not, really?
So I went.
++ +++ ++++ +++++ ++++ +++ ++ 
It was hardly a surprise to find the bus deserted, given that it was hardly busy at the best of times and was now running effectively from nowhere to nowhere, rather more unexpected to find the climbers' bar of the Old Hotel similarly empty. Frankly, I'd have expected a few washed out campers from the site over the road, maybe a rained off conservation worker or two, maybe even, you know ... Kath. And that dog.
But, no, no sign. No Landie in the car park, no dog, no Kath.
So I went and bought a pint, obviously, sat at a table near the bar and sat trading sarcastic jibes with Fergus, the bar manager and a naturally irreverent sort of bloke. Obviously, he wasn't the least impressed when I told him I'd become a local resident – with years of experience of visiting the place as a tourist I knew the staff hereabouts were never impressed with anything that didn't give them an opening for a cutting one-liner – but it was a pleasant enough way to pass half an hour.
By the time it had got to be a full hour, though, I was beginning to get a bit pissed off at Kath's continuing non-appearance. I thought about phoning her, of course, given that there was a pay phone in a little stone niche beside the toilets, but I knew she wasn't home ... and that she wouldn't have a mobile signal any more than I did.
So I carried on passing the time with Fergie until I saw the next bus come up the valley and wondered whether I should cut my losses and just head back to the office. Then I thought that that would be pretty rude if Kath did eventually turn up, so I went back to the conversation and – not five minutes later – was rewarded by the sound of a large dog scrabbling at the pub door, followed soon enough by the arrival of Harry the Harebrained hound – Kath's excessively friendly labrador. Which promptly attached itself meaningfully to my leg, distracting me momentarily from greeting his owner.
Except that when I did look up, it wasn't Kath that had brought him in. It was Debbie.
Debbie, looking very fetching in full waterproofs and boots. Even if not, initially, looking overly pleased to see me. Then she smiled, hauled the dog away from its ... umm ... activities and looked at me significantly.
"Well," I said, conversationally, "that is Kath's dog ... but you're not Kath."
"Very true ... this is indeed Kath's dog and you're not Kath, either. Let me make a wild guess, here: You thought were meeting Kath here, too?"
I agreed that this was indeed the case as the absurdity of the situation and she smiled.
"At a further wild guess, I would also suggest that it might have been one or more Braithwaite sister who gave you to understand that she would be here?" 
I nodded, grinning rather inanely.
"In which case, my dear," she said, returning the grin, "I think we have been royally had. So what do you think we should do now?"
"Well, its a pub, so maybe I should offer to buy you a drink?"
"Good idea. And while you're doing that I'll think of what I'm going to do to those bitches when I next get my hands on them ..."
Language, I thought to myself, reprovingly. Then I went to the bar. And bought us both a drink.
