‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope. When Uncle Liam first ran it, only a few hundred people had done it. Now it’s a couple of thousand, I think. He’s in this special club because of it – and he doesn’t let anyone forget it. He’s a real character: loves a party, and loves a drink too – he doesn’t train like you’d expect an athlete to. He goes through spells where all he does is run, and then he won’t do anything for a while, until he starts joking about the fells calling to him. It’s hard to believe he’s Dad’s brother sometimes – my dad is much quieter. Uncle Liam was twenty-three when he first ran the Bob Graham Round with one of his mates. He was in hospital afterwards, had to be rehydrated, and one of his ankles was rubbed so raw you could see the ligament. He’s still very proud of that scar. The other guy didn’t even get halfway.’
‘Bloody hell, he sounds crazy. I love a challenge, but I don’t know how far I would get. And your dad?’ Leo asked. ‘Is he a fell-runner too?’
‘No, he’s an electrical engineer by trade, but he’s busy with the Mountain Rescue team as well. Dad’s a real hero, actually, picking people like my uncle up off the mountain when they push themselves too hard.’
‘He has two jobs?’
‘No, the mountain rescues are all done by volunteers. You have to have an understanding boss, mind – although, lots of the rescues happen later in the day, when people get stranded as bad weather sets in, or misjudge how long it will take to climb up and down a mountain.’
‘That sounds awesome. He must have some great stories.’
She hesitated, feeling a flurry of nerves at the thought of introducing Leo to her father. She wanted to ask something about Leo’s family but she wasn’t sure where to start. ‘So what about your dad, what does he do?’
Leo’s jaw tightened. ‘He’s not in the picture.’
Georgia had felt herself colouring up. ‘Oh, sorry.’
‘It’s fine – never has been, so I’ve never known any different.’
After this, every time she thought of a question she balked, and the conversation trailed off. Georgia tried not to feel the weight of the silence. Instead she’d focused on her technique, making sure she landed well on each foot, keeping her arms relaxed. She was pleased when they rounded a corner and she spotted a distinctive shape up ahead. ‘Come over here a second,’ she said, speeding up. ‘I want to show you something.’
She stopped running to pat a huge tree trunk thicker than a car wheel. It had buckled at a strange angle, close to its roots, and bent towards the path.
Leo looked intrigued, then put his hand out and ran his fingers over a few of the thousands of tightly packed rows of coins which had been hammered into the bark, obscuring the trunk. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a money tree. There are a few of them in this part of the world.’
He leaned in to inspect them. ‘Is there a story behind it?’ he asked, glancing up at her briefly, then back at the coins.
She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything specific. People do it for good luck – like throwing coins into fountains.’
‘They look like part of the tree, like natural lumps or seeds. I wouldn’t have thought they would warp like that.’ He pointed to the rows of coins that had curled to rest their exposed tips against the bark. ‘There must be thousands in there.’ He patted his pockets. ‘I suppose,’ he said, pulling out a two-pence coin, ‘if it’s for luck it’s only right I add an offering.’
‘My family have put quite a few in there over the years,’ Georgia replied as she watched him. ‘Couldn’t tell you which ones, though.’
Leo hunted around and found a large stone. He set the coin’s tip against a small section of empty bark and tapped it lightly a few times. Then with one swift movement he brought the rock down hard.
‘There,’ he said, satisfied.
The force of his blow had made Georgia jump. She had expected him to hammer it in little by little, like her family always had. From memory it had taken them a while to get a coin in far enough to stay put, but Leo’s two-pence was now buried deep in the wood.
He smiled at her. ‘Shall we go?’
She nodded. On the tip of her tongue was one of the other stories of the money tree: that if you could drive a nail or coin into a tree with one blow you earned a kiss from your sweetheart. But she didn’t say it.