The Fear Bubble

The girls were now leaning into each other and whispering intensely. I wondered what they were they doing. Plotting their next assassination? I kept noticing their eyes swivelling out from their dark huddle and looking in my direction. Then they abruptly sat back, now not saying anything. Suddenly a phone appeared. It was in a black case with Michael Jackson picked out in fake diamonds, one hand on his trilby, the other on his crotch. The girl in the mini-dress was holding it directly in front of her face, but some distance away from her, like an old lady squinting at a book. Then it turned slowly in my direction. The girl looked upwards, now apparently closely examining the advert for student home insurance above the window opposite her. There was the faint electronic sound of a shutter being clicked. Her mate snorted with laughter. ‘Shut up!’ the first one hissed.

I wouldn’t mind if they’d asked. I never complain about being recognised or having to pose for selfies, as that would be ungrateful and disrespectful. And I’d hate – more than anything – to be perceived as being rude to anyone. Having said that, I always try to keep my head down when I’m out and about. I never pretend that I’m someone. I hate being in that mindset, thinking that I’m the centre of attention. But more and more, things like this kept happening. I’d leave the house and be reminded very quickly that my existence had changed. There wasn’t much I could do about it. This was the reality of the ‘new life’ that Ivan had been asking about.

It was a life that didn’t come without its own peculiar risks. I only had to walk out of a pub looking unsteady and some newspaper somewhere would print a story that I was an alcoholic. I only had to scowl in someone’s direction and it would be reported that I was in the middle of a heated argument. So I needed to make sure that my behaviour in public wasn’t merely immaculate – it could never even be perceived to be anything less than immaculate, even down to the expression on my face.

Maintaining that level of good behaviour wasn’t easy, especially for someone with a past like mine. It wasn’t a comfortable combination, all those eyeballs, all that stress – and my personality. The more I felt watched, the more that old, raucous version of me wanted to kick back. The intense pressure to behave immaculately – in trains, on the street and within private members’ clubs – taunted that unstable ghost living inside me. It goaded him and mocked him and motivated him to take me over. I felt him writhing around, pushing at me, tempting me to make chaos. As the girl took another photo, and this time barely bothered to pretend she wasn’t, I buried my fists deeper into my pockets and pushed my chin into the collar of my coat, as my left leg bounced up and down in nervous, aggravated motion. ‘I should’ve got a car back,’ I thought to myself. ‘Fuck this. I’m not taking the tube any more. I’m going to stop taking public transport.’

By the time I got to Liverpool Street station I’d done a lot of serious reflecting. What on earth was I thinking? Who was I turning into? Some TV celebrity puffing on £400 cigars who refuses to go on the underground? In that moment with the girls and the photos, it felt as if everything I was, everything I’d fought so hard to become, was at risk of getting lost. I didn’t want to fall head first into this new life, with its new definition of success. It wasn’t just that I was worried I’d change for the worse and become some spoiled ‘celebrity’. I was afraid that if I didn’t grab hold of the situation, the old me would fight back in a way that I couldn’t control. There was a genuine danger that I would revert to finding my buzzes elsewhere. That could be drinking. That could be fighting. That could be getting myself killed by a double-decker bus. Too many people were relying on me these days for that to happen. It wasn’t only my wife and five children. My life had somehow turned into a small industry. There were teams of people making serious parts of their livelihoods off the back of me, and all of them needed me out of prison and off the tabloid scandal pages, not underneath ten tonnes of steel and rubber in the middle of Piccadilly. My success and theirs were intertwined. I felt a responsibility to every single one of them.

But what could I do? How could I exorcise this ghost when I had all these eyeballs on me? Perhaps I could take a spell out of the limelight and go back to West Africa, where I’d carried out some security work before life in the media found me. That might be fun – I’d get into some interesting scrapes – but there was no way I’d get it past Emilie. It was too sketchy. I thought about running a marathon or taking up boxing in a serious way, but neither of these would really test me. I needed that perfect balance, somewhere I could feel fear but actually be relatively safe.

As soon as I had that thought, an incredibly vivid memory came to me. It was so powerful it was like being in a momentary dream, one that took me back all of twenty years, when I was seventeen. It was my first adventure training package in the army, and we’d climbed Snowdon in Wales. Before that day, during basic training, my life in the military had been extremely controlled. We’d been spit-polishing boots, doing drills and press-ups and running around in the mud, all under the instruction of barking troop sergeants, with almost every minute of every day being tightly regimented. Even though I’d been pushed to my limits, it had all been done in an environment of safety. I’d been scared and intimidated, but the only things I’d really had to fear were failure and humiliation – threats to my feelings. It had been fake danger. And then we’d climbed the mountain.

And it wasn’t just any mountain. It was Snowdon, at 3,560 feet the highest peak in England and Wales. It was said to be where Sir Edmund Hillary himself had trained for his successful assault on Mount Everest. When we reached the summit that day I remember thinking, ‘Fucking hell, I’ve just climbed a mountain!’ It felt like the greatest achievement of my life. I’d never experienced getting out into the world like that before. I’d never felt as if I’d truly conquered anything. And there I was, on top of the world, breathing the air of the gods.

But that wasn’t the only reason my memory of Snowdon was so precious. After my father suddenly died at the age of just 36, on 31 December 1985, my mum and her young boyfriend Dean moved the family from our three-bedroom council house in Portsmouth first to an eight-bedroom mansion outside Southampton, and then to northern France. Flush with money from my dad’s life-insurance payout, they bought a huge house that had once been a children’s home on a large plot of land on the outskirts of a town called Saint-Lô, twenty miles from Bayeux. Life with my mother and new step-father was tough, and my happiest times were the hours I’d spend tearing around in the fields and woods playing soldiers. I had a wild time, and even at that age I began to wonder about being an actual soldier when I was older.

As wild as those days had felt to me, however, they had really been lived within a controlled environment. Even when I stayed in one of my dens for two or three nights, someone would always have to know where I was. If I ever got into trouble I’d feel it. Part of why I wanted to join the army was my urge to re-create those experiences of wild adventure under open skies. But in the early weeks and months after I joined up, the experience had been more like being at home with my stepfather. I was always watched and pushed and corrected by a figure of authority.

All of that changed on my ascent of Snowdon. My most vivid memory of all, even more than of reaching the top, was when I saw the lad in front of me almost fall off a narrow track, right off the side of it. I’d seen the fear first grip him, then overwhelm him, and watched him give up the climb completely, fumbling his way back down to safety. I’d become infected with that same fear. It had soaked into me like a heavy, disabling liquid. I looked around me and realised I was on the edge of death. Anything could have gone wrong. I could have slipped. The weather could have come in. I could have got hypothermia or been blown off the mountain. I’d never experienced such vulnerability. For the first time, I felt that I had my own life in my hands. As the fear washed through me I had to make that decision. Do I listen to what it’s telling me? Or do I trust myself to do this? Do I go up? Or down?

It was that fear I remembered most. As I paced up and down the platform at Liverpool Street waiting for the Chelmsford train I was in a trance of memory, feeling it again as if it was all happening to me right now. That fear had almost beaten me. But the moment I’d committed to the decision to climb, an incredible transformation had taken place. My perception changed. It had been as if the mountain itself had stopped trying to hurl me down its precipitous flanks. Now, instead, it was drawing me up to its summit and I no longer felt as if I were on the edge of death.

Why had that change occurred? How had it happened? Partly, I realised, it was because, in making the decision to continue on upwards, I’d fully embraced the responsibility of my task. There were no rules on that mountain except for the ones I gave myself. There was no drill instructor telling me where to look or put my feet. There was no stepfather telling me what time I had to be in or where I could or couldn’t go. It was lawless up there. Amid the freezing blasts of wind I found an ecstatic sense of liberation on Snowdon that was completely new to me. I was in real danger on that narrow, icy track. If I made the wrong decision it was entirely down to me, and I alone would pay the price. That was petrifying. But it was also exciting. I was my own god up there. I felt completely alive in a way that I never had done before. I felt afraid – and I felt free.

I found a quiet seat on the train where no stray eyeballs or selfie cameras were likely to find me and excitedly pulled my phone out of my pocket. How long did it take to drive to Snowdon? I’d go up it again. Do it solo. The next weekend I had free. That’s it, it was decided. I wondered if I could remember the exact route we’d taken twenty years ago. It wasn’t one of the normal tourist routes. It was … I didn’t know. Well, what was the toughest way up? I opened up my web browser and typed in S.N.O. … I stopped. Snowdon? Really? I was seventeen when I’d done it. I was thirty-seven now, and a completely different man. I could walk up Snowdon in silk slippers. It just wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t give me what I needed. So what would? What’s the ultimate Snowdon? I went back to the web browser on my phone and deleted S.N.O. … In the place of those letters, I pecked out a new word.

E.V.E.R.E.S.T.

As the train wobbled to a start and began to rattle out of the station towards home, I excitedly scanned the results on Google. One page leapt out at me. A Wikipedia article: ‘List of people who died climbing Mount Everest’. I began reading.

Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), is the world’s highest mountain and a particularly desirable peak for mountaineers. Over 290 people have died trying to climb it. The last year without known deaths on the mountain was 1977, a year in which only two people reached the summit.

Most deaths have been attributed to avalanches, injury from fall, serac collapse, exposure, frostbite or health problems related to conditions on the mountain. Not all bodies have been located, so details on those deaths are not available.

The upper reaches of the mountain are in the death zone. The ‘death zone’ is a mountaineering term for altitudes above a certain point – around 8,000 m (26,000 ft), or less than 356 millibars (5.16 psi) of atmospheric pressure – where the oxygen level is not sufficient to sustain human life. Many deaths in high-altitude mountaineering have been caused by the effects of the death zone, either directly (loss of vital functions) or indirectly (unwise decisions made under stress or physical weakening leading to accidents). In the death zone, the human body cannot acclimatise, as it uses oxygen faster than it can be replenished. An extended stay in the zone without supplementary oxygen will result in deterioration of bodily functions, loss of consciousness and, ultimately, death.

Why did people die on the mountain every year? There must be something special up there. And what was this ‘death zone’ they were going on about? What did a death zone actually look like? What would it feel like to tackle one? It sounded as if you only got a certain amount of time to climb the mountain before you ran out of oxygen – that climbers used ‘oxygen faster than it can be replenished’. So it was like a race for your life. I felt my heart lurch with excitement. I scrolled down the page to the seemingly endless list of fatalities. The deaths started with the very first expedition to attempt to climb the mountain, undertaken by a British team in 1922. Seven Nepalese guys, who I guessed were helping them get to the top, died on the same day in an avalanche. Two years later, there was a Brit, Andrew Irvine: ‘Disappeared; body never found; cause of death unknown’. He was twenty-two. With him, another Brit, the famous George Mallory. ‘Disappeared; body found in 1999; evidence suggests Mallory died from being accidentally struck by his ice axe following a fall.’

As I kept scrolling, the deaths mounted up. Wang Ji, China, 1960, ‘mountain sickness’; Harsh Vardhan Bahuguna, India, 1971, ‘succumbed after falling and being suspended above a crevasse during a blizzard’; Mario Piana, Italy, 1980, ‘crushed under serac’. My eyes flicked across to the column that noted the causes of death. There were hundreds of entries, page after page: avalanche, avalanche, fall, fall, exposure, exposure, exposure, drowning, heart attack, high-altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE), high-altitude cerebral oedema (HACE), exhaustion, organ failure due to freezing conditions. And these people were from all over the planet: Australia, Germany, Taiwan, Canada, Bulgaria, South Korea, the United States, Vietnam, Switzerland … Finally, I reached the end of the list. 2017. This year. Six deaths. An Indian, a Slovakian, an Australian, an American, a Nepalese and a Swiss guy. Causes of death? Everything from altitude sickness to ‘fall into a 200m crevasse’.

Of all the names I’d seen on that page, I’d only heard of one: George Mallory. I knew, of course, that Hillary had been the first man in, up on Everest’s summit, but why was Mallory so famous? I clicked on his name and began reading the article about him. It turned out that he’d taken part in the first three expeditions to the mountain, the first a reconnaissance expedition in 1921, the second two being serious attempts to ascend the peak in 1922 and 1924. He was last seen alive just 245 feet away from the summit, and it remains unknown whether he reached the top before his death. He’d served in the military, as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery, and fought at the Battle of the Somme. I noticed his age on the day he died.

Thirty-seven.

‘But Ant, you said Mutiny was your last thing.’

It was the following morning, just after 7.30 a.m., and I was disappointed to discover that 5 Hertford Street £60-a-shot whisky gives you exactly the same hangovers as the stuff from Tesco at £6.99 a bottle. My wife Emilie was at the counter with her back to me, preparing breakfast for our one-year-old boy. I’d forgotten I’d made that promise to her. But she was right. Mutiny, the TV show I’d filmed the previous year, re-created the 4,000-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean in a twenty-three-foot wooden boat undertaken by Captain Bligh and eighteen crewmen following the mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789. That had been a tougher-than-expected sell when I’d first run it past her. Looking back, the idea was borderline insane. Together with the nine men I was responsible for, we’d braved wild storms, twenty-foot waves, starvation, dehydration and the onset of madness, and I’d only just made it back in time for the birth of the amazing boy – named Bligh – whom Emilie was now spooning mashed bananas into.

‘Well, I actually said Mutiny was the last stupid thing I’d do,’ I told her. ‘Everest isn’t stupid. Hundreds of people do it every year. It’s just a holiday, really. A camping trip.’

‘And how long will you be gone on this camping trip?’

‘Er, it takes about six weeks, give or take.’

‘Six weeks?’

‘Yeah, because you need to acclimatise. The air up the mountain is so thin you’ve got to give your body a chance to get used to it. So you go up a little way, rest and get used to the altitude, then you go down, rest some more, and then you go up again, but a bit higher.’

‘Sounds annoying.’

She was still in her pyjamas and had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. I often think of the word ‘angelic’ when I see Emilie. She has a perfect, heart-shaped face – her cheekbones are wide and high, and her chin forms the cutest little bump. Her eyes are large and dark green, speckled with brown that sometimes, in the right light, seems to glisten like pale gold. She has exactly the kind of face you’d imagine on an angel.

‘It’s just being careful,’ I told her. ‘It’s the safest way of doing things.’

I took the spoon off her and began feeding Bligh myself.

‘I’m not up for taking any risks up there, babes. This isn’t for a TV show or anything, so there’ll be no drama. It’s just a bit of fun. An old pal of mine from the military takes people up there every year. He’s got a company that does it. Proper professional outfit. Here you go …’

I unlocked my phone. The website of my friend’s organisation, Elite Himalayan Adventures, was still on my web browser from when I’d last looked at it. I passed it over to her and she picked it up warily. I’d spent the rest of my train journey the previous night reading pretty much every page of it. Elite Himalayan Adventures specialised in expeditions up the world’s fourteen highest mountains including Kangchenjunga on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, K2 in Pakistan, and the king of them all, Mount Everest. The page I showed Emilie highlighted the company’s emphasis on not putting their clients in any undue danger: ‘Safety will always be our priority, and all of our Sherpa guides are expert climbers and expedition leaders in their own right, who then undergo a rigorous selection and training process to ensure you get the safest, most informed and most professional climbing experience possible.’

‘Looks fun.’ She put the phone down and started noisily unloading the dishwasher. ‘But six weeks, Ant?’

‘Well, the entire trip, with actually getting to the mountain in the first place … I mean, you’re probably talking more like two months, if I’m honest.’

‘And how much is this two-month holiday going to cost?’ she said, over the sound of bowls being stacked in the cupboard.

‘It’s not exactly cheap. But we’re doing OK, aren’t we? I’ve been working hard.’

‘I know, Ant,’ she said, still not looking at me. ‘You have. It’s totally up to you. What are we talking, though? For the trip?’

‘It’s probably … I don’t know.’ I did know. ‘Sixty grand? Give or take?’

There was a silence. I watched her put a pile of plates down, slowly and gently on the counter, and then pull a chair out opposite me.

‘This isn’t a wind-up, is it?’ she said in disbelief once she’d sat down. ‘I can tell by your face it’s not a wind-up.’

I spooned another mouthful of banana into Bligh.

‘It’s just what it costs, babe.’

‘But why does it cost sixty grand?’ she said. ‘I mean, sixty grand? For a camping trip? How did they work that one out?’

‘Emilie, you’ve got to trust me. I need to get away. This new life we’re building is great but I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. I keep having these thoughts. It’s hard to explain.’

I put the sticky spoon down and looked her in the eye.

‘I don’t want to muck anything up for us. I don’t want to do anything stupid. If I manage to behave myself, it’s just onwards and upwards for us and the kids. There’ll be no stopping us. But there’s a lot of steam building up. I can feel it. And if I don’t let it off up that mountain, I might end up doing it outside some bar or something. If I don’t get the buzz I need, I’m going to find that buzz myself, whether it’s breaking the law or offending someone or fighting someone. I can’t end up back in that place again. We’d lose everything. It is sixty grand. But you should see it as an insurance payment.’

‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’

‘Not for me it isn’t. I could walk up Everest backwards. They’ve had all sorts up there on the summit. Postmen. Celebrities. It’s just an adventure holiday. Just something to sort my head out.’

To be honest, there was never really any chance of Emilie standing in the way of my going. Although she sometimes worried about me, she always trusted me, and I always respected her enough to run anything I wanted to do past her. When I’d served in the military, she hadn’t been like the wives and girlfriends of some of the other men, worrying and fussing and distracting them with the anxieties and problems of home life. As had been my wish, Emilie just let me get on with serving my country when I went away, and that allowed me to keep my head clear and focused on the job in hand. She didn’t call. She didn’t write letters. And that’s exactly how I liked it. Her strength of character helped keep me alive. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Emilie has always been the perfect partner for me. We instinctively understand what each other needs and we always do our best to provide it. Me and her are an unbreakable team.

She also knew I wasn’t lying when I told her I could walk up the mountain backwards. In Everest I’d found the ideal challenge to tame that warrior ghost inside me, at least for the time being. Nobody could deny that climbing the world’s highest mountain was dangerous. Its list of confirmed kills was impressive. But I wasn’t just anyone.

I’d often told Emilie that I was invincible, and I wasn’t really joking. I didn’t really believe anything could kill me – and it was this belief that had kept me in one piece. Nothing that had ever been thrown at me had taken me out. All those people I’d read about on Wikipedia who’d fallen down crevasses or succumbed to exhaustion or organ failure or a cerebral oedema, whatever that was – I felt bad for them, but they weren’t me. Everest would give me a taste of the danger that I’d begun to crave, that was probably true, but it wasn’t going to pose me any genuine problems. If anything, it would be too easy. This would be a camping trip. A walk in the park.

‘Thanks, Emilie,’ I said, lifting Bligh out of his seat and cradling him against my shoulder. ‘I’ll get it booked.’

A sudden wave of excitement washed over me and I grinned in her direction.

‘How good is it going to be, standing on top of the world?’

CHAPTER 2

HOW TO HARNESS FEAR

Why did I want to climb Mount Everest so badly? Why was I taking deliberate, crazy risks when crossing busy roads? Why was my mind slipping into violent fantasies at the very moment I was being made to feel most coddled, in a Mayfair private members’ club over expensive whisky and cigars? What kind of a man would imagine such horrific things? Believe me, I didn’t want a terrorist to come bursting in with an AK47 and a bomb vest because I’m some psychopath. I didn’t want people to get hurt. What I wanted was to be handed a reason to leap up and stop people being hurt. I wanted to be forced into action. I wanted to be put in a position in which I had no choice but to perform or die. What I wanted – what I’d started craving almost like a drug – was fear.

This might seem strange, but that’s what my relationship with fear is like. I crave it. I need it. And as much as I need it, I also dread it. As I travel up and down the country meeting people on my tours, one of the questions I always get asked is a variation on this – ‘How did you get to be so fearless?’ The answer is, I didn’t become fearless. I don’t believe that’s even possible. I feel fear all the time. Not only do I feel it all the time, I hate it. It’s not that I’ve learned to conquer fear or enjoy it. It’s that I’ve learned how to use it. My experiences fighting in Afghanistan with the Marines and serving as ‘point man’ as a member of the Special Boat Service, the first man in as part of an elite team that was charged with capturing some of the world’s most dangerous men, taught me that fear is like a wild horse. You can let it trample all over you, or you can put a harness on it and let it carry you forwards, blasting you unscathed through the finish line.