'She would have been happy when she died'

He had no regrets, Jim Ballard said yesterday. As he confronted the almost certainty that his wife was not coming home, there was nothing he would have asked to be different.

"She would have been happy inside when she died," he said. "She would have had the most incredible buzz of satisfaction of climbing Everest and K2 back to back and doing it in style. Style means a lot. I would have been more sad if she hadn't climbed it."

For all the talk of hope and slim chances, in his heart of heart he knew Alison Hargreaves's luck had run out as soon as the first bulletins emerged on Wednesday evening, he admitted yesterday. "I came to that conclusion as soon as I heard the first reports from America. At that stage, though, I didn't know she had made it to the summit. That makes a difference and has obviously given me a great deal of pleasure."

As he sat at the Nevis Range ski resort near his home at Spean Bridge, Fort William, Mr Ballard, 49, seemed almost too calm, too composed, for a man who has lost the woman he acclaims as "a genius" and possibly the greatest female mountaineer in the world.

He was calm, he confirmed, a calmness born of a knowledge that his wife was doing what she wanted and from a decade of preparing for the harsh prospect that her spirit of adventure might one day take her from him.

The fatalism is still mixed with some small optimism. Stranger things have happened, he said. But if he hears nothing positive by Sunday evening, then he will begin to put that chapter of his life behind him and get on with securing a future for Tom, six, and Kate, four.

Though still young, they have been brought up with the mountains. Before Mr Ballard had a chance to break the news to them, Kate had understood from breakfast television that there had been an accident on K2. Tom has seen bodybags coming out of helicopters in the Alps and bodies being lifted off mountains only 20 yards from where he stood. "He might even have seen a climber fall to his death," Mr Ballard said.

"Both he and Kate were perfectly well aware of the dangers involved in what their mother did and that she may not come back. Alison was a loving mother but she could also slip easily into work mode when she had to. Our family life was intense. We knew that we had to make the most of all the time between climbs."

In recent years Ms Hargreaves had become the main breadwinner but Mr Ballard hopes a public fascination with her drive and ambition will secure a financial security for the children.

A biography and a film are planned and he has just discovered the unedited diaries of her record-breaking Everest expedition this May, when she became the first woman to reach the summit unaided and without oxygen. He hopes all these projects will also create an archive, a picture for Tom and Kate of what their mother was like.

Alison Hargreaves moved in with Jim Ballard, 16 years her senior, when she was 18. Only the mountains have separated them in the 15 years since.

"It's going to be incredibly difficult. When you lose a loved one, you're going to walk through the door and they're not going to be there."

But he considers himself lucky that he had already adjusted to the risks and the fears in the way that Formula One Grand Prix wives must. That comes with the profession. "Compare it to how Schumacher's family must feel or how Damon Hill's mum copes. You just do."