He had scribbled a note for his parents, letting them know he was biking to school. He often chooses to ride, but he has never left before without saying goodbye – he doesn’t know what he’d say to Georgia this morning. Everyone will be preoccupied with the accident, but he is still reeling from that photograph too. And he is afraid that if his mother catches him alone today she will decipher some version of the truth on his face, and get it out of him.
As soon as he wheels his bike out of the garage and sets off along the lane, Zac feels calmer. He loves riding along the narrow, winding paths out of Fellmere towards Ambleside. He revels in the energy-sapping climbs, and the thrill of freewheeling the descents. His friend Cooper is always keen for them to travel together, since they are the only two boys who live in Fellmere, but when they do it’s an endless competition of speed and style, and Zac arrives at school feeling frazzled. When he’s alone it’s just the ride itself, the shifting of speeds and gears, and he can let his mind drift without being goaded.
He has so much time to spare this morning that he sets himself a meandering route cross country, one he is sure his mother wouldn’t approve of, but he needs to think.
The characters he manipulated in Black Ops were always picking up grenades and using them without hesitation. He was beginning to get an idea of just how different it was when you had a real one lying in your hand, the pin unplugged, and you alone responsible for the direction it travelled, and with whom it collided on the way.
He can’t stand being alone with this secret, and yet there is no one he can tell. What would his parents do if they saw that photograph? Is there any way he could have misinterpreted what he had seen? He hadn’t thought so, but now, as he cycles on the empty path, with the day fresh and stirring around him, he begins to doubt. Maybe his mind has played a trick on him. Maybe he has got it all wrong.
His thoughts are still whirling when he realises he is on the spirit road. Whenever he sees the corpse stone he feels uneasy, but it’s probably nothing more than the recurring twinge of humiliation from when, as a boy of seven, his older sister and cousins had run away from him here, leaving him so terrified that he had cried until they stepped out from behind a tree, laughing. He can never help but wonder just how many dead bodies have been set down to rest temporarily upon that spot. Despite its association with the dead, this section of the track always feels more alive than the rest – the grass moving energetically in the smallest breeze, the rustles and whispers of the drying leaves a little louder than elsewhere, crunching emphatically under the bike’s wheels.
Zac had thought he was above childish superstitions nowadays, but when he reaches the tarmacked section of the trail, the spindly branches of birch trees leaning towards him in welcome, it is as if his burden lightens. He feels not only relief but a renewed sense of purpose. He needs to see that photograph again. Only then can he make a decision about what to do next.
There is still plenty of time before school begins, so Zac heads straight down the path and approaches by road. The hardest section of the ride is inside the school gates, where there’s a steep uphill climb to reach the bicycle racks. Zac loves catching sight of the main building, a gothic country house that was converted more than a century ago after two dedicated teachers pooled all their resources to buy it. Although this building represents the school in all its marketing material, it doesn’t house any classrooms, which are instead tucked away among the foliage and found along a labyrinth of outdoor walkways. In Zac’s opinion, the only other school with as much character is Hogwarts.
The school opens at eight and closes at seven, unless there are special evening events going on. Zac reaches the front entrance at a few minutes to eight, unsure if he’ll be allowed in. He holds his pass out, and the gate buzzes and swings slowly open. He rides through and heads for the bike stands – unsurprisingly, he is the first there. He unbuckles his helmet and locks up his bike, then grabs his rucksack and heads through the main doors of the school building. It’s so early that all he can hear is the sound of his footsteps on the polished board, and a couple of secretaries chatting in the admin rooms at the other end of the corridor. His stomach begins to complain, and he berates himself for not grabbing something to eat before he left the house.
He heads hopefully to the dining room. It is his favourite place in the school – not just for the food, but because the lowlying building has windows instead of walls running along one side, with a view right across the valley towards the northernmost tip of Lake Windermere. In one corner of the room stands a polished wooden boat that had once belonged to Arthur Ransome – as a young boy Zac had often dreamed of sailing it to his own secret island. But when he gets there the doors are locked, and the canteen won’t be open for another thirty minutes. He doesn’t want to wait that long.