There were a number of diverging pathways that meandered and re-met at various points, but the main one was hundreds of years old, beginning as stepping stones in the long grass, before it widened as it wound down to the town, eventually joining an ancient horse-and-cart track before meeting the main road. Her parents were fine with her walking this way in daylight but reluctant to let her venture here on her own after dark. When she was younger, her dad had sometimes taken Georgia and her brother Zac on the tracks late in the evening, armed with torches, hoping to spot owls. They had studied the birds’ pellets on the woodland floor, and sat for hours listening for the squeaky warbling and hooting calls, but it was a rare treat to spy a tawny owl on the branch of a tree, and one that lasted only seconds, for they took off as soon as the torchlight came near them. Back then, Georgia had thought that grown-ups weren’t scared of anything, but now here she was, on the cusp of adulthood, and there was more fear in her than she could ever recall having as a child.
As she reached the corpse stone, her step quickened. Some locals called this part of the track the corpse road, others the spirit road, but whatever you knew it as, there was no way around this ancient section of the path, along which people had once carried their dead for miles to ensure their loved ones would be buried in consecrated ground. The corpse stone was a long flat standing stone that had been there for centuries, where coffins could be rested while aching limbs and numb hearts took a moment to rally for the remainder of their journey. She couldn’t walk this stretch without awareness of those other vanished footsteps, their heavy burden in those final acts of love.
The local kids had all heard the rumours connected with this short stretch of track: the strange lights that floated close to the ground, a ghostly hand stroking a cheek or an arm. Some said that the way was lined with the souls of the departed, a drifting, lingering guard of honour on those lonely tracks. It was a rite of passage to leave your friends hiding behind an ancestral oak tree, from whose stout lichen-clothed trunk emerged a mass of taut and twisted fingers that reached for the sky. Alone, you would stand on the track past the corpse stone, switch off your torch and let the darkness claim you, while someone set a stopwatch to see how long it would take you to run screaming towards the safety of the living. Georgia had stayed longer than most, because her stubbornness had nearly outlasted her terror – but she still remembered how her legs had trembled and how loud her heart had drummed in her ears.
After half an hour she was relieved to see the beginning of the bitumen path, which took over from the dirt and began to descend rapidly, leaving the ghosts behind. On a school day she would take the right-hand fork halfway along, and follow it for another few hundred metres, where she would join the short stretch of track that the school had commandeered as part of its team’s regular running route. However, tonight she was heading for town, so she continued down the steep path until she met the road. The journey so far was a little over a mile, and Georgia spent the time thinking of him. After all that had happened over the past weeks she didn’t even want to name him in her mind, as though if she denied him this he would have less substance in her life. But she wasn’t fooling herself, and so she was deep in troubled thoughts for most of the way. It was a surprise when she zigzagged between the metal poles that marked the entrance from the main road, and found herself on the outskirts of Ambleside.
Her phone buzzed. Sophia. Where are you?
Nearly there, she typed back, quickening her pace. It was only a short walk to cross to the southern side of town. The evening was still light as she passed a few huddles of late shoppers and early drinkers, before heading along the old Vicarage Road that bridged town and country to the west, finally taking a shortcut through a playground and a field to reach the quiet lane where Bethany lived.
‘Georgie!’ Bethany said, flinging her arms around her as soon as she saw Georgia at the door, as though they had been parted for months and not mere hours since the end of school. ‘Come in, everyone’s here.’
The living room was busy already, and as usual the girls were outnumbered. A group of boys Georgia didn’t know were having a hyperactive discussion in one corner, while a few more lounged on sofas, drinks in hand. She glanced at the armchair in the corner and recognised Poppy Matthews by her long, red hair but couldn’t see the rest of her, since her face was already attached to Jared Elton’s, and they were going at it like a pair of sucker fish. On the coffee table Oliver Sutton and Jamie Clegg were busy cutting up something that she was pretty sure was contraband in Bethany’s home.
‘Georgia!’ Sophia was waving from across the room, but to Georgia’s dismay she was sitting on Eddie Miles’s lap and made no move to get up.
Bethany tugged on Georgia’s arm – ‘Come on, let’s get you a drink’ – and all her plans of a heart-to-heart with her cousin had to be put aside. Instead she followed Bethany to the kitchen and watched her fill a shot glass with vodka. ‘Here,’ Bethany handed it over and Georgia took a large gulp. Her stomach contracted at the taste, steeling itself. Georgia grimaced, but Bethany was grinning at her. ‘Drink up,’ she said, ‘there’s plenty more.’ Georgia downed the drink, and only once she was holding a tumbler of vodka and lemonade was she led back into the living room.