The Shadow Year (3 page)

‘OK,’ says Simon. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Tomorrow’s supposed to be hot again . . . how about a trip to the seaside?’ Carla leans into the crook of Ben’s arm. ‘Swimming . . . fish and chips . . . ice cream. You’d drive us, wouldn’t you, Mac?’

Mac yawns. ‘Sure.’

Simon shakes his head. ‘Everyone will have had the same idea. It’d be unbearable. Besides, it would take us most of the day to get to the coast.’

‘There’s always the canal out the back,’ grins Ben, taking a deep drag on the dwindling spliff before passing it on. ‘You know, if you
really
want to swim.’

Kat gives a horrified laugh. ‘You really are an animal, Ben. Only you could think of jumping into that cesspool.’ She turns to Carla. ‘And you sleep with this guy?’

Ben gives a loud, beery belch and then nuzzles his ginger goatee into Carla’s neck. ‘Don’t be fooled by her ladylike exterior, she loves a bit of rough.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ says Carla, cuffing him around the head.

Kat waves the joint on as it moves around the circle; she’s drunk too much already and the hideous, patterned lino they have lived with for the last two years is beginning to shift and swirl alarmingly before her eyes. They are all silent as they consider their dwindling options, until finally Mac speaks up from the end of the table, his voice so quiet they have to lean in to hear him. ‘There’s a place . . .’ he hesitates, ‘a lake. Out in the countryside. I went there once when I was a kid.’ He clears his throat. ‘It was all right . . . you know . . . nice.’

‘A proper lake?’ asks Kat, narrowing her eyes.

‘Yeah.’ Mac nods, shaking his hair from his eyes. ‘I could probably find it again.’

‘How far?’ asks Simon, the lid of his beer bottle now lying still in the flat of his hand.

Mac shrugs. ‘I reckon an hour or two north of here.’

‘What do you think?’ Simon asks, turning to look at the others, his dark eyes flashing in the candlelight.

Carla reaches for the neck of her T-shirt and flaps it away from her skin. ‘I’m so hot I’m almost tempted by the canal. You can count me in.’

Ben nods. ‘And me.’

‘Me too,’ says Kat, placing the cool glass of the beer bottle against her forehead.

They all turn to look at Simon. He stares back at them, his eyes black and unreadable. Watching him, Kat feels the familiar catch in the back of her throat.
Say yes
, she wills.

In one quick move he spins the bottle lid into the air, catches it and flips it onto the back of his hand, inspecting it as if it were a coin. ‘Let’s do it,’ he says with a grin, tossing his dark hair out of his eyes. ‘We deserve a little celebration, right, before we pack up this place and leave . . . ?’

‘Tomorrow?’ asks Kat.

‘Tomorrow,’ he confirms and Kat feels her face relax into a smile.

She half expects the others to have forgotten the plan by morning, so it’s a surprise to find them all squashed into Mac’s clapped-out Fiesta and heading out of the city just as the clock in the Market Square chimes ten. Simon calls ‘shotgun’ and sits in the passenger seat next to Mac while Carla, Ben and Kat are left to squeeze into the back seat. All of them, it seems, are buoyed by the idea of escape. Carla has even found time to make cheese sandwiches and pack a cool bag with beer and lemonade, the glass bottles clinking cheerily in the boot as they drive out of the city.

‘No funny business,’ Kat warns, seeing Ben’s hand creeping up the inside of Carla’s thigh. She angles herself away from them and stares instead at the curve of Simon’s neck, just visible through the gap in the headrest. She sees the faint sheen of sweat on his olive skin and the heart-shaped mole just below the lobe of his left ear where his hair curls. She thinks about reaching out to touch it, but she doesn’t dare.

The city is already beginning to display the effects of another unexpectedly hot summer’s day like a tourist sporting sunburn. The roads shimmer in the heat, oozing sticky black tar, while the grass along the verge begins to crisp and brown like burnt sugar. After a while, even with the car windows rolled down, it is unbearable, like sitting in the blast of a hairdryer. Kat eyes a large advertising hoarding for instant mashed potato, then turns her gaze enviously toward a cluster of little kids shrieking and spraying each other with plastic water guns on a street corner. Two women, their hair tied up in scarves, sit on a brick wall pulling choc ices from white paper wrappers while they watch the antics of the children. Slowly, slowly, the car creeps through the traffic and spills out onto the open road.

Kat thought it would feel good to do something, to go somewhere different but the longer she sits in the back of the tiny car, the more cramped it begins to feel. The halter ties of her bikini top are cutting into her neck and Carla’s dimpled thigh presses hotly against hers; a layer of sweat builds between them, the skin of their arms occasionally brushing and sticking. Kat shifts closer to the window, cranky with the arrival of her hangover, the taste of last night’s beer lying like a dusty carpet on her tongue.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Simon says, turning to study her through his black Ray-Bans. ‘Are you OK?’

She nods.

‘Hung-over?’

She nods again and Simon smiles. ‘I’m not surprised. Just looking at Ben’s shirt is giving
me
a headache.’

‘Hey, what’s wrong with it? It’s holiday attire, isn’t it?’ huffs Ben, holding out the lairy fabric of his Hawaiian shirt, but it is too hot for any of them to bother replying and Simon just turns back to the road. The grey ribbon of asphalt stretches endlessly before them; a road to nowhere, thinks Kat, and she rests her head against the side of the car to doze a while.

‘So where exactly
are
we going?’ she hears Ben ask an hour or so later as they pass through yet another picturesque village of topsy-turvy stone cottages and twisting country lanes. ‘We’re near the Peak District, right?’

‘Yep. Heading north.’

‘Are you taking us into the national park?’

Mac shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. The lake might belong to the park, or it could be farmland.’

‘Oh fantastic,’ says Kat, opening one eye a crack. ‘I didn’t realise getting shot by an irate farmer was on today’s agenda.’

‘You said you wanted an adventure,’ says Simon, turning round to face her again. ‘I’m sure Mac knows what he’s doing. Right, Mac?’

But Mac doesn’t say a word; he is focused on the road in front of them, driving them deeper and deeper into lush countryside, past fields of rapeseed glowing golden in the sunshine and green pastures spotted with black-and-white cows.

Another hour passes and they distract themselves with ‘I Spy’ and squabble like kids over what music to play. The girls want Blondie but they’re outnumbered and Ben’s album goes on. ‘The Clash?’ groans Carla. ‘Not again.’

Kat closes her eyes again and tries to block out the thrashing guitars. Her headache is getting worse.

‘We must be nearly there,’ says Carla, pulling her frizzy auburn hair up into a pineapple. ‘It’s pretty hot back here. We could do with a stop if it’s going to be much further.’

‘What do you say, mate?’ asks Ben, leaning forwards between the two front seats. ‘How much further?’

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ says Mac, without even looking up from the wheel.

‘
You’re not exactly sure?
’ Kat is incredulous. ‘I thought you knew where this lake was?’

Mac just shrugs.

‘So when
were
you last up here?’

Mac shrugs again, his eyes fixed on the road. ‘Can’t remember.’

Simon studies Mac for a moment then bursts out laughing. ‘That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Mac: it’s just
so hard
to shut you up.’

Kat leans her head against the side of the car and regards each of her friends in turn, tries to imagine what it will be like next week after their graduation ceremonies, when they pack up their student house and say their goodbyes. They’ve spent two years together in their shambolic red-brick terrace and while there have been arguments about washing-up and toilet paper, household chores and bills, she knows she will miss Ben’s easy humour and Carla’s warm generosity and Mac’s strange, quiet manner. And Simon . . . well, she knows there will never be anyone else quite like Simon. In the short time she’s known them, her friends have come to mean everything.

Twenty minutes later, Mac slows the car on a twisting country lane then indicates and turns up an overgrown track littered with rocks and potholes. It’s obvious from the height of the grass growing down the central ridge of the trail that no other vehicles have passed that way for a very long time. Kat leans forwards and gazes out the window, scanning gaps in the hedge for a telltale spot of blue water shining in the distance; but there is nothing. As they bump along the uneven ground, the heat of the midday sun now beating down on them, Kat wills the journey to an end.

The hedgerows are high and bursting with thistles and thick, snaking briars. Nesting sparrows dart from the undergrowth as the car passes by, while cabbage whites flutter against the blue sky. A huge bee, drunk on pollen, wafts through the open window; Carla shrieks and flaps wildly until Ben manages to steer it safely out of the car. Far above them the silhouette of a hawk hangs black against the dazzling blue sky; Simon points to it and they all watch in awe as it hovers like a shadow above them.

They continue jolting their way up the track for a few more minutes until the hedgerow begins to crowd in on them from both sides and brambles screech and scratch against the car. ‘Are you sure this is right?’ asks Ben, leaning over again from the back seat. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to turn the car around if it gets stuck.’

‘You’ll see,’ says Mac.

Ben and Kat exchange worried glances across the back seat but just a few hundred yards on and the track unexpectedly widens again. Mac pulls the car up onto the grassy verge and switches the engine off.

‘I don’t see a lake,’ says Kat.

‘We go through there.’ Mac points to a wooden gate slumped on its hinges, only just visible through the thick brambles and tangled hawthorn branches. They stare at the gate. There is nothing but the heavy drone of insects and the car engine ticking beneath the bonnet to break the silence that has descended over them.

‘Where does it go if we carry on up the track?’ asks Simon, nodding ahead to where the trail winds up over a distant hill.

‘Dunno,’ shrugs Mac, ‘the moors, I guess. But the lake’s this way. Come on, grab your stuff.’

‘We’re walking?’ asks Kat, horrified.

They pull their belongings from the boot – hats, towels, an old tartan rug, the bag of drinks and sandwiches – then take it in turns to clamber over the creaking wooden gate. The grass in the meadow on the other side is almost waist-high and bursting with ox-eye daisies and scarlet poppies drooping in the hot sun. They swish their way through in single file, Mac leading them down towards a thick line of trees in the distance.

The air is alive with insects and sunshine. Crickets leap from their path as they move through the tall grass. A huge blue dragonfly crashes into Kat and then zigzags off across the field, the deep thrum of its wings trailing away on the air. Ben, dragging the bag with one hand, has already sparked up another joint, the aroma drifting like exotic perfume. Kat can feel a trickle of sweat run from the hollow at the base of her neck down between her breasts; she wipes it with the hem of her T-shirt, then tucks the fabric into the elastic of her bra, exposing her midriff and lower back to the sun. Her hangover is definitely getting worse.

Once they reach the wooded copse on the far side of the meadow, they follow Mac through the shade of the trees, a damp earthy scent drifting up from the floor. Emerald ferns nod as they pass by and huge banks of nettles push up towards the canopy. It is quiet, nothing but their footsteps and the crunch of dry leaves and sticks beneath their shoes. Kat feels a million miles away from the bustle of the city.

Finally, they emerge from between a bank of alders but there is still no sign of a lake. Kat stomps behind the others out onto a grassy ridge, the drumbeat of her hangover building in time with her footsteps, until halfway along Mac pauses and looks about, as though checking his bearings.

Carla groans. ‘Don’t tell me, we’re lost?’ Her pineapple wilts in the heat, spots of pink colouring her plump cheeks.

‘No,’ says Mac with a shake of his head, ‘we’re not. Come on,’ and he leads them to the far end of the ridge and then down a long slope of tufty grass before disappearing behind a thick hedge of blackberry brambles.

One by one they follow him round, Kat trailing miserably in the rear. As she emerges on the other side of the bushes she almost walks slap bang into Carla who has come to a sudden halt.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbles, then raises her head and looks out, following the others’ line of sight to gaze down at the vista spread before them. She lets out a long, slow breath. ‘Oh,’ she says.

‘Yep,’ says Simon.

‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ She can’t find the words.

‘. . . perfect,’ says Carla, finishing her sentence for her.

‘It’s amazing,’ crows Ben. ‘There’s absolutely no one here.’

Mac doesn’t say a word; he just stands there with a sheepish grin spreading across his flushed face.

They are standing at the top of a grassy slope, gazing down into a small green valley – a basin of land seemingly hidden from the rest of the world by the emerald hills and shady woodland rising up on all sides to enclose it. Best of all, nestled in the trough of the hills and gleaming like a sheet of glass in the sunshine, lies a perfect, shimmering lake. The landscape is like a mirage after the long car journey and the hot trek through the fields and woodland. Kat shields her eyes from the glare of the sun and drinks it in.

She’s never been very good at judging distances but the lake is a good size – at least three hundred yards across and perhaps half a mile or so long – definitely more lake than pond. It sits like a glittering blue eye, surrounded on all sides by fringes of woodland and the steep grassy hills. It’s as though they have fallen into a secret valley – one cloaked in an air of strange, blissful solitude.