Cover

Chapter 1

When the alarm pierced the darkness, Joe Spencer rolled over and flopped his arm out from under the duvet to silence the damn thing. He sighed loudly. Had he really been that stupid? To think that he could haul his kids out of bed – as well as his wife – before dawn, to get into a freezing car, all to witness the sunrise over a pile of stones?

He sighed heavily again. Annie, his wife, groaned and pulled her pillow over her head.

‘You seriously set the alarm?’ she asked. He fumbled around the floor, under the bed frame, and found his phone. He switched off the beeping siren and slumped back to his sleeping position. As a National Park Ranger, he was supposed to be used to early mornings, but he was off work, and he’d drunk too many beers last night.

‘I’ve got a headache,’ Annie announced.

‘You drank too much wine.’

‘That’s rich, coming from you.’ She squeezed one eye open affectionately.

‘Come on, we’ll regret it if we don’t go,’ he said, sitting upright, galvanised suddenly by his original excitement from when he’d first planned the crazy idea. The boys had been up to Castlerigg before but never at sunrise. Every time he made an early morning visit to check the site for litter, miscreants and misdeeds he took photos of the captivating dawn and swore that he’d show his family one day.

Castlerigg stone circle was some five thousand years old, though no one knew for sure, and its true history was shrouded in mystery. Funding had never been forthcoming to excavate it, and the circle had sat for centuries, guarding her secrets, in solitude, surrounded by an amphitheatre of rock and fell. The huge glacial boulders originated in Neolithic Borrowdale, some nine miles away, and how they were lugged to Keswick, through such precipitous terrain, was anyone’s guess.

‘Come on, it’ll be worth it, I promise,’ he said to Annie. She’d never been. Annie was originally from Cornwall and the whole experience of the Lakes to her had been a revelation. Joe had romanced her with a thousand views of mountain and lake. Now she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Joe wasn’t a local either, but he’d lived here for most of his life.

Annie scowled at him from under her pillow, the only light still was the blue glare from his phone.

‘I’ll wake the boys.’

Joe flicked on the hall light and went into the boys’ room. He quietly opened the door and found them both fast asleep, which he’d expected. He gently nudged the older boy first.