It was the morning. Light filled the gorge. Pale blue light with golden lines in it, like rays of the sun drawn by a little kid. And then the rock of the gorge opened out, like a scallop shell, or like a book. Or like when you’re holding a butterfly, and you show your friend, your dark‑haired girlfriend, and she comes over and you open your hands. And the butterfly – nothing special, only a cabbage white – spreads its wings and flutters them, making sure they still have power in them, and then it’s away into the blue and gold air. And I was lying on my back, gazing up, watching the soft white lines in the sky. Remembering what my dad said – that when he was a kid, before the internet, when there was nowt on the telly during the day, him and his friends used to watch the white contrails for hours in the endless blue of summer skies, just like me and Kenny watching the telly. And Kenny was here. That was good. I couldn’t see him, but he was here. And Sarah. I knew if I turned my head she’d be there, too. I reached out, trying to find a hand, thinking it would be Sarah or Kenny, but I could only feel the soft hay we were lying on. The hay of the field near the wood where the badgers lived.

And then I heard the sound. The mad, ecstatic music of the lark. I peered into the brightness and saw the small bird straining upwards, its flight not like the easy, carefree swooping of the swallows and swifts. The lark’s flight was all effort, as if hauling itself up by sheer will – a wanting, a yearning. To fly and to sing was work, it was grit. And it was beautiful. And then the lark flew so high it escaped the earth’s gravity, and suddenly flying was no effort at all. And finally the lark was so high that I lost the song, and though I tried to keep my eye on the tiny dot in the blue forever, striving to keep my eyes open in case I couldn’t find it again, at last I blinked, and my eyes opened not into the blue and gold but into the black.

And then I understood that the lark wasn’t a lark, but a soul, and that I was alone, and that a beautiful thing had left this world.

Nineteen

Nineteen

“Listen to me. Nicky. You’re OK. Can you hear me? Look at me.”

Lines of light were playing about the gorge. Like searchlights in the war.

There was a man. He had a yellow helmet on. A torch in the helmet. I’d always wanted one of those. He had a moustache. Who had a moustache these days?

I didn’t understand.

“Kenny,” I said.

“Kenny?” the man asked. “Is that your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Kenny’s fine.”