The summer Mark and I found the man in the woods, Mark was sixteen and I was a year younger. We’d been playing a lot of golf that year and nobody much admired us for it. After our rounds and long practice sessions were complete, we’d walk home along the lane that led back to the village, carrying our clubs, and the inhabitants of passing vehicles would beep their horns and shout profanities at us. Considering it was a quiet lane where you’d only see about twenty cars per hour, it occurred with startlingly regularity. One time someone hurled a half-full Fanta can from a passenger window and it hit me in the eye and drenched the front of my polo shirt. When my mum saw the bruise, she refused to believe I had not been fighting. After that, Mark and I started taking a different route, over the corner of the tor and down through the woods by the river. Some of the paths weren’t public but Mark worked out a shortcut and was fairly confident we wouldn’t get into trouble.