The Hill wakes.

  It has been asleep for longer than it can remember. It has been dreaming for centuries. It has seen Magic, all of the In and all of the Out. It has seen these things in its sleep. Now it is awake.

  It sees the world stretching out from its feet; it sees the green march outwards to hit the brown of the trees three miles east. It sees the blue of the sky and it sees the air swimming over it, through it, around it. All these things are Always, are Everywhere.

  But now something changed: a man at its feet, looking to its top. He is an old man and the Hill knows his age has come recently. This man is ancient while he should still be in his middle-age. That is passed him now. Light is behind him now. There will be no laughter for this man. His life is over.

  The Hill watches the man squat and trace his hands over the grass of its feet. It watches the man raise his fingers to his nose and breathe deeply and run his fingers over his lips as if to taste the grass. The Hill watches the man throw his head back and scream. It hears the agony tear itself from this man's throat and mouth and lips. It listens to the pain there, watches the man weep as his hands tear at the grass, pull the skin off the world as if to find something beneath it, something that will tell him why.

  He finds nothing and slowly stands. The Hill watches him. The man begins to breathe slowly. His crying has stopped for the time being. He has brought himself back under control as he has been doing every minute of every day for the past month. He looks at the Hill and the Hill looks at him. He sees the grass, the green, the land that was given his name five generations previously. He sees how the green at the top of the Hill seems to touch the blue of the sky. He sees the green of the grass stained with blood; his blood; the blood of his love and his skin.

  The Hill sees a man who will never again come here, whose life is now over here. This is a man who will forget the last forty-two years. They will be nothing to him. He does not exist now.

  The Hill watches the man begin to walk away. It watches him step around its feet as he walks east, covering the grass slowly, head down, August sun coating his neck. The light of the day is shining through him rather than on him. He is going away.

  The man skirts the edge of the Hill and begins to walk out across the fields. He has an uninterrupted path for the next three miles before a small wood breaks the county in half. The Hill watches him go. It knows that if he stays on that path, he will not come to any village for fifteen miles. It knows he will not stop there. It knows the man has a very long journey now. It watches him until he is gone.

  The August day continues and the silence of the world continues. This is the world as the Hill knows it will not be soon. This is the world quiet and small. Soon that will end and the War will come. Blood will be spilt. They will come here from In and from Out; Right and Wrong. They will come and they will bring their War with them.

  The Hill is awake. It watches. It will watch for almost another two hundred years. 

one

kev

   Kev Yates stood with his t-shirt in his hands, frowning at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Thirteen and he didn't look like he'd gained any weight in about three years. Although he had shaved for the first time a few months ago, he didn’t think he’d grown recently. Simple as that really, but it didn't stop him being pissed off about it.

  Kev turned off the hot tap, lathered his chin and cheeks and started to shave. His face, looking odd with the gel covering it, looked back from the mirror. Although he had been awake for hours, the dream during the early hours of the morning was still fresh and his mind began to pick over it as he shaved. The problem was, he told himself, there wasn't much for him to pick over.

  All he truly remembered was that it had been about running, about being chased. There had been a sense of something vastly different about him. He didn't know what, couldn't even make a guess. He had been thinking about it after waking just before nine and it hadn't been far from his mind since then.

  Running. Being chased. Something hugely different between him in the dream and real life. Something close in his head; something right-

  “Kevin, are you in there?”

  It was his mother right outside the door. A wave of irritation washed over him.

  “Yeah. I'll be out in a minute,” he replied. The thought was gone. There was only his face in the mirror, looking like him now the gel was almost gone. He heard his mother walk away, then the sound of the vacuum cleaner starting. He was surprised by this; he hadn't heard her coming or vacuuming anywhere else. He had been too far

(out)

in his own head.

  Deciding not to think about it any further, Kev washed the last of the gel off his face, rinsed the sink and patted his face dry. He used some of his dad's aftershave and left the bathroom clean and tidy. As he pulled the door shut, the air in the bathroom shifted from the moving door. It moved again as the door shut. The air was then still.

  The bathroom was empty.

two

sue

   Sue Browning stood at the side of the Library, glad to be out of the October wind. She lit her cigarette, inhaled and slid her bag off from her shoulders. Feeling paranoid, she looked to the far end of the passageway between the Library and the restaurant. There was nobody there and she told herself not to stress. That was easier said than done. Her mother had caught her smoking two months before and threatened to tell her father if Sue didn't promise to quit. Sue had not been particularly bothered by this threat, but she knew it would make life easier if she had agreed with her mother. For a short time, she had debated arguing with her mother. She'd said nothing, aware she was breaking the laws of parents, of rules and all that. Worse than that though, she'd be making life harder for herself.

   Sue took another drag and planned the rest of her day as the passage by the library acted as funnel, scooping the sharp wind down towards her in a pushing gust. Homework with Lucy for an hour or so; a wander around the shops and then home for about five. She and Lucy had not made any plans for later, but she thought Lucy would probably come round. The thought was comfortable. It said to her that she knew her life and its routines

 She checked her watch. Just gone two. Lucy should be here any minute. Sue killed the cigarette, squashed the butt under her trainer, picked up her bag and walked to the front of the building to wait for her friend.

  She had no idea that on a usual, predictable Saturday, her life was minutes from changing in ways she had never considered.

three

harris

   Harris saw Sue before she saw him. It took no time for him to also see he wasn't going to get out of this; Clare had seen Sue. Harris didn't have to look at his girlfriend to know this; he had felt her hand tighten hard on his just after he saw Sue.

  Shit, he thought, not telling himself that he felt something he couldn't call excitement, something close to it, though. On the surface, this was a pain and nothing else, and Harris was the first to admit that he only ever cared about what was on the surface. Everything that went on beneath was for girls but he couldn't deny there was a sliver of something close to excitement in his stomach.

  “Don't worry about her,” he said to Clare as they continued to walk and the Saturday shoppers continued to push them forward.

  “I'm not,” Clare replied. Her reply was too quick; Harris caught that and held back a grin. He loved being right even if it was easy to be right about girls.

  They passed the Pizza Hut, then the three phone boxes and the Greek restaurant. The Library came up and even though the street had been packed with people, noise and flesh all the way from where Harris and Clare had met at the bus station, a gap appeared in front about ten feet away.

  Someone shoved Harris in the back; he swore and stumbled. Clare held his hand tightly and Harris righted himself. He turned back to see who had shoved him; a woman smiled and mouthed sorry. Harris looked and saw that his feet and the push at his back had taken him, and therefore Clare, to in front of Sue. She was looking at him with interest.

  “Alright?” she said. She looked from Harris to Clare who gave no sign of acknowledgement.

  “Not bad, thanks,” Harris replied. He knew he was pushing his luck, but the possibility of.....he didn't know exactly, but the possibilities made him stay still.

  “What are you up to?” he added.

  “Homework, sadly,” Sue replied. “You know all that History stuff about the Royal Family?”

  “You're not going to get much done standing here,” Harris said. He could hear an interior clock that was ticking away the seconds until he went from pushing his luck to getting into the shit with Claire.

  “Waiting for Lucy,” Sue said. “Should be here in a minute.” She looked again to Clare, knowing exactly how Clare felt about Lucy. Clare and her mates had never liked Lucy, Sue or any of their mates. It was the way things worked.

  Harris, knowing he had pushed his luck as far as he could, nodded. “Sounds like fun,” he said. “I was planning on leaving mine till the last minute. You know. Keeps the pressure going and that.”

  “Good plan,” Sue muttered.

  “Better go, then,” Harris said. He suddenly wanted to stay. He didn't know why. He just wanted to stand in the cold wind, talking bollocks and pushing his luck with Clare to breaking point.

  His feet moved before he knew they were going to; Clare was pulling him away.

  “See you Monday, then,” he called. He and Clare hit the throng of people who had just left the pub next to the Library and were gone. For less than a second, the thought crossed Sue's mind that something had happened. It was a bright, loud thought, but it came and went too fast for her to focus on it. Had she been just two years older, she would have looked at the minute with Harris and bitchy Clare with some perspective. She would have seen Harris as more than just the boy with the jokes and she would have seen Clare as more than just his bitchy girlfriend.

  But there was no time for that now. There was no need for it. Now was Saturday afternoon. Now was real life.

  She had the real world to think about and that was enough.

four

lucy

   Lucy Adams came across Blind Man's Lane, pedaling hard. She crested the edge of the field to her left to avoid a large puddle, came back down to level ground and swore as the bag on her back swung around, a book inside stabbing painfully into her arm.

  Saturday afternoon and being forced to go the Library. God. OK, homework had to be done, but this was a bit much. It wasn't like she cared about royalty or history. Nobody cared about Mr Kent's History lessons. The guy couldn't teach to save his life; he never seemed to notice Paul and James at the back of the room, playing cards. He rarely chased up homework. In fact, Lucy had asked herself as she had wheeled her bike out from the garage five minutes before why they were bothering. The chances were that Kent wouldn't ask them for their homework on Monday afternoon.

  “Who cares about this?” she had muttered as she zipped up her jacket. “There's better things to do.”

  She'd known why she was bothering even if she didn't like the answer. She was driven. She wanted to do well. She knew her mate Sue acted to keep her life easy just as she acted to do well. She might not care about her History homework, but by doing it, the chances were better that she would succeed a little more.

  Lucy didn't think of herself as ambitious, exactly. It was more that she wanted to prove herself. She couldn't have said why or if there was anyone she wanted to impress-she never thought of her parents when it came to doing well and she had no siblings-and had never considered that she was trying to impress herself. Life seemed to be more about doing well because doing badly or only giving half of what you had felt that it would be a waste of time to Lucy. She had no wish to be successful; she couldn't say she wanted a particular job or career after school and university. She couldn't honestly say she ever truly considered life after school, after right now.

  What mattered to Lucy was now, was doing as well as she could now. Making a difference or doing anything important, those things could be left to others. She knew that. What mattered was now, working for now. Affecting life, her own or others, way off in the future could wait.

  That was who she was.

five

the three

   Lucy and Sue sat in the Library with books on British history and the Royal Family spread open on the table. They had been at the table for twenty minutes, made notes for five minutes and spent the rest of their time talking. The Library was busier than usual. People were queuing at the Information desk; the four photocopiers by the entrance were all in use and a group of kids at the computers had been told to be quiet twice by staff. In spite of the unusual noise and life, there was still something cosy in the place to Lucy. She had never noticed it before. It was there though: the feeling that the outside world was shut away and she was free to talk to her mate, talk while the October afternoon was held back by the windows.

  “Lewis is still talking about having people over when his parents go away,” Sue said, turning a page in one of the books. Henry VIII looked back at her. “God, look at this fat git,” she said, showing Lucy the picture.

  “Yeah, but that's not till December. Why's he planning ahead so far?” Lucy asked.

  Sue shrugged. “Probably to make it sound like he's actually going to do something when we all know that's rubbish. He won't do anything.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Lucy sighed. She caught Sue giving her a speculative look. “What?”

  “You want Lewis to have a party, don't you?” Sue replied and laughed.

  “No, I don’t,” Lucy replied, looking at her paper. “Lewis is alright, but he's going out with Kate, remember?”

  Sue shrugged again and scratched her nose with her pen. Neither girl noticed Harris come past the Information desk, see them and step quickly to the American History section.

   “What does that matter?” Sue asked. “Just explain to her that just because she's the best looking girl in the Year, that doesn't mean she can have any bloke she wants.”

  “First off,” Lucy said. “Kate being able to get any bloke through being the best looking girl in the Year means she can have who she wants. Second of all, the day I mess with that mare will be the day before you bury me.”

  She smiled as Sue laughed. Harris heard this even though he couldn't see the girls. He was standing between American and European history, trying to think of a way of getting the girls to see him without being obvious. As much as he had been asking for trouble with stopping to talk to Sue, he knew this was really asking for it. He looked over his shoulder, saw nothing but the doors, and stepped from the books to full view of Sue and Lucy. They saw him and he was glad his smile felt real even if the rest of him felt that what he was doing was odd.

  “Hey,” he said as he reached their table. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “I told you we were going to be here, Harris,” Sue said. She glanced around and relaxed when she didn't see Clare.

  “Where's the love of your life?” she asked, chewing on her pen. Harris grinned.

  “Kev's mum? Na, she couldn't make it.” He nodded towards the chair next to Lucy. “Mind if I sit?”

  Lucy pushed the chair out with her foot and shifted some of the books closer to her.

  “Clare's gone home, if that's who you mean,” he said. “She's not feeling well, so she buggered off. I knew you two were here, so I thought I'd come and annoy you.”

  “Lucky us,” Lucy said, smiling. Harris was OK if irritating sometimes with his stupid jokes.

  “The two luckiest girls sitting at this table,” Harris agreed, glad his lie had sounded real. He knew he couldn't have told the truth. Saying he had told Clare he was going home because he felt like crap, and then came to the Library expressively to meet Sue and Lucy........life didn't work with weird stuff like that.

  “So, what are you up to?” he said and picked up the nearest book. “Hey,” he said. “This looks really boring. You don't want to be doing this. You want to be doing anything more fun like stabbing each other in the head. How does that sound?”

  He smiled at them.

  “Like someone who doesn't have to work hard to do well,” Sue replied. “So not us.”

  Harris flicked through the book. “I tell you what,” he muttered in a secretive whisper. “Make it worth my while and I'll tell you what you need to know.”

  “Worth your while?” Lucy repeated.

  “Yeah. Buy us some chips or something and I'll get this done in half hour. Deal?”

  Lucy and Sue looked at one another. Harris watched them, knowing what this was about. He appreciated it, strangely. He had come to their table when they were talking; he had invited himself. And now he was asking them to let him stay. This wasn't about chips or homework. Harris, who didn't care about anything beneath the surface, suddenly found himself fascinated with those things beneath.

  Lucy and Sue communicated in some odd female way. Lucy looked at him.

  “OK, but you better get everything right or Sue will stick your chips up your bum.”

  The cold outside just then seemed very far away. Even the uncharacteristic noise of the place seemed far away. It was as if something magical had happened and brought the world to their table and made everything feel OK there.

  “Right,” Harris said. “Let's get started.” 

  The three came out of the Library forty-five minutes later. Although it was not yet four, shadows had already begun to lengthen and pool across the road. The afternoon shoppers had thinned; more people were heading away from the town centre than into it and the day had a final feel to it. The wind had freshened and clouds were forming in the west of the sky. They promised rain. There was something in the early gloom that made Lucy feel sad.

  “OK, chips,” Harris said. He felt good. The afternoon had gone better than he had expected. It had been different and there was something quite cool with that.

  “Well, you earned it, I suppose,” Lucy replied.

  “I like your style,” Harris said.

  “Even if she is a midget?” Sue asked; Lucy thumped her arm and Harris shrugged.

  “Well, you can't have it all, can you?” he replied, zipping his jacket.

  The three began to walk towards the city centre, taking up most of the pavement without realising. People shifted around them. They passed the cinema, then two bars in quick succession. Just as Harris and Sue had not known Lucy was fast approaching as they had talked outside the Library, none of the three knew Clare was walking towards Guild Square with her friend Erica. The air knew; the ground knew. The three did not. They were talking as they walked, going over a point Harris had made about how a lot of boys at school thought Sue was fine.

  “Harris, you talk rubbish,” Sue said. She knew she was coming close to blushing, but that didn't change that she wanted to say Harris was talking rubbish.

  “No, on my life, I'm not,” Harris protested. Lucy watched this with interest. There weren't many boys who had what it took to directly flirt with Sue. They all fancied her, but not many of them could say anything to her.

  “Everyone knows it,” Harris continued. The wind blew suddenly fierce and he swore. “There's you, Jenny Pike, Penny Law, Zoë Hansen and......well, everyone fancies Miss Cairns.”

  “But not me, then,” Lucy said, not particularly bothered, more interested in seeing Harris blush.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “You're up there, too.”

  “Right,” Lucy replied, unconvinced.

  They crossed a road in a break in the traffic. The shoppers around them, the people, the noise, the cold and the familiarity of it all were there, but they didn't think of any of it. They had their conversation and everything they knew. Guild Square was coming in five hundred yards. Bishop's Gate and Long Gate branched off from it, both lined with shops and businesses and pubs. Clare was walking towards the Square, moving past a busker outside the Town Hall, talking to Erica about that silly bitch Sue at the Library.

  “And with the boys, all the girls go for John Wilson, Richard Blunt and James Taylor,” Harris said, nodding. Sue snorted.

  “Sorry, but James Taylor is not good looking. He looks like a wanker.”

  “Hey,” Harris said. “Even I can say that James Taylor is good looking.”

  “Why?” Lucy looked at him with interest. They walked past Marks & Spencer. “Are you gay?”

  “Well, no. But if I was, I'd fancy him.”

  “Either way,” Sue said. “James Taylor is not good looking. He's too thin. Richard Blunt, on the other hand-”

  “Yeah,” Lucy interrupted without thinking. They looked at her, both grinning. “He's got nice eyes,” Lucy finished.

  “I like his legs,” Sue said and Harris groaned.

  “Man, I'm in the wrong conversation,” he said.

  “OK,” Lucy said. “Let's talk about girls.”

  “Na.” Harris continued to smile. “Let's talk about why neither of you added me to that list of blokes.”

  “You?” Sue said with her eyebrows raised. They had reached the end of Broadway and were into Guild Square. Through simple fate or as if something powerful wanted it to be, Clare and Erica were coming at the same speed through the crowd at the other side of the Square.

  “I can look alright,” Harris said.

  “What? In the dark?” Sue replied and giggled as Harris nodded.

  They shifted to their left, coming at the burger van almost in the centre of the Square. To its right was the War Memorial. It was a large stone monument, built in a six foot circle, the top lined with flowers. The legend, scripted around one side of the stone, read:

FOR THE DEAD OF WORLD WAR ONE AND WORLD WAR TWO

AT THE COMING OF EACH DAY AND AT THE SETTING OF THE SUN

NEVER FORGOTTEN

  They moved towards the van, Harris already fishing in his pocket and telling the girls he would treat them to lunch.

  “This is a boy who knows how to show a girl a good time,” Sue said to Lucy. She was smiling because she was warming to Harris in a way she had never considered before. There was something magical in thinking that the afternoon had turned into such a good time when that hadn't been expected. Everything, while being the same and made of everything she knew, felt new, as if she was looking at it for the first time. Weirder than that, the three of them together already felt comfortable.

  Then she saw Lucy's expression and stopped smiling.

  “What?” she asked. The change in tone even snagged Harris' attention. He stopped digging for his change and followed Lucy's eyes just as Sue did.

  And in a conversational tone, he said:

  “Shit.

six

where it begins

   Clare said nothing. She could feel so many different emotions streaking through her that focusing on one seemed beyond her.

  Nobody spoke. People passing looked and carried on walking. The power coming between the two groups didn't register with everyone. It didn't want to.

  The wind gusted to kick-start the moment. Lucy's hair, loose from her pony tail, flapped about, slapping into her face, and she brushed it aside, feeling as if she been unpleasantly touched. She saw Clare looking at her hand, then her face. Lucy slowly lowered her hand and watched Clare look calmly to Harris.

  “I knew you would,” she said loudly.

  “Would what?” Harris asked, reacting and not thinking.

  “Go and find these two after you said you were going home,” Clare said. At her side, Erica took a step forward. Sue did the same.

  “What's the big deal?” Harris asked. He knew, but there didn't seem to be anything else to say.

  Clare said nothing, but they all could see her face working. They could see all the hurt and anger coming. For Lucy, it was a strange moment. For the first time, she saw Clare as more than just a bitch. She felt the other girl's pain and embarrassment as if they were her own emotions.

  “Clare......” she said. The Saturday shoppers were everywhere. There was noise and cold and life everywhere. Lucy had never wanted to be anywhere else as much.

  “Shut up, you little bitch,” Erica shouted.

  “What's it to you?” Sue shouted. Lucy's stomach was rolling as if she was about to be sick.

  “She's a stupid little cow and I should break her face in,” Erica said. “Yours too, if you want it.”

  “Yeah?” Sue said. “Try it and I'll tear out your throat, you fat cow.”

  Harris, almost forgotten in this very female moment, felt laughter coming. The knowledge that things with Clare were done and that this whole thing was his fault-nothing was enough to stop it. This was great: the girls swearing in the street like blokes; Sue calling Erica a fat cow. Harris wanted to laugh and when Harris wanted to laugh, he usually did.

  Clare saw this and recognised it.

  “You're dumped, you wanker,” she screamed. She was crying. Her tears were there, hot and furious. She whirled and was striding away before anyone could reply. She disappeared into a crowd exiting from The Fountain.

  “You just cause trouble, don't you?” Erica said quietly, looking only at Lucy.

  “Lucy?” Sue yelled. “What has she done?”

  Erica shook her head and walked after Clare. The three watched her until she was gone. Lucy walked to the Memorial and sat. She suddenly felt very tired. The stone was cold, but its solidity was comforting.

  Sue joined her, sitting close. After several seconds, Harris walked from his spot to stand directly in front of Lucy. She looked up from her swinging feet and Harris saw she wasn't smiling.

  “Well, you were a big help, weren't you?” she shouted.

  “Hang on,” Harris protested. “I just got dumped.”

  “Yeah, like you did anything to stop it,” Sue said. “That whole thing was your fault.”

  Hearing the anger in her voice caught on Harris and made him want to defend himself. He wanted to say they were wrong, that he was a good bloke. But coming up beneath that need was the understanding that he was at fault. He had to take responsibility for it and apologise......and there was more coming through to him. If it didn't, it would be worse than saying he didn't care; it would mean the whole afternoon would be done. And that couldn't happen. He had never thought of Sue and Lucy as real mates before, let alone friends, but something had changed in their brief time together. They had to be mates now.

  “I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “That was my fault. I lied to her and I lied to you two....it was just that......I thought I might have a better time with you than with her. That was a crap thing to do. I'm sorry.”

  Sue nodded and put her arm around Lucy's small shoulders. Harris took a breath and moved to Sue's side. She shifted to make room and Harris sat on the Memorial with the girls.