Monday

1

Although it was July, the weather was awful. It had been since the start of term

The rain dripping steadily from the brown, tattered clouds looked as though it had no intention of stopping. Rivulets trickled off sagging leaves and bored holes in the school rose-beds which spread soily puddles across the car park. The birds were in hiding. Delivery men used free newspapers as rain hats as they raced between their vans and the kitchens

It was so dark they had the lights on in the dorm but Kizzie was smiling. I'm in love, she was thinking. Finally!

Kizzie pressed her nose to the window, her breath steaming the pane, and, looking directly downwards, watched Angela emerge from the Main Building. Her dorm-mate's dedication was incredible: training in this weather! Angela's lanky, white-socked, green-hooded figure set off into the drizzle, loped around the black semi-circle of driveway beneath the trees and vanished out through the main entrance

"Who's nicked my new headphones?" shouted Priya from under her own bed. The dorm carpet, once red, was the colour of cardboard. Priya backed out, careful not to snag her hair on the springs, and held out her glinting, ringed fingers for an explanation

"You've still got the price tag on your new shoes," Kizzie told her

"I need my headphones, guys. It's not funny."

Kizzie, yawning operatically, started knotting her tie. "Not me."

"Athy borrowed them," came a sleepy Scottish voice from the top bunk by the door. "She left 'em in your sock drawer. Hid them in your Minnie Mouse specials if I'm not mistaken."

"Thanks Gillian." Priya fished out the tangle of white wires and opened the dorm door, wishing the girls a curt good morning. She came face to face with the Housemistress. "Oh. Hi, Miss Bainbridge."

"Kizzie?" Miss Bainbridge peered at them all from under a helmet of dry-looking, greyish hair. She always seemed to be wearing the same colours, if not the same clothes: frog, dog and an especially horrible shade of budgerigar. "Is she in here?"

"Yes, Miss B?"

"You're to report to the Headmaster's study straight after breakfast."

"Yes, Miss B." Kizzie nodded and noticed, out of the corner of her eye, Gillian's rumpled, bed-face peeping over her duvet. Priya was standing in the corridor behind Miss Bainbridge with a puzzled look on her pretty face, mouthing, "What the ...?" as Kizzie asked, "Am I in trouble, miss?"

"No idea. That's for Mr Firmin to know and for you to find out, isn't it?"

"Yes, Miss B."

As Kizzie watched Miss Bainbridge slide away in her dirty, novelty slippers, Priya darted back inside the dorm and leaned against the dressing gowns hanging off the back of the door. "So? What was all that about?"

"What have you done, Kiz?" Gillian asked, upright on her bunk, her bare feet dangling from her too-short pyjama bottoms. Her short, dark hair was standing up in tufts. She'd been in such a deep sleep that all her features seemed to have crowded into the middle of her face. "Something bad. Has to be."

"Don't think so."

"You look guilty, to be honest, babe," noted Priya, bracelets jangling as she searched the tracks on her phone screen. "Your body language, I mean. Oh God, now that I say it, it's so obvious. You look so guilty."

"I feel guilty!" Kizzie replied, giggling. She always smiled when she was in trouble or nervous. When she was really nervous, on the verge of tears say, she had a habit of bursting into laughter. Like now

"Well don't worry 'til you know, eh?" said Gillian. The bell for breakfast sounded in the corridor and Gillian groaned. "Oh, is that rain for real? What happened to summer?"

"Good Scottish weather that is, Gil," Priya told her, winking as she left. "You should feel right at home. I'll save you a place downstairs, girls. If it's the last time I ever see you, Kiz, it's been nice knowing you, all right? I'll send you the tenner I owe you to your new school, OK, babes?"

2

Angela took her usual route, jogging out through the main gate of the school and up the gravel lane directly opposite before turning right at the track which ran adjacent to the pony field

Careful not to snag herself on the barbed wire, she skirted the field where the beehives where before stopping to walk through the graves in St Catherine's. At the far end of the churchyard, soaked to her knees with dew, she hopped the old, mossy stile and jogged up through the dripping bracken to where the footpath ringing the school known as The Gallops began

Up above the first treeline, where tufts of cloud trailed off the leaves and branches below like smoke, Angela started her run proper. She set herself a decent pace and tried not to think about the rain or the niggling tightness in her left calf which had started during yesterday's run. The weather wasn't too much of a problem, she had the right gear on, but it made conditions underfoot slippery and unpredictable and she spent more time watching the ground than simply enjoying the run

The path was slick with running water and sometimes the roots of the great oaks and elms that towered over were submerged or buried. The higher she went, the harder the rain pelted down and she ran with her arms stretched out, always ready to break her fall if she did go over. Somewhere in her mind she knew she should stop and walk but she couldn't bring herself to listen. It'll be fine, she thought, wiping a screen of rain off her face. I'll be fine.

This is wet rain, Angela thought, glancing up at the dull sky, remembering a phrase of her grandmother's. Wasn't all rain wet? But she understood what her grandmother had been getting at. It was horrible, thick, driving rain which worked its way up your nostrils and trickled down your collar and made you do that weird, jerky thing when it ran down your spine towards the small of your back

At the top of the hill where the fences were, Angela went left rather than right, thinking she might cut the run short. A few minutes later she heard a train whistle from somewhere occluded but close by and realised she hadn't taken the path she thought she had. She'd run The Gallops many times so didn't panic but, checking her watch, she did worry about getting back in time for Assembly. She was only allowed out alone on condition she came back at the agreed times

The mist and rain was too thick to be able to see far ahead – it was really chucking it down now – (her father's phrase, that one) – so when she spotted a narrow path darting off downhill she took it, ducking under a broken, dripping bough and slithering side-footed through soaking green ferns and nettles. Cold droplets sprayed up into her eyes and she felt twigs and loose stones whip her ankles

Any way down is good, Angela thought, mildly out of control. I'll get to the bottom, find the bypass and jog back to the school. Stupid to come out in this weather. What was I thinking?

Angela spotted something in her juddering, peripheral vision further down the steep path, blocking her way. She couldn't look up long enough to see what it was. A sixth sense warned her of danger

It's a person. A man.

This didn't immediately register: it seemed impossible that she could come face to face with someone up here, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere

But it...