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around him the same people were doing the same things at the same time of day as they always did. Mrs Rogers was opening the village store as she did every morning, putting the same goods out on display in exactly the same place as always. Her husband was taking the daily delivery of bread, milk and papers. The small school gates were being opened and children were beginning to arrive. It was happening everywhere he looked. In some ways he was no better, he had to admit. He often ran the same route at the same time of day and he always performed a well-rehearsed stretching and loosening exercise routine before going out. Although he wanted to believe otherwise, maybe he was as regimented as the rest of them.
     
    Harry checked the door was locked, checked that he had tied his spare key onto the string of his shorts, checked and started his stopwatch and then began to run. He moved slowly at first, knowing that the first few footsteps were crucial. He'd had more than his fair share of avoidable injuries over the last couple of years and he knew now that it suited his body to start slowly and gradually build up to something resembling a decent speed. In any event, this was a simple training run and he didn't intend overdoing it.
     
    He jogged out through the village, acknowledging a couple of bemused folk as he passed them, ran across the dam and then began his usual clockwise circuit of the lake. He'd run this route many times before and had adapted it over time. He knew that it was more sensible to run clockwise because the majority of the children who attended the school lived on farms and in other villages to the east. The timing of his run today had been carefully considered so that he wouldn't reach the busiest stretch of road until the school traffic had been and gone. He expected the rest of the route to be quiet. Although very busy at the height of summer, with the ending of the holiday season the lake and the village had become noticeably quieter. Harry didn't expect to see more than a handful of people while he was out.
     
    That was how he liked it.
     
     
    Three miles in and the village had long been lost in the distance behind him. A heavy canopy of trees bowed over the road, giving Harry shade from the strangely cool but still brilliant and relentless sunlight. The cover muffled and changed the sounds around him, blocking out the very distant rumble of village noise and traffic, making every birdsong and animal noise seem random and directionless, and seeming to amplify the constant thud, thud, thud of his trainers pounding the ground. His breathing also seemed inordinately loud although he knew it didn't matter if it was because there was no-one else nearby to hear him.
     
    The peace and tranquillity was disturbed momentarily. A car engine (which could have been ahead or behind him and anywhere between half a mile and a mile and a half away) was abruptly and unexpectedly silenced. Harry then thought he heard the crackle and spit of splitting wood. It could have been anything, he quickly decided, but it was probably nothing. One of the local farmers working their land on the steep banks of the lake perhaps? He ran on regardless.
     
    The lake was roughly quadrilateral in shape. He had already run along its longest side and had just followed a sharp bend in the road round to the right. He was now running along the second side which was less than half as long as the first. The dense forest of trees to his left, the grey tarmac ahead and the glare of the sun bouncing off the water's calm surface to his right were all that he could see. His foot scuffed against something unexpectedly and he looked down at his trainers to mind his footing over a particularly uneven stretch of road. For some reason the ground here was covered with debris. Slowing down but not stopping, he tripped and kicked his way through the tangled branches of a sapling that had been felled, its narrow trunk having been snapped near to its base.