John was running. It was a good day for it. A pale echo of summer warmth parcelled up in placid country green, and presided over by a smooth white sky. Everything was still, save for the rolling ground and the airy beckon of stirring trees. Departing a footpath, he was swallowed into the crooked jaws of Monk's Wood, trading the scratch of starved dirt for the moist pounding of earth underfoot. Legs punched like pistons, springing from the happy handshake of friendly ground. It was always the same; the brittle crack of twigs and the sweet heady musk, the relentless thumping of worn trainers, the chiselled kick of dirt, and the dry pop of fire upon his tongue. Senses fired, dashing and lapping at every experience like an excitable pup, the old and familiar renewed with vital life. Ahead, ranks of wizened trees strobed daylight into the thinning wood, and the husk of a forgotten farmhouse crept into view.

Cobbled together of coarse stone and slate, the farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings huddled close on the hillside, besieged by nettle clusters and towering weeds. Weathered by long winters and empty years, it was a crumpled monument to a forgotten time, lost to the long shadow of the past. There was a time when its windows glowed gold, warm and inviting, when smoke snaked from the chimney stack, and the ring of laughter drifted through open doors. John pushed onwards, haunted, and repelled. He followed a dusty road, divided by the ancient impress of expensive cars into twin shallow trenches, which scuffed his shoes and jostled him off balance down the hill. When he reached the bottom, there was a laboured limp in his gait, and he welcomed the stretch of trusty tarmac that greeted him. He hobbled along for a couple of minutes, willing the strength back into his ankle, as Pickwick Lodge Farm blossomed on the horizon, immaculate and white. In the drive, a family unloaded suitcases from a car, their voices carried brightly across the expanse, punctuated by the menacing roar of a little boy circling the vehicle with a toy plane. John felt his face stretch in a warm unfamiliar way, and just as quickly found himself casting wary glances left and right, before resuming his run.

Orbiting high above the farm, he followed a scar of sloped green between flanks of ash and maple trees, it was a roundabout detour that kept him off the radar of discerning civilians. And that was how he liked it. Over Hartham Park, a colourful pair of kites battled against the stiff breeze, weaving, swooping, diving, twisting, tumbling to the earth. Youngsters tangled with string to get their craft airborne. It reminded him of a story. The night of the Hartham bomber. The town of Hartham was a small and unassuming place, but it had some rather important neighbours, such as the Colerne Airfield and RAF Box. One night, a damaged German bomber was spotted flying low over Port Hill, a trail of thick smoke billowing in its wake. It was pursued by a couple of fighters, engines rumbling into the Warren as it dipped lower and lower. Some say the target had been the Hatfield airstrip, others say the gas works, but what is known is that the last of the German bombs were unloaded over Hartham, lighting the valley in bursts of red. It is believed the plane went down somewhere around Hunsdon. The body of the pilot was never recovered. Sadly, the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Berkley were found beneath the rubble of their cottage, where they had been buried in their bed. Today, Berkley's Café is a betting shop.

The lonely road from Hartham to Biddestone was enclosed by tall hedgerows. There was no breeze, his lungs swelled like powerful bellows in his chest, heaving at the stagnant air. A junction came into view, along with a road sign, and John felt the same shameful creeping tug at the corner of his mouth as he turned into The Butts. It was remarkable, he considered, that after all this time he was still amused by something so juvenile. Picturesque cottages lined one side of the street, while a wide field of unkempt grass sprawled out on the other, with white blossoms thick like snow. Family cars formed an orderly queue perched on the curb beside each house. John hated them, they were plastic, angular, homogeneous, prefabricated, soulless shells on wheels, and he feared for the day he saw another bloody Mondeo. A place like this rankled his sensibilities. On one hand, it was a pleasant and placid little community, and that appealed to a big part of him. It was somewhere he could call home. On the other hand, it was a pleasant and placid little community, and he could never live in a place like that. Dead end thoughts abandoned, he ploughed on, up The Butts.

Biddestone was quaint. Neat rows of cottages framed in smart stone walls with little white gates. English country gardens overburdened with lush pockets of colour and winding gravel paths. Even the streets were accessorised with old fashioned, some would say classic, telephone boxes and a charming village gazebo where there once stood the communal well. It was postcard perfect, but in his heart, John longed for something bigger and louder and faster. In a narrow gloomy lane, he passed a couple of young cyclists wrapped in skin-tight garments of electric pink and neon blue, and pinned them with a stare of iron-clad disapproval. He shook his head. Loud, but not that loud. Young men were playing in the football fields, their faces were pink, their knees crusted brown, they barked and cheered, all impatience and passion, voices hoarse from shouting.

From the parlour came a chorus of hearty laughter, where the men sloshed hooch and the women danced. A robust gramophone sat in the corner, scratching out the jaunty hoots of Artie Shaw, animating limbs with shades of the collegiate shag. It was all American and new, and they were young and shameless, in their military blues and jitterbug frocks. Outside, a pristine Ford Model B rolled up to the window, there was a girl in the passenger seat, she had full red lips and cascading auburn curls. I caught her eyes in the flickering cigarette light.

A rush hour commotion of wind raced over the flanking fields and battered the lone runner, nudging him from the embankment and off the beaten track. He sought refuge in the encroaching woodland. Gnarled arms of oak gave a lazy stretch, making rafters of calloused fingers, and the woken bracken whispered beneath a cloud of impenetrable green. He was alone, a labyrinth of untamed terrain vanished into the distance, brash in its unspoken dare. In his chest rose a quiet flutter of joy, fresh and bright, the spark to light the fuse. Legs sprung, unravelling steely tension with a snap, and the uncompromising earth tumbled away beneath seven league strides. They were powerful legs, that had fled a crashing tide of bulls in Pamplona and pursued gunmen through the bustling Tokyo underworld. Ancient branches groaned against his grasp, and upon release shuddered a shower of acorns, fingers clamping like vices. Strong hands, fists hardened by the smack of flesh inside Vancouver's bloody cages and fingers supple from a season of sheep herding across Napier, New Zealand. His chest burned like a furnace, lungs firing like locomotive cylinders, hissing hot jets of steam. Nature had folded him into something hard and powerful; something inhuman, something like a machine.

When John spilled out of the forest in an explosion of underbrush, a passing van honked angrily, its senior citizen occupants were unimpressed by the caveman theatrics. It was raining, a relentless drizzle of fine summer mist that kissed his skin and galloped through the tree canopies. He panted, and closed his eyes. Any warmer, and he was toiling the rice paddies of Gazipur, and any colder, he was conquering the razor ridges of Buni Zom. This was English weather. It was Goldilocks weather. It was the best weather in the world. He was home.

Along the endless crawl of road, skeletal trees staggered and groped at the breeze, spitting ice water. A tall fence of wire mesh rattled ominously into the distance, atop of which its clutching horny claws trembled, shaking diamonds from rusted barbs. Beyond that, a horizon, where curtains of sickly green and grey drew to a close. Fingers interlaced with the cold woven wire, John pushed close, on the other side of the fence heavy breaths dissipated in a pale vapour. Through the shimmering haze, colours and shapes blended like the running of paint on a sodden canvas, ghostly at first, and as formless as a rumour. In time, the shapes sculpted themselves into a congregation of brown block buildings, huddled in the shadow of a massive globe, pocked and white. It was the infamous Colerne Airfield.

Operational as of 1940, RAF Colerne, as it was then known, was initially established as a subsidiary base during the Second World War. A year later, it housed over a dozen fighter squadrons, with other fighters rotating through the airfield daily. This traffic boom led to a history of ill-fated flights, culminating in the crash of a C-130 Hercules in September, 1973. The crash was attributed to engine failure during a co-pilot training detail, the hulking craft dived into the woods north-east of Colerne and burnt out, killing all six passengers, including the Air Loadmaster. His name was Dave Harrower. He died a Squadron Leader, but back when he was but a lowly Sergeant, he saved the lives of five British soldiers. A black ops team, stranded behind enemy lines in the Aurunci Mountains while the Battle of Monte Cassino unfolded below. Wounded, surrounded, and five days without radio contact, the men braced themselves for a final stand. Then, out of nowhere, came the crackling voice of Dave Harrower and the looming shadow of a C-47 Skytrain to deliver them from the jaws of death. That day, Sergeant Harrower earned himself a bottomless Guinness jar in the Colerne naffy, it then came as little surprise that that was where old Dynamo Dave met his untimely end.

Twin runways dissected the landscape, empty and vast. It was a graveyard of memories, a glorified flight school where recruits manned handfuls of Grob G's, polluting the air with their anaemic whine. John skirted the periphery of the airfield, hugging the fence, battered by the renewed onslaught of rain. Nothing stood between him and the sky. Wild gusts howled. Clothes rippled like flags in the wind, lapping limbs with wet slaps. Colerne Airfield diminished into the distance. Faded, like an old photograph, a bottled lightning instant frozen in time. Sometimes he watched the planes from his bedroom window as they glided over the valley. Sometimes, when the bottles were empty and the books ran dry, he considered it. Considered doing it all over again. Doing it all for the first time.

December 20th, 1943. The party boasted the richest of festive trimmings and the spirit of Christmas had infected us all. Marshall, stripped of his jacket and tie, danced with the Crawford girls. The dog has a taste for country blondes, I fancy, to rival his appetite for dry gin. Wayland and Aster were canoodling in a corner, much as they had done for the best part of the evening, together they laughed like school children. Alone in my sobriety, I went out into the crisp night air and walked the courtyard. It was so calm and tranquil. I fished out a Woodbine and listened to the gentle stirrings of Monk's Wood. Above, pinpricks of light swarmed in great arching festoons across the sky. In the morning, I told myself, I'd follow them home.

It came, at first, as a low mournful groan, sounding into the valley like a great wounded beast. My Woodbine was cast to the ground. The sound climbed steadily in pitch, taking on a note of alarm. I was running. The gramophone scratched silent and, in an instant, the farmhouse was plunged into darkness. Now, the siren wailed. Men passed me in the hallway and piled into cars. Women followed. There was a practised resolve in their farewells. In the parlour, I fumbled my jacket from a chair and pulled it on. I was not alone. Lips, soft as velvet, stole a kiss in the dark. In my surprise, I retreated, left with the lingering sweetness of cranberries. The culprit's breath was warm against my neck. Dwarfing a dainty wrist with my hand, I led the stranger towards the window, and saw red lips and auburn curls in the moonlight. We kissed again. Outside, Marshall called.

"What's your name?" I asked, as the moment crashed around us.

"Phoebe," she said.

Walls built from clumsy stacks of stone lined the road into Thickwood. It was a small forgettable hamlet overlooking acres of sloping farmland. There was a musty post office at its heart which John visited daily for his newspaper. But not today. A rickety stile provided an escape route across an expansive cattle field. He followed a bald lane of dirt which dipped out of view into The Groves. Rain roared applause as he embarked on the last leg of his journey through the thick weave of trees, kicking wood chips, and breathing the sweet summer tang. Clearing the tree line, a row of familiar Bath Stone fangs poked out from behind a hulking barn, but before he could get there, John had to run a gauntlet of sodden sucking mud. Earth squelched, spitting geysers of dirt up the length of his sweat pants, and by the time he'd conquered the treacherous tract of road, his trainers resembled cow pats. In the interest of self-preservation, he thought to himself, he'd avoid Stephanie.

Rudloe Manor was a modest country house of golden limestone and slate. It stood tall behind locked gates of cast iron and walls riddled with creeping ivy. Flanks of smaller buildings framed the courtyard, where towering trees drooped lazily over the driveway. It had been four weeks since the funeral, five weeks since the phonecall, and still, John could not call this place home. A modest country house was still a country house. He cleared the gates with a leap and quickly rounded the east wing, opting for the stealthier side entrance. Mud clumps scattered the path with a clap of rubber soles. Once inside, he retreated to his room undetected, which was no difficult feat in a building of that size.

After a hot shower, he reappeared, dressed in a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. A hearty aroma wafted into the hall from the kitchen and from the family room came the soft tinkling of laughter. Jace Harriman and his daughter, Louise, a cherub-faced little girl with blonde wispy hair, were curled up on the sofa in a lock of limbs. Beneath her father, Louise wriggled frantically to squirm free of his merciless tickling, lost to a howling ecstasy of melodic giggles. It was a warming scene which belied the dark truth of their predicament. The children of Walt Harriman weren't safe in the wide world anymore. By virtue of their bloodline they shared a common enemy. An old friend intervened, smuggling Jace and his family to the house in secret, and Rudloe Manor became both a prison and a home. John was more of a lodger, brought to the manor by the same old friend, and in a way he identified with their plight. Both pursued by phantoms of the past. Jace was hiding. John was running.