Free Frozen by Richard Burke Page B

coils of rope looping around her. I tried hard not to look at her legs and knickers.
    “Harry,” she said, after a pause. Her face was reddening and bulging, clotting her voice.
    “Yes, Verity?”
    “Shut up.” So I did. I watched.
    Eventually, the swing was hung, and a small spar knotted into it for a seat. I stood on the platform holding it, feeling stupid. “Go on,” she urged. She looked enchanted, her eyes dreamy and unblinking, her stillness the only sign of her excitement. I leaped upwards and plunged from the treehouse. “Yeeee-hah!” A sudden perilous drop—the breath rushed out of me—and I arced upwards, and then out towards the shimmering curtain of leaves. I had to stretch almost to my limit to grab the platform's edge as I swung back. I pulled myself on board.
    “That was brilliant! You can almost touch the leaves! I bet you could if you jumped high enough first.”
    Verity's eyes glittered darkly. “If you hold it lower down and run along the edge before you swing, you'll reach that branch.” She pointed to one of the large horizontal limbs, which jutted outwards further round the tree, beyond the end of the treehouse. She made no move to take the rope.
    The angles looked all wrong to me, but I tried it. I swung out and round, and my fingertips brushed bark before my momentum carried me past and smashed me into the main trunk. I rebounded outwards, spinning and a little dazed. On my second return, she caught my arm, and hoisted me back to safety.
    “Got—got to—run a little faster,” I gasped, my chest in agony.
    “Second time lucky!” She giggled and clapped her hands. “Gimme!” She flew outwards, screaming happily, not caring about the knocks.
    For Verity, the swing was only the start. She announced that a treehouse was not a treehouse without a roof, so we built one over part of the platform. It was flat, and doubled as a second level; by using it as another starting point, the swing had even more permutations. Next we knocked up a ramshackle shelf. We kept biscuits and pilfered apples, and bottles of Coke, which were always warm and flat by the time we were finishing them.
    I secretly relished the implied intimacy of my lips touching the bottle where hers had been. It sealed our companionship, acknowledged our oneness—I had a lot of romantic notions when I was thirteen. We shared everything: food, drinks, games, trivial flirtatious secrets. Some days she would be distant and uneasy, though, and even the most spectacular stunts on the rope would not bring her back. I learned to give her time.
    We improvised a rope ladder, which we hid on the platform and pulled down with a stick when we needed it. We kept the stick hidden in long grass against the fence just where we slipped through into the woods. From the ground, despite all our modifications, the treehouse was still all but undetectable. Of course, it probably stood out like a sore thumb in winter with no leaves to shield it, but I never gave that a thought. The gamekeeper never found us—or if he did, he left us alone.
    Someone found us, though.
    And it changed everything.
    *
    We didn't go to Wytham Woods every day. Occasionally we'd get out the sling and play target practice instead, or cycle to Port Meadow and swim in the Isis, or rummage out our roller-skates and sweep down the hill into Wolvercote at lethal speed in the middle of the road. We broke into the grounds of the local private school, St. Edward's, and swam in its huge outdoor pool. We spent lazy days on the swing-bridges across the canal, and exploring the old cement works. It was summer; there were endless days, endless ways to spend them.
    But one morning when we arrived at the treehouse, the rope ladder was hanging down. Someone had been there in the two days since we'd been. They'd even taken our biscuits. I thought Verity was going to cry. Her hands waved about, apparently uncontrolled. She began to stammer. She looked around constantly, her gaze flitting