Photographs show Joe Millson at St Mary’s and two more views of the Great Bedwyn ramp.

POST SCRIPT

Death is a surprisingly ordinary thing, part of the every day routine for some people. The rituals, the routines, are tidily observed. Society exists to take care of these things. Bodies are removed, a bit of paper or two signed and that’s it. Nobody else had been affected by the security guard’s death. He was hardly a family man. There was nobody to care. He’d arrived in the town two days ago and his unfortunate departure was hardly noticed.

How different from the case of that boy. There hadn’t been a body to take away then, but his absence, if not his departure, had certainly been noticed. The police search had gone on for months but they never found a trace of him. It was as if he’d just faded away.

His parents never got over it. They became as obsessed with him then as they had seemed uninterested in him before. Now they wanted to track down every little detail of a life they realised they knew nothing about. There was little enough to learn — about the only thing they could discover was that he’d spent nearly all his time skateboarding in the new office complex behind McDonalds. Ever since the old skatepark had closed, it seemed, he’d grown more and more withdrawn and the only satisfaction he’d gained was skating on the brick banks which had risen from its ruins. What friends he’d had, had given up skateboarding and couldn’t tell his parents much. Wouldn’t have anyway. As far as they were concerned he’d just faded away about the time they’d finally stopped bothering with skating themselves. After a while his parents moved away. Within six months they were both dead.

Zed didn’t know any of this. He still wasn’t fully aware of anything yet. It was very odd. Somehow he’d known better than to try and make it again while the police were hanging around. Funny that: until the other skaters had appeared he’d never noticed anything apart from his own skating and nobody had ever noticed him. He’d think (think? strange, that seemed new, too) about that later — for now everyone had gone, the place was quiet and he was trying to get it again.

The first time he tried he got the height but couldn’t quite get above the board enough. He bailed but caught his ankle on the end support of the hand-rail. It hurt. He felt it. He felt sick. He felt adrenalin. He felt a strange rush. He climbed back up the steps, feeling, feeling, feeling all the time. He turned, hacked towards the rail, Ollied and made a clean 50/50 the full length of it. Zed screamed in exultation as other yells echoed round the courtyard — the skaters had arrived, and they were looking at him.