Kotler, leading the way, set a pace that started out brisk and got faster as the afternoon progressed. It was tough keeping up with him. We walked in single file, stomping on in his footsteps. Caleb, using just one walking pole, I noticed, was first in line. Then came Xander, then Amelia, with me bringing up the rear. I got into a rhythm, pumped the poles to stabilise myself, and pushed hard – as I could tell we all were, Caleb particularly – to match Kotler’s stride.

  Inevitably clouds overran the crystal-clear sky that afternoon, dropping gauzy, windblown snow, nothing like the whiteout of the day before but enough to bring the horizon close. The concentration it took to walk efficiently, the sheer effort of keeping up, and the reduced visibility had a numbing effect on me. Was that the point? Was Kotler – and by extension Armfield – dragging us out into the middle of nowhere to test our mettle, as he’d said, or was the trek a ploy to distract us, keep us out of the way? As I grew more exhausted, suspicions tormented me.

  Ahead, a little distance had opened up between Caleb and Kotler. I was about to go past the others and ask if Caleb was OK when he sped up again, closing the gap. The same thing happened again a few minutes later. He was obviously struggling. I was too. Kotler forcing the pace like this felt almost malicious. I wanted to object, but I wanted us all to keep up more. He didn’t deserve the satisfaction of breaking us. Would the invisible elastic between us snap before I did though? Just as I thought I was about to find out, the guide, his stocky silhouette just visible through the snow-laden trees ahead of us, stopped abruptly.

  I drew up alongside Xander. He was breathing heavily. Amelia, whose swimming regime makes her the fittest of all of us, was bent double, gasping. And Caleb had sunk to his knees. The only satisfaction we had was the fact that Kotler was blowing hard too: in the dim late-afternoon light, his breath billowed from his nostrils in clouds of steam.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘Now, it’s time to catch dinner.’

  I’d foolishly been expecting to see the lake once we’d arrived at it, but we’d emerged through the trees into this open area and were clearly standing on the edge of the lake’s frozen, snowy surface.

  Kotler, rummaging in his pack, said, ‘Well done for keeping up. I wanted us to arrive before dark. It will be easier to show you what to do with a bit of natural light. Here – it won’t be long before you need these.’

  I waved away his offer of a head torch, pleased that I’d brought my own, and a little less angry with him for pushing the pace so hard: at least he’d had a reason to do so.

  Next, he unstrapped two halves of a vicious-looking corkscrew-like tool from the side of his rucksack, slotted the segments together and held it out. ‘This drill is called an ice auger. Modern ones are mechanised; this is much lighter, but a little harder work. Our first step is to make some holes.’

  The wind had blown the snow on the lake’s surface into drifts, so the plane of ice wasn’t even dead flat. We followed Kotler out onto the expanse. I’m not sure I’d have guessed we were walking on a lake at all if I hadn’t known. Kotler stopped and kicked a window of snow away from the ice with his snow boot. ‘There are other ways of clearing the snow,’ he said. ‘Peeing on the ice brings good luck, for example. But in present company …’

  Amelia turned to me. ‘Is this guy for real?’

  Kotler just laughed. ‘Why do we clear the snow? Because fish are attracted to lighter areas where they can see better to hunt,’ he said, setting the tip of the metre-long ice auger down in the middle of the snow window he’d cleared. ‘This job can take a little while, depending on how thick the ice is.’ Gripping the auger’s pommel with one hand and the square section of its handle with the other, he slowly ground the tip of the wide corkscrew into the ice. As the blade bit and began to bore a hole, it spat out chippings of ice. Within a couple of minutes, he’d cut a hole fifty centimetres deep, through which he was able to plunge the shaft of the auger completely. Black water flooded up out of the hole. He worked more ice loose, reversing the auger back and to the surface.

  ‘But look,’ he said. ‘There’s still slush in the hole. If we leave it, the ice will quickly close over again.’ He bent to retrieve a long-handled ladle – the sort you might use to dish up a casserole – from his pack and went on. ‘So we use this to clear as much of the slush as possible.’ He scooped out a few ladles full of gritty black ice and tossed it away. ‘And once the hole is clear, we can fish.’

  The rods he’d brought were stumpy little things. That made sense: there’s no need to cast the bait when you’re fishing straight down through the ice. Kotler showed us how to thread the silver and orange lures onto the line, and explained how the reel and brake worked. It was all pretty straightforward. We crouched near the ice hole as the guide dropped the lure through it and unspooled enough line for it to settle on the bottom.

  ‘It’s about fifteen metres deep here,’ Kotler explained. ‘Once the line goes slack, reel a little in. We want to fish near the bottom of the lake but not on it.’

  ‘What exactly are we fishing for?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘Perch, grayling, possibly pike. Burbot, particularly at dusk. Maybe even an Arctic char.’

  ‘Is there anything more to the technique?’ I asked him, since simply sitting by a hole holding a stumpy rod seemed pretty basic.

  ‘Not much,’ Kotler replied. ‘If you get no bites for a minute or two, jig the lure up and down a metre or so. That’ll give you something to do, and keep you a bit warm. But mainly ice fishing is about patience. We call it Finnish meditation. You,’ he said, pointing at Caleb, ‘you win this hole. I’ll help the others set up at intervals across the ice.’ He handed Xander the ice auger, shouldered his pack, and beckoned us on.

  I’m not sure whether there was method in where Kotler chose for us to fish, but he spread us out quite widely. Each of us drilled and cleared our own holes. I was last and furthest from the rest. He’d brought tiny collapsible stools for us to sit on. Once my mini-rod and tackle were safely deployed, there was nothing for me to do but sit and do as the guide had instructed.

  Quickly, the last of the light faded. I put on my head torch and sat over my glittery black hole in the ice, dipping and jerking my lure as darkness descended. The others were in their own pools of light. Was it really necessary for us to be so far apart? Again, my mind started playing tricks on me, cooking up conspiracies out of the cold and the dark.

  And boy, was it next-level cold. I’d brought two extra layers in my backpack, plus a balaclava to wear under my beanie and fur-rimmed hood. I had inner gloves to beef up my mittens too. In the seconds it took me to pull this stuff on and climb back into my coat the cold dug its claws deep into me, and I had to do plenty of squats plus rod-jiggles to regain the lost body heat. I was famished, I realised: we’d set off from Kotler’s place without eating any lunch. I was hungry, cold and – I admit it – a bit bored. Was this all part of the ‘test’?

  Minutes dragged by. No fish bit. My stomach rumbled. I looked at the sky. Cloud had snuffed out the stars and there was, I realised guiltily, no sign of the Northern Lights tonight. I still hadn’t told the others I’d seen them. Pushing the thought away, I focused on the pool of torchlight in front of me, and the black hole at its centre, willing something to happen, and trying not to mind when it didn’t.

  Kotler had set himself up nearest to me, though still fifty or so metres away. The beam from his head torch, out of the corner of my eye, seemed unnaturally still. Xander’s, Caleb’s and Amelia’s pools of light all moved more. Had Kotler mounted his light to something? Was he even there at all? Indeed he was; his light finally moved as he stood up to reel in a fish. Of course, he’d be the first to catch one. It stood to sod’s-law reason. I stared down into my ice hole, trying to keep the beam from my head torch as still as his had been – maybe that was the secret?

  And still I had no joy, fish-wise at least. I did notice something, however. By concentrating very hard for a long time on nothing but the hole, the shimmering blackness beneath it and the filament of my fishing line bisecting the two, the rest of the world – even, somehow, the cold and my hunger – faded away almost to nothing. The line became a point around which every other concern I might have rotated, at a vast distance. I was no longer bored, just calm, entirely in the moment, and incredibly focused.

  26.

  Caleb was the first of us to reel in a fish. The commotion he made, standing abruptly and winding in his line, startled me from my trance. Kotler had spread us out to work alone, but I decided to go and see what Caleb had caught – what was the worst the guide could do? I jogged over in my snow boots – the layer of snow on the ice made it easy enough to grip – and arrived at the same time as Amelia, who’d also decided to ignore the solo fishing advice, just in time to see Caleb yank whatever he’d snagged against the rim of his ice hole. The hook dislodged from the fish’s mouth and the fish disappeared below the ice.

  ‘I’ve read about that happening,’ Amelia said. ‘You’re supposed to let the fish tire itself before pulling it up gently, nose first.’

  ‘Useful to know,’ I said. ‘Better luck next time, eh Caleb?’

  In the torchlight I couldn’t tell whether he was smiling or grimacing.

  ‘I guess,’ he said, sounding a bit lacklustre.

  ‘You’ve done better than the rest of us,’ I said.

  ‘Technically –’ Amelia began, but stopped because Xander, who had jumped up from his stool, had clearly hooked a fish too. Rather than risk jinxing another catch, I stayed put this time. The three of us watched as Xander safely reeled in and landed whatever it was he’d caught. It didn’t look particularly big from this distance.

  ‘Perhaps they’ve decided to start biting,’ I suggested.

  ‘More like a coincidence, I reckon,’ was Amelia’s response.

  ‘Worth giving it another go, anyway.’

  She nodded her agreement. Caleb was already unspooling his line again. His movements seemed wooden, slow. Perhaps he was just being careful. I patted him on the shoulder, said, ‘Keep it up,’ and jogged back to my position to re-sink my lure. Now that I’d seen one of us succeed, it seemed all the more important to increase our collective chances of eating that evening by getting as many hooks in the water as possible.

  Xander struck again next, followed by Kotler twice, then Amelia’s whoop of joy told me that she’d also had some luck. But on the end of my line: nothing. Soon I was back in my Zen-like waiting state, and this time it seemed to go on for ever. Although I was aware of the others having some success, I was alone with my own lack of it for what felt like an aeon. Caleb caught something. Amelia caught another. More minutes passed. Any time now, surely, Kotler would call a halt, wouldn’t he? We still had that huge snowshoe hike back to his base ahead of us …

  Just as I was getting ready to give up, the rod bucked in my hand. Its stubby tip jerked down, went weightless, then jerked down again. I barely moved, just waited, a statue above my hole in the ice, as the line went taut and slack repeatedly.

  With one hand gripping the rod, I set the GoPro strapped over my hat to record: footage of ice-fishing success would surely cut well into a film on sustainability.

  Whatever I’d hooked, when it pulled away from me, felt pretty substantial. I fought my urge to reel the fish in quickly. For a good three minutes I just let it pull left and right in the deep beneath me. Then I began to worry that the line, sawing against the icy edge of the hole, might fray, so I began to reel the fish in as gradually as I could. It was still thrashing away down there, meaning it had to be properly hooked, but I didn’t want to take any chance of losing it as Caleb had done.

  Soon the fish was visible, flashing darkly through the hole. There was its silvery tail, its side, its blunt head. For an instant it angled up towards me. I struck. With a flick of the rod, I had the fish up through the hole and on the ice, flapping in vain.

  I have to admit, success – after all that waiting – felt good. It was a decent-sized fish, thirty-five to forty centimetres, with a green-brown back and dark stripes on its sides. It flapped weakly as I prised the hook from its upper jaw. A second pool of light swam over mine. I glanced up, expecting to see one of my friends, but it was Kotler looming over me.

  ‘Xander,’ he said.

  I sighed. ‘He’s over there. I’m Jack, remember.’

  ‘No, you’ve caught a zander. Or pikeperch, if you prefer. It’s a small one – they can grow much bigger – but still, decent eating. Well done.’

  This praise, even for ‘a small one’, meant a surprising amount, coming from Kotler.

  ‘And just in time,’ he went on. ‘Now everyone has tasted success we can make the return journey. Feeling strong?’

  ‘Strong enough,’ I said, though in truth I felt anything but: my legs were as weak as string and my empty stomach was twisted with hunger.

  ‘Good.’ He banged his mittens together once: the sound was as loud as a car door clumping shut. Across the ice he shouted, ‘Pack up, guys, and let’s get going!’

  27.

  Although there was no deadline by which we had to make it back to Kotler’s facility – we weren’t racing the sun as we had been on the way to the lake – the guide still set a relentless pace. He’d instructed us to stay tight to one another behind him and focus the beams of our head torches on the snowshoe prints of the person in front, so that we might literally keep in step with one another, but at the speed he took off, that was harder than it sounded.

  Caleb was suffering the worst. He was immediately in front of me this time, and I could tell he was exhausted. If you fail to pick your snowshoes up high enough, it’s easy to catch the frame of the shoe in the snow, sending you reeling. We’d not been going long before poor Caleb took his first tumble. I called out to the others to stop, and to be fair Kotler immediately did, but he only gave Caleb seconds to get back in line before he set off again.

  I had to fight my own battle to bring up the rear. My head was light with fatigue, my limbs were heavy, my stomach was hollowed out; I had absolutely nothing left in the tank. I’ve had to dig deep before. In Somalia, when we’d been trying to outrun Armfield and his men, I collapsed. But I’d been bitten by a snake while we tried to make our escape. Now I was simply trying to keep up in the snow, yet I felt similarly lightheaded to the point of delirium.

  After some time, we stopped to drink some water. Kotler shone his torch beam in each of our faces, one by one. Caleb squinted back at him, wavering on his feet. Xander can normally be relied upon to lighten the moment, but he’d turned in on himself too, his arms folded and his head bowed. He clearly wasn’t about to crack a joke for anyone. At least the look in Amelia’s eye galvanised me: she had her Channel-swimming-race face on. ‘Think you can crack me?’ her raised chin said. ‘Think again.’

  I shone my own torch at Kotler’s square jaw. Was he enjoying taking us to the limit? Though what I really wanted to do was curl up and sleep in the snow, I forced myself to say, ‘Shall we crack on, then? I’m looking forward to eating what we’ve caught.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said, and set off immediately.

  It was probably for the best. We’d have seized up if we’d rested for long. And in fact, the second leg of the return journey seemed to pass more quickly than the first. The wind had swung around behind us, so it was no longer mocking us by blowing snow in our faces, and perhaps Kotler did ease up a fraction, making it easier for us to keep to his pace.

  Eventually I spotted the orange dot of his facility’s lights ahead. As we trudged on, I could make out the lamplit windows and the brighter white external light in the yard. Beneath the latter we prised ourselves free of our snowshoes. They felt about three times as heavy as when we’d put them on.

  The cosy warmth and windless quiet of the main building were almost unbearably pleasant after spending so long outdoors. I could have slumped down on one of the sheepskin-covered chairs and slept there and then, despite my gnawing hunger, but Kotler insisted that we help him gut and prepare the fish.

  ‘Do you need all of us to do it?’ Xander asked innocently.

  ‘Well –’ Kotler began.

  ‘Because I’m thinking …’

  I know Xander well enough to detect when the warmth in his voice is fake.

  ‘… that too many cooks spoil the broth and all that.’

  Amelia interjected. ‘He’s right. Jack and I will help. Let Caleb and Xander rest.’

  Perhaps because my cousin looked properly ashen, Kotler relented. ‘Teamwork is all about the division of labour, you’re right,’ he said. He pointed at Amelia and me. ‘I’ll teach you two how to prepare the meal, and tomorrow you can pass on the knowledge to your friends.’

  ‘Great,’ Xander said mock-cheerfully. ‘I noticed a router in the briefing room. Any chance I could have the Wi-Fi code?’

  Kotler laughed. ‘There isn’t one. It’s not as if any strangers are within range to use it.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I –’

  Kotler waved him away absently.

  Xander immediately retreated. Caleb, looking dead on his feet, followed him. At the big enamel sink in the kitchen area Kotler, using a knife as long as my forearm but as thin as my finger, demonstrated how to slit open the fish we’d caught – two grayling, five perch and my zander – hook out their oily guts, cut away their tails and heads and fins, and fillet the flesh from their xylophone-like skeletons.

  No doubt about it, fish guts are pretty smelly. I took my time washing my hands with the bar of soap Kotler provided once we’d finished the gutting. What did Xander want with the Wi-Fi code just now? He was up to something: no doubt I’d find out what in time.

  Preparing the food to cook had reignited my hunger. The glistening fillets, set on a big white plate, looked much smaller than the fish they’d come from, and certainly not enough to feed all five of us. Luckily Kotler had a sack of potatoes for us to cook along with the fish. We slathered these in butter and salt and wrapped them in tin foil, then set them straight on the open fire in the living area. Once they’d been in there for a good hour, we heated a skillet on the same coals and flash-fried the fillets in more melted butter until their outsides were a crispy gold.