A throaty growl interrupted his thoughts as Sam pulled up in his Defender and climbed out.

‘Ethan. Johnny,’ he said, striding over to them. ‘Ready?’

‘I sure am,’ said Johnny, standing up. ‘Ethan’s still in shock, though, aren’t you, mate?’

Ethan looked up at Sam and slowly got to his feet. ‘How am I supposed to pay for this?’ he asked. ‘It’s OK you helping me out by teaching and filming and stuff, but it’s still going to cost, isn’t it? And I just don’t have the cash. I really don’t. I mean, fifteen hundred quid… that’s-’

‘A lot of money, I know,’ said Sam, cutting Ethan off. ‘But hasn’t Johnny told you? It’s all sorted.’

Ethan nodded. ‘Yeah, he said, but-’

‘Then here’s a little tip: shut up and accept it, right? I have ways of getting extra funding when I need it. That’s all you need to know.’

‘But I’ll still have to pay it back,’ said Ethan.

‘No,’ said Sam, ‘you won’t. That’s what “sorted” means. I’ve also arranged cover for you this week so you don’t have to worry about work. All you need to think about now is keeping your eyes and ears open, listening, learning and making sure you don’t die. Got it?’

Ethan stood there for a moment, trying to take it all in. The tandem – that had been pretty crazy. But now this! How on earth had Sam sorted out the costs? And why? It didn’t make sense, but Ethan didn’t want to ask any more questions in case Sam got annoyed and changed his mind. It started to sink in. He was going to learn to skydive… bloody hell!

Adrenaline raced through him. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said, and as he looked up at Sam, he saw a flicker of a smile cross his face.

‘I’m always serious,’ said Sam. ‘So sort your shit out and I’ll see you and Johnny in the hangar in ten.’

He went over to the café door, unlocked it and disappeared inside.

Ethan turned to Johnny. ‘I’m actually going to be learning to skydive? For real?’

Johnny nodded, and came to put his arm across Ethan’s shoulders. ‘Not just skydive,’ he said, ‘but skydive with the best.’

‘Sam?’

‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘Me.’

‘The AFF course,’ Sam began, ‘takes you from beginner to category eight qualified skydiver in eight jumps.’

Ethan was sitting in the hangar, Johnny next to him. He was fully rigged up and hanging on Sam’s every word. Outside, the day was clear; sunshine was streaming in through the windows. ‘Eight jumps?’ he said, thinking it hardly sounded enough.

Sam nodded. ‘Today we’re doing ground training,’ he went on. ‘You’ll do your first jump tomorrow.’

Ethan immediately felt disappointed. He was impatient, wanted to jump now, get back into the air, feel the sky rushing past him, experience again that strange moment when the world below just seems to sit there, perfectly still, not getting any closer, your brain unable to compute that you’re at terminal velocity, falling at around 120 mph.

Johnny went and stood next to Sam. Ethan thought how different they were – Sam with his startlingly short hair, hard face and unflinching stance; Johnny looking like an advert for why extreme sports make women want to sleep with you.

‘Sam’s going to be leading on this,’ Johnny said. ‘I’m helping out. When you do your jumps, you’ll leave the plane with both of us. We’ll help you get a feel for the air, sort your positioning out, that kind of thing. And I’ll be filming it all too. So at least you’ll look good.’

‘It’ll give us something to analyse on the ground,’ said Sam, ignoring Johnny’s comment. ‘Just another way of being extra thorough. The quicker you get the details right, the better you’ll be when you’re up there.’

‘It’ll also give us something to laugh at,’ added Johnny.

Ethan noticed a smile start to flicker across Sam’s face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He was beginning to understand the man a little more now, and since the jump he felt he could trust him absolutely.

‘As Sam said,’ said Johnny, ‘today’s ground training.’ He went over to the hangar wall and pulled out what looked to Ethan like a tea trolley.

‘What the hell’s that?’

‘The perfect way to make you look a total knob,’ said Johnny. ‘We’ll be using it to show you the basic moves you’ll need. You lie on top of it – that way you can practise the correct positions and movements in freefall.’

‘Are you having a laugh?’ Ethan looked doubtfully at the trolley.

Johnny shook his head and Ethan saw a rare seriousness on his face. ‘If you can’t do it down here, and do it well, then there’s no way we’re going to throw you out of a plane,’ he said. ‘It’s human error, not equipment failure that kills. Skydiving is only as dangerous as you make it. Get the basics right, and you can do this stuff without even thinking about it. It becomes instinctive. You’ll be fine.’

Ethan remembered Luke saying something similar about human error versus equipment failure. He listened even more intently to everything Sam and Johnny were saying.

Sam looked at him, his eyes hard. ‘Questions?’

Ethan shook his head. ‘Not yet anyway.’

‘Good,’ said Sam. ‘You’ve learned your first lesson: shut the hell up. It’s the only way you’ll learn. I’ll tell you when you can ask questions. Until then, just listen to us and do what we say. Understand?’

‘Totally,’ said Ethan, and meant it.

Johnny bent down and picked up a skydiving rig. ‘By the end of today you’ll know what this is, inside and out. You’ll know how to read an altimeter. You’ll know how to exit an aircraft and how to do a freefall – the correct body position, hand signals, canopy control – everything.’

Ethan nodded. Sam knew his stuff, that was obvious, but so did Johnny. He was a flash git – everyone knew it – but he was also an astounding skydiver. And Ethan could see that Sam had a lot of time for Johnny, despite the fact that they were different in almost every way. Johnny lived and breathed skydiving. What he didn’t know, you didn’t need to know. Ethan wondered if he’d ever be like that; hoped he would.

Johnny interrupted his thoughts. ‘Tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, you’ll be jumping from twelve thousand feet. Forecast is good – we shouldn’t have any problems. For each of your AFF jumps, we’ll be in constant radio contact, so we can guide you down, help you correct what you’re doing. Jump eight, your last jump, will be your first solo. You’ll be entirely on your own. Complete that, and you’re qualified. However…’ He paused and looked at Sam.

‘What?’ said Ethan.

‘Qualifying to jump solo doesn’t mean you can then just get into any plane and start throwing yourself out whenever you want,’ said Sam. ‘After AFF you have to do a further ten consolidation jumps before you’re classed as capable, experienced and safe. With each of those jumps, one of us will jump with you.’

Ethan saw a smirk slide across Johnny’s face. ‘And it’ll take a miracle for you ever to make it look as good as I do.’

Sam didn’t respond, but Ethan laughed.

It all felt so unreal. He couldn’t believe he was sitting there, listening to Johnny and Sam, learning to skydive. And somehow he’d got all this training for free. Somehow, Sam and Johnny had sorted something out. He had no idea how or why. But he knew Sam well enough to realize that any more questions about it would not go down well.

What followed was a day so intense, Ethan felt like his brain would burn up. Sam and Johnny pushed him hard. Lying on the trolley, he practised the freefall body position again and again. Sam didn’t mince his words. If Ethan got something wrong, he knew all about it. Sam wouldn’t accept anything less than perfection. And that perfection had to become instinctive.

What really intrigued Ethan, though, was that in the midst of the info-dump he was undergoing, Johnny and Sam seemed really interested in who he was. When they weren’t telling him stuff or demonstrating something, they were asking questions – not just to make sure he was remembering what they were teaching him, but about his background, how he’d come to be there at FreeFall with them, learning to skydive.