Now I Know by Aidan Chambers

said, enjoying this sign of weakness, ‘you’ve enough experience to know?’
    â€˜No one can ever have enough experience to know. I mean, to know the answer to a question like that. Though some people pretend to.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜You’re teasing.’
    â€˜No, I’m not.’
    â€˜But it’s obvious.’
    Nik shrugged. ‘Then tell me.’
    â€˜Some things you know from your own experience, yes? Some you know because other people you trust tell you about them from their experience, yes?’
    â€˜Okay so far.’
    â€˜But no matter how much you set out to experience, you can’t ever experience everything. Not in one lifetime.’
    Nik thought a moment before saying, ‘Agreed.’
    â€˜And no matter how much you trust other people, you can’t know for certain they’re telling the truth about the things you can’t experience for yourself.’
    â€˜True.’
    â€˜But you believe them because you trust them. So some things you only know because of belief. Because of faith. Yes?’
    Nik pretended to puke at having fallen into Julie’s trap. ‘Okay, yes, put like that.’
    Julie pulled a face at his vulgarity. ‘How else can you put it?’
    Their path was taking them close by the hang-glider. It was fitted together now, a large, neat, kite-like toy, hard to imagine carrying anyone safely into the air. A challenge to courage. The pilot, however, was preparing to take off. Nik and Julie stopped to watch as he harnessed himself to the frame, helped by his friend, gathered himself, ran, and launched into the air.
    â€˜Would you like to do that?’ Julie asked.
    â€˜Not a lot,’ Nik said, shading his eyes from the glare of the sky with a hand the better to see the pilot’s progress. ‘Would you?’
    â€˜Yes. Must be fun. Think he’ll make it?’
    â€˜Probably. There’s a good breeze now, and he looks as if he knows what he’s doing.’
    â€˜But you don’t know he will.’
    â€˜â€™Course not. Do you?’
    â€˜No. But I believe he will. So do you.’
    Nik grinned, eyes still on the glider fluttering a few metres above the scarp. ‘Does it matter whether I do or not? It’s his funeral.’
    Julie gave him a doubting glance. ‘You say that, but you don’t really mean it.’
    â€˜I don’t?’
    â€˜You’re not that callous. Least, I hope you aren’t, or I’ve misread you. You’re just avoiding the argument.’
    Nik grinned at her. ‘Sure? How do you know?’
    Julie shrugged. ‘What would you do if you knew he couldn’t manage, and would fall and kill himself?’
    â€˜But I don’t know that.’
    â€˜But if you did? Really knew .’
    â€˜All right, what you want me to say is that I’d try and stop him.’
    â€˜Yes. But would you ?’
    They were eye to eye now.
    â€˜You’re being serious,’ Nik said.
    â€˜I’m being serious.’
    â€˜Okay, yes, I’d try and stop him.’
    The glider, sails smacking, wobbled, dipped, slewed, steadied, hung for a moment between up and down, and at last soared, slipping and pawing, out and up and away over the valley, rising into the absorbing sky.
    â€˜You believed he could,’ Julie said, sitting on a bench, ‘or you wouldn’t have stood by watching him try.’
    INTERCUT :   Long shot of a lake in northern Sweden. Late summer. Evening. The sun has just set. The lake, shaped like a Y, is surrounded by undulating low hills, some covered in fir and birch, a few with fields of grass and ripe corn. The water is mirror flat, reflecting in its darkness a cloud-cushioned sky.
    A small rowing boat sits in the middle of the lake, at the elbow of the Y. A figure in the boat rests on oars, very still. The only movement comes from a dabble of ducks feeding and larking along the edge of the water nearest our