by Zoe Sharp
I calculated the time until I was due to hit the road, and the fact that the mighty lunch my mother would undoubtedly serve would sop up the worst of the alcohol.
“I’d rather have a whisky,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me, “if you still have any of that rather good single malt?”
He raised an eyebrow but poured a finger of rich golden liquid into a pair of crystal tumblers without comment. As he handed one across he clinked his with mine before perching on the edge of the desk beside me.
“So,” I said, inhaling the smoky earth tones in my glass, “what have I done now?”
“Why should you think you’ve done anything?” he asked, his voice deceptively mild.
“Oh, habit,” I said, not to be deflected. “Why else the cosy chat?”
He took a sip of his whisky, savoured the taste and sidestepped the question. “Your mother said you’ve come to collect your other motorbike – the new one,” he said then. “Can I ask why?”
I shrugged. “The Suzuki got trashed last night,” I said shortly. “I need transport.”
If I’d been hoping to shock him into a reaction, I was to be disappointed. Instead, his eyes tracked over my leathers and I realised, belatedly, that they still bore the scuffs and scars of my Transit encounter.
“I would ask if you are all right, but clearly you are,” he said. “This was in addition to you banging your knee yesterday, I assume?” he added dryly. “You were never so clumsy as a child, Charlotte.”
“Sometimes,” I said with a smile. “But back then it was usually ponies I was falling off.”
“Hmm. Strange that you should suddenly become so accident prone just as Sean Meyer makes a reappearance, don’t you think?”
Ah, so that’s what this was all about. I sat up straighter in my chair, the smile fading.
“No,” I said baldly. “Sean came because I called him after Clare’s accident, because I asked him to. Don’t go blaming him for any of this.”
“Any of what?”
Damn. I glared at him, as though he’d set out to deliberately trick me. Silence was the best card I’d got and I played it with a flourish, taking another mouthful of whisky.
He set his own glass down carefully on the leather blotter, folding his hands together in front of him. “I understand you’ve stopped seeing Dr Yates.”
“Oh, and what happened to patient confidentiality?” I threw back at him. “Or doesn’t that apply when it’s one of your golfing cronies?”
His moment of stillness signified his irritation. “That was unworthy of you, Charlotte,” he said. “Dr Yates agreed to see you as a personal favour to me and he would no more discuss one of his patients with a third party than would I. But, since I’ve been footing the bill for his services, he thought I ought to be aware that your last session was six weeks ago and you have failed to make any further appointments. Would you care to tell me why?”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, flashed with genuine contrition for my lack of gratitude. “Maybe I’m just not the type who responds well to psychotherapy. I didn’t feel it was doing me much good.”
“Perhaps that is precisely why you should have continued.”
“Perhaps I will,” I said, noncommittal. “But if you were hoping he’d talk me out of working in close protection – or working with Sean – you’ll be sadly disappointed.”
He regarded me for a moment longer, then sighed and got to his feet. He went over to the tall sash window and seemed lost in contemplation of the garden. “This wasn’t quite the future we envisaged for you, you know,” he said, without turning round.
“It wasn’t quite the future I had mapped out myself,” I agreed. “But I’m here now and it would appear to be something I’m quite good at. It’s not everyone who finds their niche.”
My flippancy was a mistake. He turned and the expression on his face held surprising bitterness. “Good at?” he repeated, his voice slipping uncharacteristically into harshness. “At what? Killing people?”
My hands gave a quick convulsive clench. I set the glass down before I was tempted to throw it at him.
“No – at keeping them alive,” I said with quiet vehemence. “By whatever means necessary.”
He moved to the other side of the desk, leaning forwards and resting his fists on the polished surface, staring at my face. “Necessary in whose opinion? Yours? Meyer’s?”
“Leave Sean out of this.”
He made a gesture of impatience with one hand. “How can I, when you persist in connecting yourself to the man? He’s dangerous and he’s leading you down a very dark path. What happens when your judgement fails you and you take a life when it isn’t necessary, hmm? What happens then?”
Into the silence that followed his outburst, there came a quiet tapping at the door and my mother stuck her head into the room.
“I’m sorry to disturb your discussion,” she said, with enough emphasis on the last word to make me wonder how long she’d been eavesdropping, “but lunch is ready.”
“Thank you, we’ll be through directly.” My father nodded briefly in dismissal. He waited until she’d gone out and closed the door behind her before he launched his final warning.
“If you stay involved with Sean Meyer you will end up killing again,” he said, calm now but certain as stone. “And next time, Charlotte, you might not get away with it.”
***
Lunch was a subdued affair. My mother chattered brightly into the vacuum, doing her best to play the perfect hostess even under the most difficult circumstances. By the time we reached the rhubarb pie, however, even she had lapsed into uncomfortable silence.
As soon as was decently possible afterwards, I gathered my kit together in the hallway and prepared to leave. Surprisingly, perhaps, both my parents came out onto the driveway as I unhooked the trickle-charger from the FireBlade’s battery. I wheeled the bike out of the garage and fired it up to let the engine warm through.
“Take care of yourself, Charlotte,” my father said gravely as I zipped up my jacket. “I would rather not meet you in a professional capacity, if it can be avoided.”
I nodded briefly and swung my leg over the ‘Blade, but hesitated before I slid my helmet into place.
Ah well, I thought. In for a penny . . .
“By the way, who’s Mr Chandry?” I asked.
“He’s the consultant gynaecologist at Lancaster, I believe,” my father said and I saw his eyes flicker over my mother’s face, as though concerned about embarrassing her. “Why do you ask?”
“When we went to see Clare yesterday he was with her and she was in floods of tears,” I explained.
“Clare has been through a good deal of physical and emotional trauma,” he said sharply. “Under those circumstances it’s hardly surprising that she will be subject to emotional outbursts. It’s a normal reaction.”
I shrugged, diffident. “I just wondered what he might have told her that would upset her so much.”
My father sighed. “Your friend suffered severe damage to her pelvic area,” he said, spelling it out. “Besides anything else, there’s the possibility it may prevent her from having children in the future. She’s a young woman. Naturally she would find that information very distressing, don’t you think?”
***
Thrashing back up the motorway, dicing with the thickening traffic over the Thelwall Viaduct, I was concentrating too much on getting used to the bike again to ponder much over the discussion I’d had with my father in his study. Once I got onto the stretch north of Preston, however, things quietened down enough for it all to creep back into my mind, unwelcome as a thief.
I tried to tell myself that he was overstating Sean’s effect on me and the dangers he represented, but my father had never been much prone to exaggeration. Besides, after the last few days I couldn’t refute his allegations with a clear conscience.
That seemed almost as bad as agreeing with him completely.
It wasn’t Sean’s instin
ct to kill that troubled me, even though in the past I’d seen him give it free rein with results that had shocked me to the centre.
It was the fact that, given time, I knew I could be just like him. And, more than that, part of me wanted to be.
Maybe that was why I’d stopped going to see my father’s tame psychotherapist. Just in case he managed to dig deep enough to uncover that shameful little secret.
Ahead of me a car abruptly pulled across into my path in the right-hand lane, oblivious despite the fact that you need a welder’s mask to look at the FireBlade’s black and yellow paintwork, and my headlight was on. I cursed under my breath as I dived on the brakes and hit the main beam switch.
When the car had drifted out of my way I drew level, with just enough time to glance sideways at the driver as I did so. A woman, I’m sorry to say, still too busy talking to her passenger to have noticed me. There was a young kid in the back who was paying more attention, though. As I came past his nose was pressed against the glass, his mouth open as he stared out at the bike. I gave him a tiny wave and snapped the power on hard, just for badness.
The FireBlade catapulted viciously forwards like a jet fighter leaving a carrier deck. I held on tight, crouching behind the screen to cut down the buffeting from the wind, and grinned fiercely under my visor. The Suzuki was a toy compared to this, I thought, with gross but triumphant disloyalty. This was the real thing.
I flicked my eyes down at the speedo and found I’d romped up to a hundred and thirty. Vehicles in the centre lane disappeared behind me like they were going backwards. Sooner or later one of them was going to step out in front of me again. Either that or I was going to get nicked.
I rolled the throttle off until I was back down somewhere around the legal limit and sat up, still grinning. Probably made that kid’s day. One thought sparked another and my smile withered.
Clare had never expressed any particular desire to have children, but maybe she always thought there’d be plenty of time for that later. Maybe being told she might not be able to have them at all had proved something of an epiphany for her.
Then I thought of Jacob, who’d done the family thing and moved on. Did he really want to start again with sleepless nights and nappies and baby buggies and all the rest of that stuff? Besides, by the time the kid was old enough to want to go play football in the park with Daddy, Jacob would be collecting his pension. That wasn’t going to be fair on anybody.
Think of it as trading him in for a younger model . . .
I shook my head to try and get Tess’s sly words out of there but they were stuck fast. And once I’d thought about them, I couldn’t seem to shut them out.
Because, there was always the possibility that it wasn’t Jacob Clare was contemplating having children with, but someone who was much closer to her own age and in a much better position to start a family. Someone who was so similar to Jacob it was like he’d stepped into a time machine and gone back thirty years.
His son.
Fourteen
By the time I got back to Lancaster I’d blown the cobwebs out of my head, if not the doubts, and more or less relearned the rules of the FireBlade.
By comparison, the Suzuki was smaller and more nimble on its feet on the twisties. It had once represented the outer boundaries of my abilities, but now it seemed a less challenging and ultimately a less rewarding ride.
Now, I’d climbed aboard something with outrageous speed and power, that just begged me to lean that little bit further, push that little bit harder. Something that coaxed and beguiled and seduced me to take another risk. And would kill me in a heartbeat if I let it get away from me.
I got off the motorway just after Forton services, intending to drop into the south side of Lancaster. Last night’s downpour had washed all the diesel off the long curving slip road and the roundabout at the end of it, and I took full advantage of the fact.
I stooged along the A6 through Galgate village, the FireBlade shivering with compressed violence as I kept it down to thirty. It was hard to get it out of my mind that only a few minutes earlier I’d been going a hundred miles an hour faster than this.
I rode with my right fore- and index fingers hooked lightly over the front brake lever, just in case of any stupid moves from other traffic. And I suppose that a part of my mind was looking for any sign of a certain Transit van with a broken rear window. Or one that had been very recently repaired.
To keep the bike humming along all it took was the slightest pressure of my right hand on the throttle. It seemed that I barely had to increase the input to overtake a slow-moving caravan. The ‘Blade just zipped past it, contemptuous.
When the lights opposite the sprawling urban mass of the university went red against me, I automatically filtered down the white line until I had my nose stuck out between the first two cars in the queue.
The driver to my left shot me a disdainful glance. I glared back. You lookin’ at me? He ducked his head away quickly, suddenly intent on retuning his radio.
In a detached way I recognised that the FireBlade had altered not just my riding style but my whole personality, the way beautiful clothes can make you walk sexier. It had nothing to do with the mechanics. It was a state of mind.
Like now. I wasn’t prepared to wait dutifully in a line of traffic any more, I wanted – no, I deserved – to be out there in front. Was I showing my assertiveness, I wondered, or just being plain arrogant?
Either way, was it going to be enough to enable me to take on the Devil’s Bridge Club at their own game?
***
The RLI was home to its usual swirling population of the worried and the exhausted and the sick. And then there were the patients.
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come to see Clare as soon as I’d hit town. According to Jamie, the auditions for the Devil’s Bridge Club weren’t until tomorrow evening, but I suppose I just wanted to find out if she had changed her mind. Or was prepared to tell me what was really on it.
When I walked onto the ward the curtain between Clare’s bed and the next was drawn halfway along to provide some privacy but I could just see Jacob sitting on the far side, near the window. My stride faltered a little. He already knew Clare had asked me to look out for Jamie but I wasn’t sure how much else I could say without arousing his suspicions.
Jacob and Clare were both my friends and I hated the feeling that I was being sneaky with him. I’d already decided that if he asked me a direct question, I wasn’t prepared to lie. But, at the same time, there was no point in prompting him to ask. And anyway, if he’d been here all day, how much had Clare told him?
It wasn’t until I reached the foot of the bed and they looked up that I realised Clare had a second visitor who’d been hidden by the curtain. Not someone I would have expected to be sitting at the bedside of the girl who was living with her husband.
Isobel.
“Charlie!” Clare said, before I had time to do much more than stare. She gave me a smile that was strained and relieved at the same time, as though my arrival had put paid to a difficult conversation.
Jacob nodded to me, cordial, his anger of the morning seemingly forgotten or at least temporarily put aside.
“Hi,” I said.
“You and Isobel have met, I believe,” Jacob said without inflection.
Isobel shifted in her seat, juggling the handbag on her lap as though preparing to offer me a hand to shake. It seemed a ludicrous gesture given the circumstances of our previous encounter. I was carrying my helmet in one hand and I forestalled her by pointedly jamming the other into the pocket of my leathers.
“Yes,” I said, stony. And, with more of a challenge: “Eamonn not with you today?”
Isobel hesitated a moment, something scuttering across her face too fast for me to latch on to, then she settled back with a carefully pained expression.
“No. Look, I wanted to apologise about that, Charlie,” she said quickly, sounding for all the world sincere. “Eamonn can be so over-protective
and sometimes he gets a bit carried away.” Her voice might be placatory but there was something calculating in her eyes. “I suppose he’s very much like that young man of yours, in that respect.”
I ignored the jibe, if that’s what it was. Hell, Isobel might have meant it as a compliment.
Jacob looked round. “Where is Sean, by the way?”
“Away,” I said shortly.
Isobel looked smug at this news, as though she’d won a victory. She got to her feet and smiled, somewhat cloyingly I thought, at Clare.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, bracing, as though Clare was just about to nip out and do a little shopping.