“What are you going to do with it?” Sean had asked. “Claim on your insurance?”
“It’s not worth it,” I’d said, shaking my head. “They’d just write it off. No, I’ll ring round some bike breakers and see what bits I can pick up secondhand. It might take me a while, but I’ll get it back on the road eventually.”
“And in the meantime?”
I knew he already had the answer to that one. He just wanted to hear me say it.
“Well, it’s a good job I’ve got the FireBlade,” I said, aiming for lightness.
Sean was well aware of the superbike I’d been given and, without us ever actually discussing the subject, I knew he wasn’t particularly happy about it. He stared at me for a long time without speaking and I felt it have the usual effect on my chin, which was rising almost of its own accord. I suppose we were just as stubborn as each other. Maybe that was the problem.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Charlie?” he demanded and there was a raw note to his voice I hadn’t heard for a long time. “I know you’re planning on trying out for this Devil’s Bridge Club, despite what’s happened. It was bad enough when you were planning to do it on the Suzuki, but on a ‘Blade . . .”
He let his voice trail off but I didn’t need him to finish the sentence.
“Clare’s my friend,” I said. “Probably my best friend. I know she’s not telling me the whole story and that hurts, but I have to do this for her.”
Sean made a rare gesture of frustration. “Friends don’t ask you to do something for them that could get you killed.”
A microsecond image flashed into my head like a strobe light. A picture of a dark cold night with the looting fires burning, of Sean wounded and vulnerable, of a man with a gun. And of me, putting myself between them without a second thought. Sean would willingly have died rather than have asked me to do it, but it had never occurred to me not to.
“That’s just it,” I said gently. “Friends don’t have to ask.”
***
My parent’s house, on the outskirts of a little village near Alderley Edge, was a gracefully proportioned Georgian pile with a stiflingly manicured walled garden at the back and impressive circular gravel drive at the front.
They’ve lived there since they were married, before the area went stratospheric and all the celebrity Manchester United footballers moved in. My mother pretends to sneer but I suspect that she’s secretly as smitten by their glamour as everyone else.
We arrived a little before eleven o’clock. Early enough that my mother’s beautiful manners didn’t oblige her to invite Sean to stay to lunch. Her barely concealed relief, when he apologised that he didn’t even have the time to come in for a cup of tea, might have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic.
Sean deposited the rucksack containing my bike gear on the old church pew in the tiled hallway and laid a hand on my arm.
“Take care of yourself, Charlie,” he murmured.
“Yeah, you too.”
“I’ll try and get back up again before the weekend.” Undoubtedly aware that my mother was hovering in the doorway at the end of the hall, he bent his head and kissed me, no more than a fleeting brush of his lips. “And remember what I said.”
“Which bit?” I asked, suddenly a little breathless and stupid from the effects of even so ephemeral a contact.
He smiled, a full-blown knock-you-off-your-feet kind of smile. One that had my heart turning somersaults and made me want to beg him either to stay, or to take me with him. Hell, or just to take me.
“All of it,” he said.
Then he walked out of the front door and climbed into the Shogun without looking back. I watched him turn out of the gateway at the end of the drive and disappear from view before I closed the door. I turned to find my mother had moved up into the hall, as though it was safe to venture closer now he’d gone. She was wearing pearls and a summer dress with an apron over the top of it, and wiping flour from her hands on a tea towel.
“You’ll stay for lunch, Charlotte, won’t you?” she said and although her voice was coolly gracious there was something a little despairing in her eyes.
In a moment of pity, I nodded. “I have to get back up to Lancaster this afternoon, though,” I said quickly, forestalling her next question.
“Of course,” she said, more brightly. “I’ll just go and check how those rhubarb pies are doing. We’ve had so much of it this year I’ve been baking for the WI market but I’m sure I can spare one for dessert.” She waited until her back was towards me and she was halfway to the kitchen door before she delivered her killer punch. “Your father will be so pleased to have caught you.”
I’d forgotten. I froze in the middle of picking up my rucksack and it bumped against my hip. “Excuse me?”
She paused then, turned to give me an anxious smile. “Oh, didn’t I say?” she said, artfully casual. “He rang earlier to let me know he’s on his way home. If the traffic isn’t too bad we should all be able to sit down together at one o’clock. Now, why don’t you go and wash your face and get changed, darling?” She gave my jeans and rumpled shirt a slightly pained glance. “I’m sure there are still some lovely dresses in your wardrobe.”
***
My father rolled up on the dot of twelve-thirty, as though he’d been waiting in some lay-by down the road in order to arrive at such a neat and precise time.
I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and crossed to my bedroom window. When I looked down, I could see the roof of his dark green Jaguar XK-8 just disappearing into the garage. After a few moments, the car door thunked shut and he walked out carrying a small overnight bag and a briefcase. The garage door slid smoothly down behind him.
He looked tired, I realised. From this angle I could see the slight drag to his shoulders. As I watched, he paused and seemed to take a deep breath before climbing the two low steps to the front door more briskly.
It was interesting, I thought, to learn that even my father had to brace himself before he could face my mother’s company.
Not to put off the inevitable, I came downstairs straight away to greet him. I reached the half landing just as he was setting his luggage down on the pew in the hall. He heard my footsteps and looked up.
“Charlotte,” he greeted me distantly and his gaze skimmed over my clothing.
I had, as my mother suggested, washed my face and changed – into my bike leather jeans, ready to beat a hasty retreat as soon as lunch was over. Rather childishly, I’d been skulking upstairs until my father arrived, knowing she wouldn’t make a big production about it in front of him.
Now, I thought I saw a fractional smile tug at the corner of his mouth, as though he knew exactly what my motives had been.
My mother appeared out of the kitchen at the end of the hallway and came forwards to welcome him. He put his hand on her arm, almost exactly the way Sean had done with me but, when he bent to kiss her, it was a sterile little peck on the cheek.