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.
“Don’t forget to sign those papers,” Jacob said. He reached for Clare’s hand, lying limply on the folded-back sheet, and gave it a squeeze. “We want to get this sorted as soon as we can.”
“Of course.” Isobel’s smile became even sicklier. “Well, now I’ve found that certificate I can get on with it,” she said, her eyes locked on their entwined fingers. “You’ll be very happy together, I’m sure.”
The way she managed to inject just the faintest whiff of doubt into such otherwise hearty tones was a masterclass, all by itself.
After Isobel had gone I peeled off my leather jacket and took the chair she’d vacated. It was unbearably hot near the window and the two oscillating electric fans the staff had set up did little more than stir the warm air about a bit.
Clare looked tired and overheated, her normally lustrous long blonde hair hanging lank around her face.
“Are you OK?” I asked. Stupid question to ask anyone lying in a hospital bed, I know, but there are degrees of OK.
“Are you OK?” She smiled faintly. “Jacob said you’d come off the RGV.”
I glanced at him sharply. Had he avoided telling her about the van that had played a considerable part because it was too close to the bone?
He gave me the slightest nod, little more than a slow blink. Yes.
“I’m fine,” I said cheerfully, reaching up to push my hair out of my eyes. “The bike’s looking a bit worse for wear but it’s a good excuse to get that wacky paint job I’ve always wanted, I suppose.”
She frowned, her face anxious. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve got a hell of a bruise on your arm.”
I followed her gaze and discovered a mottled deep aubergine-coloured blotch across the outside of my left forearm, fading to yellow at the edges like my skin was sucking the colours out of it one at a time. The bruise ran in a narrow diagonal line across my arm and it hadn’t come from any accidental source. I dropped my arm quickly.
“That was Isobel’s little playmate, yesterday afternoon,” I said. “I don’t suppose she happened to mention that part of it, did she?”
Jacob frowned. “She said she was looking for a copy of our marriage certificate,” he said. “I’ve been nagging her to get the paperwork for the divorce sorted at her end for the last couple of months. She’d told me it was all in hand and reckons she was too embarrassed to admit that she had lost her copy.”
“So why was she ransacking the study when I arrived?”
He gave a half-smile. “Depends on your definition of ransacking,” he said. “I remember, if she was looking for something in a kitchen drawer she’d be likely to pull the whole drawer out of the dresser and tip it upside down onto the floor. Isobel’s just like that.”
“So if I’m exaggerating, why did she bring that tame psycho with her and set him onto me like a bloody attack dog?”