I frowned, remembering the conversation I’d had with Jamie last night. “But he’s
“It’s not that,” Clare said, her face miserable. “It’s the people he’s going with. They’re, well, they’re like Slick. They ride like a bunch of total idiots and they’re going to get him killed. Jamie hasn’t had his licence for that long. He’s on a bike half their size and he won’t admit he can’t really keep up.” She gave me a wan smile. “You know what these fellers are like.”
I did. Clare was ferociously quick. She’d left more than one bike wreck behind her as a testament to the foolish assumption of less experienced – and usually male – riders that any corner she could take, they could take faster.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I said. I nodded to the mechanical construction that was holding her bones together. “At the moment, he might just listen to you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve always been something of the wicked stepmother to Jamie,” she said with candour. She was folding the edge of the starched sheet over and over, her eyes fixed on her fingers. The knuckles of her right hand were bruised solid purple like she’d been in a fight. “I mean, Jacob and Isobel’s marriage was history long before I came on the scene but when I did I suppose Jamie knew they weren’t ever going to get back together again. He’s always resented me a little for that, I think.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
She stilled a moment, like she hadn’t thought it through that far, then shrugged, looking close to tears again. “I don’t know,” she said, back to restless. “I suppose I was hoping that, if you can’t stop him going with them, you could, maybe, even go with him?”
It was said hesitantly enough to turn it into a question, with a little wince at the end as though she was expecting me to shout her down.
I didn’t shout. I sat still for probably five full seconds wondering how to ask when my friend had developed this massive maternal instinct for someone else’s child. And why.
Clare took my silence for refusal. “Please, Charlie,” she said, reaching to grab my hand again. “Look, you’re a bodyguard now, aren’t you? So – I’ll hire you! Name your price.”
She said the words with a big smile but there was panic in her voice and cowering behind her eyes. Across the other side of the ward the nurse’s head snapped up like she could sniff the patient distress in the air. She started to move purposefully in our direction.
“Charlie, please!” Clare said quickly, sounding desperate now. The panic had climbed out of the background and was in full flight across her face. Her fingers gripped tight. They were unnaturally cold.
“I want you out, now!” the nurse snapped with thunderous restraint. “I will not have you upsetting my patients.”
I stood up, ignoring her, and summoned up my best reassuring smile for Clare.
“It’s OK,” I told her. “I’ll look after him.”
It wasn’t until I was heading for the ward doorway that I wondered how on earth I was going to make good on that promise.
Sean was waiting for me, leaning against the wall in the corridor. Of Jamie there was no sign.
“She OK?” Sean asked, falling into step beside me.
“Mm,” I said, still distracted. “She’s just hired me to act as Jamie’s bodyguard.”
Sean didn’t scoff, as anyone else might have done. A dent of concentration appeared between his eyebrows. “What’s the threat?”
I smiled. “Himself, I think.”
He stopped. “But you said no,” he said and it wasn’t a question.
I stopped, too. “I said yes,” I said, surprised. “You saw her back there, Sean. How could I say no?”
“Because how can you protect him when you’ve no idea what the threat is and he’d probably run a mile rather than agree to submit to being under
“Thanks very much,” I said tartly.
He made a brief frustrated gesture. “You know what I mean,” he said. “It’s like going on a lads’ night out and taking your mum with you.”
I put my fists on my hips and tried to keep my face under control. “You are
His frustration flashed over into humour. His face relaxed a little and he smiled ruefully. “Sorry,” he said. He raised his hands in surrender. “OK, let’s go put it to him that you’re going to be his bodyguard and see what happens.”
“After all,” I said, wry, as we started moving for the exit again, “it won’t be the first time I’ve had to babysit an arsy kid, now will it?”
***
When we got outside, though, breaking the news to Jamie about my new role in his life suddenly became a side issue.
William and Paxo were still there. In fact, William was still sitting on his Kawasaki not looking like he’d moved at all apart from removing his helmet. The padding had left two matching imprints in the flesh of his cheeks. The helmet was resting on the tank and he had his arms folded across the dome of it.
Paxo was still standing by his Ducati like a terrier – stiff and bristling and looking ready to bite someone at any moment. Jamie was next to William, as though for protection, but this time he wasn’t the one who had Paxo’s baleful attention.
