He looked up at me then. Perhaps it was because he was squinting into the sun that made him look so fearful. “It’s Jacob and Clare,” he said. “They’ve had an accident. A bad one.”
“Bad?” I straightened. “What do you mean ‘bad’?”
Sam screwed up his face, as though I might decide at any moment to shoot the messenger. “Jacob didn’t make it,” he said at last, heavily. “They’ve taken Clare to Lancaster but apparently she wasn’t looking good.”
“Wait there,” I said.
I ducked back inside, pulling the window shut after me and headed for the stairs, grabbing stuff as I went. My full leathers were hanging on the peg near the back door, but I ignored them. Suddenly I couldn’t hear over the thunder of blood in my ears.
The lean-to off what used to be the cottage kitchen had a doorway just wide enough to squeeze a bike through, so it had become my integral garage. I wheeled my elderly Suzuki RGV 250 straight out into the small rear yard and kicked it into life, letting the two-stroke engine tick over just long enough for me to struggle into my old jacket, helmet and gloves, and slam the Yale behind me.
I fumbled with the awkward latch on the back gate and my temper fizzed briefly, making me lash out at it with my fist. The pain the stupid action caused brought back a measure of sanity. I took a deep breath and tried to force calm on my rampaging heartrate. A morning’s hard physical labour hadn’t made the palms of my hands sweat. Sam had managed to bring that on with a couple of sentences.
He was waiting as instructed as I wheeled the Suzuki out alongside him. He’d put his helmet back on and now he regarded me with some anxiety through his open visor.
“Let’s go,” I said tightly. “Keep up or I’ll leave you behind.”
He managed a half smile, as though I was joking. The Commando’s engine was three times the size of my little RGV, but on the kind of twisty country roads we had to cover there would be little to choose between them. Besides, I was in a hell of a hurry.
***
I don’t remember much about the ride to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Perhaps the only way I could push the bike anywhere near fast enough was simply not to think about what I was doing.
Jacob Nash and Clare Elliot. I’d known them more than five years but never separately, couldn’t think of them any other way than together. Two halves of a whole.
I’d been so caught up with the renovations to the cottage that the last time I’d seen the pair of them was nearly a month ago. They’d been the same as ever, teasing, happy, vibrantly alive. Thinking of either of them dead sent me reeling into panic and denial.
Not that I was any stranger to death. I’d seen it, touched it and smelled it, more times than was good for me to remember. I’d even felt it come for me, for those I loved, and then swing away almost on a whim.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t truly believe the news about Jacob. Why I was making this near-suicidal dash to the hospital. Until I knew for certain that it was hopeless and he was truly gone, I would try to bind him to this life by sheer effort of will.
My mind kept running over and over what might have happened, but Sam had only arrived after the event, so he hadn’t been a direct witness. Clare had been asking for me, he’d been told, and he was the one who’d volunteered to try and track me down from scrappy bits of information and hearsay. Just about anything, by his way of thinking, was better than hanging around at the hospital.
The very fact that at one point after the crash Clare had obviously been conscious and lucid filled me with a small measure of hope but I shied away from the possible nature of her injuries.
Besides, what was she going to do without Jacob? Did she even know that he was dead?
I couldn’t imagine what kind of self-induced error had brought the pair of them down. Jacob was a seriously fast rider, had raced bikes in his younger days and still pushed hard on the road. He had skill I couldn’t even begin to match and a seeming sixth sense for dangers lurking round the next blind bend.
And Clare had too much respect for her classic Ducati 851 Strada to be reckless. In biking, as in all things, Clare just had too much style to do something as untidy as crashing.
So what the hell had gone wrong?
***
Lancaster on a Sunday was fairly quiet and I totally disregarded the posted speed limits all the way through town. Sam was right behind me when I finally pulled into the car park at the RLI and dived into a space marked ‘reserved for consultants only’.
For once I didn’t chain the bike up, or even check to see that it was settled fully onto its side-stand. Taking the keys out of the ignition was the most I could manage. Having Sam there made me try for composure, so we walked, rather than ran, into the building itself.
Nevertheless, I hit the entrance doors to Accident & Emergency shoulder first without slowing, punching them open and woe betide anyone unlucky enough to be standing on the other side.
Sam bypassed the reception desk and trotted off down a corridor. I wanted to stop and ask, but at the same time I didn’t want to let him out of sight, so I hurried after him with barely a break in stride.
It had been around ten months since my last visit to the RLI – only that time I’d arrived on a stretcher. I felt the familiar tightness in my chest that being inside the place again always brought on. They say the body doesn’t remember pain. They lie.
After a couple of corners the corridor opened out into a large recess that formed a waiting area. The three
