“If you stay involved with Sean Meyer you
***
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.
“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 instinct 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.
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.
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.
