Road Kill

Three

That night I dreamed of Sean.

It was a kind of buried longing I seemed only able to give free rein to when my subconscious was in control. Talking to him again, hearing his voice and picturing the face behind it as he spoke, had provoked a reaction so strong it frightened me.

The job in Florida back in March was supposed to have been a new beginning for us, an easy couple of weeks in the sun where we could relax in each other’s company. But it hadn’t turned out that way.

I’d spent four nightmare days on the run with my teenage charge, all the while believing Sean was dead. And then, when I’d found out he was still very much alive, I’d had to stand by and watch him commit what was little more than cold-blooded murder. I’d had to kill to survive, but not for personal gratification. And not for revenge either, however close I may have come to it.

Sean had accused me of not having faith in him, but it had been five months since our return and I was still trying to find a way to bridge the gulf between us. He’d pulled away from me, or maybe it was me who’d pulled away from him. I hadn’t even felt able to ask him to come to me now, when I needed him. And – worse – he hadn’t offered.

Then, from somewhere above me a small sound broke through the outer layers and crashed through my unconscious mind like a falling stone.

I came bounding out of sleep much too fast, with my heart screaming. My eyes snapped open allowing the darkness and silence to pour in. For a long suspended second I struggled there, locked between dreams and reality. Then the sound that had woken me came again, and it was reality that elbowed its way to the fore.

Someone was moving about downstairs. Why on earth the dogs weren’t kicking up an unholy stink I had no idea. I was a light enough sleeper to have heard the driveway alarm, too – if it had gone off – which meant no one had tripped it.

For a moment my hopeful brain formed Jacob’s name and I got as far as opening my mouth to call out to him. Sense kicked in and I shut it again.

My eyes were adjusting to the gloom all the time. I’d left the curtains open and the moon threw a trickle of thin silver-grey light into the room. I swung my legs out of bed and carefully picked up the old-fashioned alarm clock from the bedside table, squinting at the luminous figures. It was a little after two-thirty in the morning. I suppressed a groan as I groped for my shirt and jeans.

My father had finally called just before midnight with the news that Clare was out of surgery and doing “as well as could be expected,” and I’d crawled into one of Jacob and Clare’s spare beds soon after.

I’d used the time before he’d rung to hunt for any sign of Jacob’s Irish contacts, as Sean had suggested, feeling like a thief as I’d systematically gone through Jacob’s desk and papers. I’d bunged the resulting half-dozen-name list down the fax to Sean’s office number. Now it was up to him.

Unless, of course, the stealthy intruder downstairs at this moment was indeed Jacob.

I padded on silent bare feet across the polished floorboards and slowly pulled open the bedroom door, praying it wouldn’t creak. At the end of the landing I could see the faint glow of a light on somewhere below. As I tiptoed towards the stairs I reached out and picked up a copy of a bike magazine that was lying on a chest of drawers and took that with me.

I descended with controlled haste, keeping to the outside of the treads. As I went I rolled the magazine up into a tight baton with its thick spine to the outside.

In the hallway downstairs I halted, listening. Over to my left the grandfather clock against the kitchen wall ticked sonorously. Under the study door a thin band of light was showing and I could hear movement inside.

Suddenly, the door opened and a man walked out so quickly we nearly collided. I don’t know who was more shocked by the abruptness of the encounter but he let out a surprised yelp and took an instinctive swipe at my head.

I ducked under the clumsy blow and jabbed him in the Adam’s apple with the coiled end of the magazine. He staggered back, choking, hands up to his throat. I pivoted sideways and brought the rigid edge of the spine slashing up, hard, onto the inner bone of his right elbow, then jabbed again on the backstroke, this time to the collection of nerves centred in his solar plexus. If it had been a sword I was holding, I would have run him through.

As it was, my attacker went down with a crash, overturning a chair. One of the dogs – probably Beezer – finally began to bark behind the kitchen door, frenzied little yaps that sounded neither big nor menacing. More’s the pity.

I flicked on the lights in the hallway and found that my intruder was a young man with longish dark hair, wearing a T-shirt and bike leather trousers. He’d been carrying a backpack that he’d dropped when he’d fallen and he was currently trying to clutch at all the points I’d hit with the hand that still worked. I waited until he had the breath to speak. At least I’d brought something to read.

“Fuck me,” he gasped eventually. It was more of an exclamation than an instruction. There was the faintest trace of an Irish lilt to his voice and something about his face was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Certainly not enough to be able to justify him creeping about in Jacob and Clare’s house in the middle of the night, that’s for sure.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Fuck that!” he countered hotly. “Who the hell are you?”

“If you’d just answer the question,” I said mildly, rolling the magazine up again, “we’d get along a lot better.”

“You could be anyone,” he said, wary, rubbing at his throat and not taking his eyes off what I was doing with my hands. “I’m not telling you anything until I know what the hell you’re doing here.”

I sighed. If there was one thing my time in the States had taught me, it was how to communicate with stroppy teenagers in terms they’d understand. This one looked twenty at a push, but I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub without having to show his ID.

“Tell me what I want to know,” I said, conversational, leaning over him, “or I’ll hit you again.”

He reared back, shocked, then a gleam of laughter appeared and a big grin broke through his natural mistrust. His shoulders came down a fraction.

“Well if you’re a burglar, you’re the prettiest thief I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “OK. My name’s Jamie – Jamie Nash.”

“Nash?” I repeated, confused. Jacob’s name was Nash. “But—”

He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “Jacob’s my dad.”

***

I put the coffee down on the kitchen table in front of Jamie and sat opposite, picking up my own cup. He smiled in thanks and, now I knew the connection, I could see Jacob’s smile there, Jacob’s eyes.

The family resemblance was clear, but Jacob had never mentioned having any children. He rarely talked about his ill-fated marriage to Isobel but I suppose it wouldn’t have been kind to do so in front of Clare.

“How’s the arm?” I asked.

“I may play the piano again,” he said, rueful, flexing it gingerly, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. Where did you learn to hit people like that? With a rolled up magazine, for Christ’s sake.”

“Self-defence classes,” I said shortly and didn’t add that I’d been the one teaching them. “It means I’m classed as having had training and if I’d beaten you up with a chair leg they’d have thrown the book at me.” I smiled at him as I took a sip of coffee. “This way you’re the one who gets laughed out of court.”

He snorted. “Remind me never to ask you to housetrain a puppy,” he said. “You’d beat the poor little bastard to death inside the first week.”

“So you don’t know whereabouts in Ireland your dad might be?” I asked.

He’d just taken a drink of his own coffee and he shook his head vigorously and swallowed before he spoke. “Didn’t even know he was away,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s over there and I’m over here.”

Beezer jumped up onto Jamie’s lap and bounced up and down a few times, trying to lick his chin. He stared at the terrier without really seeing her, ruffling her ears in a reflex gesture. “Shit this is bad,” he muttered. He glanced at me with an almost fearful curiosity. “About Clare, I mean. How is she?”

I repeated my father’s diagnosis, such as it was. “Do you know her well?”

His gaze passed over me briefly, then slid away. “Not really,” he said with an awkward shrug. “I haven’t really seen that much of Dad since he and Mum split up.”

Difficult to know how he’d be expected to feel about his father’s girlfriend, I suppose. Particularly as she was far closer to Jamie’s age than to Jacob’s.

I’d told him only the bare bones of the story. That Jacob was away somewhere in Ireland and that Clare had been in a bike accident in which another biker had also died. I didn’t tell him the rumours about what might or might not have been going on between Clare and Slick. As it was he’d taken the news in pale silence.

“So,” I said, sitting back. “Your turn. What were you doing breaking in to your father’s house at half-two in the morning?”

Jamie grinned. “Got in to Heysham earlier this evening and went round the town with a few mates after we got off the boat,” he said. “Then—”

“Boat?”

“Ferry,” he explained. “From Ireland.” And when I still looked blank he added, “That’s where my mother’s family hail from, so that’s where we went back to. Just outside Coleraine. In the north.”

I reached for my coffee cup again and waved him on.

He shrugged again, still fussing with the terrier. “Well, I was supposed to be meeting someone but they didn’t turn up,” he said, pulling a face, “so then I didn’t have any place to stay.”

A girl, I surmised. And he’d been hoping to get lucky. “And?”

“And nothing,” he said with the same kind of easy smile that Jacob was master of. “I suppose I just thought why should I shell out for a hotel when my dad’s place was just up the road, so I thought maybe I’d come and crash here.”

He hesitated, possibly realising that use of the word “crash” was not the best choice in these circumstances.

“So you bypassed the drive alarm and broke in through the study window,” I said dryly, draining my coffee cup and standing. “Don’t they have doorbells in Ireland?”

“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” he said, smiling easily. “I helped Dad dig that sensor in one summer when I was about ten. And the study window’s always had a dodgy catch on it.” He tipped the terrier back onto the floor and got to his feet, too.

“Besides,” he added, following me out into the hallway, “when I saw the car and the bikes were all here I wasn’t expecting them to be away – or that I’d be jumped by Lara bloody Croft on the way in.”

I led the way upstairs, turning off lights as we went. At the airing cupboard on the landing I dug out sheets and pillows and thrust them into Jamie’s arms, ignoring his surprised expression. I think he was probably hoping I’d offer to make the bed up for him. His mother, I reckoned, had a lot to answer for.

Jamie made straight for the second room on the left, pushing open the door and stepping inside before I could stop him.

“Erm, Jamie,” I called sharply. He stopped. “That’s where I’m sleeping and I’m afraid you aren’t invited.”

He cocked his head in my direction, taking in my rumpled shirt and jeans in a single sweeping glance that seemed to suggest he was giving me serious consideration. “Oh well, if you’re sure,” he murmured, backing out. “Although, as that used to be my room, technically speaking I’m not the one who’s in the wrong bed.”

For a moment I considered offering to move, but he was already grabbing for the handle of the door opposite instead. I shrugged, but slid the bolt on my door once I was safely inside. Then I climbed back into bed and slept like the dead for what remained of the night.

***

I woke around seven the next morning, courtesy of my in-built alarm clock. A lazy mist hung over the trees and the river, promising another long hot day ahead. I glanced down onto the forecourt and saw a snazzy little race-replica Honda RVF400 with a Northern Irish plate on it parked up next to Jacob’s old Range Rover. Nice bike. It seemed that in amongst the rest of the genes, Jacob had also passed on his love of biking to his son.

I slipped into the bathroom first, then climbed into my leather jeans and a clean shirt, glad I’d made that detour. I looked in briefly to the bedroom Jamie had taken but he was spark out, lying diagonally across the bed in a face-down sprawl.

I went downstairs and let the dogs out, then rang the hospital again for news of Clare. Comfortable, they told me, which seemed absurdly optimistic of someone with as many broken bones as she had.

The sun was already throwing out warmth, beginning to heat up the stones of the old house. I drank my first coffee of the day sitting out on the terrace in peaceful solitude, soaking it up. The events of yesterday seemed remote, like a dream. I remembered my conversation with Sean and almost wondered if I’d imagined that, too.

Away to my right came the sound of water running down the drainpipe from the bathroom. Sleeping beauty awakes. I went back inside to put a fresh pot of coffee on.

I was halfway through filling a cafetière when the drive alarm went off. The dogs scrambled out of their beds, barking furiously like they’d been practising the drill. The combination of the two made me jump and slosh hot water onto both the kitchen floor and down the leg of my jeans. Good job they were leather or I’d have been scalded.

When I looked out of the window onto the forecourt, it was just in time to see the post van pull up outside.

“Oh yes, very dangerous he looks,” I told the dogs, sarky, as the mail dropped through the letterbox in the front door. They whined and avoided my gaze and looked embarrassed. I wondered if it was the alarm rather than the vehicle the dogs reacted to, like some Pavlovian experiment. Was that why they hadn’t kicked up a fuss last night?

Jamie arrived just as the coffee was brewed. He didn’t wait to be invited but helped himself, retrieving a mug from the cupboard next to the kitchen door without hesitation.

“Know your way around, don’t you?” I said, nodding to the mug.

He paused, startled for a moment, then he grinned at me. “That’s where they’ve always been kept,” he said. “Dad’s nothing if not a creature of habit.”

He was wearing the same leather bike trousers he’d had on the night before, and a clean T-shirt with a designer label on the front. He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table, turned it round and sat astride it, leaning his forearms on the back.

“I’ve rung about Clare and they tell me I can go in and see her this morning,” I said. “You want to come?”

He frowned for a moment, warring emotions flitting across his face.

“It’s not compulsory,” I put in mildly. “She may not even be awake enough to talk to.”

“No, no, I’ll come,” he said quickly. He nodded towards the kitchen window where we could just see his Honda outside and gave me a smirk. “If you’re feeling brave enough I can give you a lift on the back of my bike.”

“Yeah, I can well imagine that getting on the back of your bike would be a pretty quick way to a hospital,” I returned with an answering smile. “But no thanks – I prefer to ride my own.”

***

Jamie watched rather anxiously as I wheeled the Suzuki out of the coach house. He only relaxed when he recognised the bike for what it was and worked out how much smaller it was than his own four hundred. Size matters – it’s a guy thing.

Like my two-fifty, Jamie’s bike was no longer a current model but it was in good nick, with a titanium exhaust can and an after-market steering damper.

Jamie already had his helmet on and the Honda revving as I locked up. I kicked my bike’s engine over and, just to give it half a chance to warm through, took my time shrugging my way into the borrowed backpack containing the nightie and washbag full of bits and pieces that I’d thought Clare might appreciate. As it was, Jamie barely let me get my gloves on before he was away up the drive.

“Prat,” I muttered under my breath. I had no intention of racing him. Not when it meant going hand-to-hand with a load of dopey car drivers in the Monday morning rush-hour, that’s for sure. By the time I reached the top of the drive and pulled out into the stream of traffic on the main road, he was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it was with the realities of the accident well forward in my mind, but I found myself riding more defensively than usual. A couple of vehicles behind me was a Ford Transit van with two men inside. Nothing sinister in itself, but Clare’s words in the hospital came back and made me twitchy. At the next opportunity I toed the Suzuki down a gear, hit the narrow power band, and hopped three cars further up the line.

I’d just pulled back in when there was a flash of high-beam headlights in my right-hand mirror. Three big bikes came thrashing past a rake of traffic to slot in alongside me with the neatness and precision of jet fighters.

I glanced over automatically. The lead bike was an Aprilia RSV 1000, all dressed up in race replica paintwork that made it look like a cigarette packet on wheels.

Behind that was a two-year-old special edition Ducati 996, with carbon trim on the exhaust can and the fairing.

Bringing up the rear of the tight formation was a sleek Kawasaki ZX-9R in lurid green. The riders were all wearing leathers to suit the bikes and they had their heads turned in my direction but the iridium coating on their visors gave them a completely blank stare. All I could see was my own reflection.

I nodded, the usual friendly acknowledgement of one member of the fraternity to another. They totally ignored the greeting, staring at me for a moment longer. Then, as if at some signal, the trio blasted away down the white line like they were overtaking a slow-moving mule train, leaving me feeling small and pedestrian and ever so slightly insulted in their wake.

***

If I’d bothered to wonder where the three bikers were heading, it didn’t take long for me to find out. About two of them, at least.

When I got to the hospital I found the Ducati and the Kawasaki both in the car park. They had pulled up on either side of Jamie’s machine, dwarfing the little four hundred like schoolground bullies. The Kawasaki rider was still on board. He was big enough for the bike to look small under him. Through the partly open visor I recognised William’s features, cheeks squeezed by the foam padding inside his helmet.

The Ducati rider had dismounted, leaving his own lid perched on top of the tank. There was so much carbon fibre covering the body of the bike it looked like it was covered in tweed.

The rider was small and dapper, in one-piece leathers that were obviously made-to-measure rather than off the peg. He had a thin pencil moustache that circled his chin, and dark hair that was spiked into a blond mini mohican along his crown. I wondered how on earth he kept his hairstyle intact under a helmet when I could never preserve mine.

He was currently standing nose-to-nose with Jamie. He had to rise up on his toes to do so. His back was towards me but their discussion didn’t exactly look friendly.

I ran the Suzuki in alongside them and cut the engine but they hardly seemed to notice me. There was no sign of the guy who’d been on the cigarette packet Aprilia.

“You’re in or you’re out, mate – now more than ever,” the Ducati rider was saying, pointing an accusing finger. His voice sounded tight but it was difficult to tell just how wound he was without being able to see his face.

“I’m in, Paxo, believe me!” Jamie protested. He was trying not to sound desperate and not quite succeeding. He flicked his eyes nervously in my direction and lowered the volume a touch. “I just can’t believe you’re still going ahead after what’s happened.”

“We’re too far along to back out now,” William said, his tone placid, almost lazy. “Life’s a risk. You either take it or you may as well just give up now.”

Life’s a risk. I remembered my defence of idiots like him to MacMillan and felt my anger climb. So it seemed that Slick had been road racing when he’d had his final crash, despite having a passenger on board. I got off the bike and yanked my helmet off, glaring at Jamie. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Does it mean nothing to you that your mate Slick’s dead because of what you lot have been up to?” I demanded bitterly. “Not to mention the fact that Clare might still lose her legs?

“Now look—” Jamie began earnestly.

All I did was turn my head slightly in his direction. He shut up.

“When I spoke to Clare yesterday she reckoned they were deliberately brought down,” I went on, my attention back on William and the Ducati rider Jamie had called Paxo. “Who have you been annoying enough that they want you dead?” It was overly melodramatic, but I was aiming for shock value.

“We don’t know what you’re on about, Charlie,” William said evenly, but I hadn’t missed the little anxious glances they’d shared.

My patience didn’t so much run out then as it petered to a stop. I hadn’t expected to be taken into anyone’s confidence but being treated like I was stupid was always going to sting.

“OK,” I said wearily, shrugging. “Whatever.” I began to turn away towards the entrance.

“Hey Charlie, hold up there, will you?” Jamie called after me. I stopped and looked back. “Just give me ten minutes,” he said to Paxo, his tone close to pleading. “Wait here, yeah? I’ll be right back.”

Paxo cocked his head towards William. The big guy lifted one shoulder in lacklustre assent.

“Ten minutes,” Paxo warned, making a big show of checking his watch. “Then we’re out of here. With or without you.”

Jamie gave them an anxious nod and hurried after me.

“Funny how you never mentioned last night that you run with the same crowd as Slick,” I said as we walked into the hospital reception area.

“You never asked,” he said.

I eyed him for a moment. That much was true. But the very fact that he hadn’t volunteered the information as soon as I’d mentioned Slick’s name was suspicious in itself.

“I’m asking now,” I said. “Bit off your home ground, aren’t you?”

“William works for one of the ferry companies and they come over to Ireland a lot,” Jamie said after a moment’s pause. “That’s where I met them. They’re a fun bunch to ride with, that’s all.”

“Oh, a laugh a minute, by the looks of it,” I said. “So, what the hell was that all about?”

He shrugged like he was trying to shake off a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, nothing,” he said lightly.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” I said. “You want to end up like Slick? You carry on using the roads for a racetrack you’re heading the right way. It will catch up with you in the end – just like it did with Slick.”

Just for a moment there was a flicker across Jamie’s good-looking face.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Charlie,” he said, the smile belying the words. “Until you do, why don’t you keep your nose out of it, OK?”

It was my turn to shrug. “It’s your funeral.”

***

Being inside the hospital had the same tightening effect on my nerves that it had the night before. I couldn’t quite pin down what it was about the place that made me so jumpy. Maybe it was just the total loss of control I had difficulty coping with.

I knew from bitter experience that if you came in here as anything other than a visitor suddenly any personal freedom was stripped away. Complete strangers could come and rob you of your dignity any time they felt like it. They governed your sleep, your food and water, and your pain.

Making a conscious effort to relax, I led Jamie on towards the waiting area I’d occupied the night before. From there a nurse directed us to the female orthopaedic ward.

The male nurse at the ward entrance looked surprised when I mentioned her name. “She’s a popular lass today,” he remarked. And when we neared her bedside I found out what he meant.

Sean Meyer was sitting in a plastic visitor’s chair next to Clare’s bed and was chatting to her like it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be there.

I stopped dead and they both looked up at us. Clare was marginally less pale than she had been the night before, but it was a close-run thing.

They’d erected a framework around her bed like a minimalist four-poster. Wires stretched from it to pins that appeared, from this angle, to actually go right through her legs, like she was some kind of suspended executive toy. The equipment seemed medieval in its crudeness. I could almost believe that the pins I could see sticking out of her torso were penetrating her body completely, impaling her to the bed.

Jamie was silent next to me. When I glanced at him he was staring fixedly at Clare. He seemed to sense my gaze and looked away quickly. But for that unguarded moment his expression had been on full view and there was no mistaking its stricken quality. So he wasn’t quite as hard-faced about all this as his mates had been.

Then Sean stood up and I’m ashamed to admit that my attention was entirely diverted. He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. Tall and wide without ever being bulky, he nevertheless filled the narrow space between the bed and the window, exceeded it, even.

He was wearing black jeans and a black v-necked T-shirt that emphasised the shifting layers of muscle across his chest and shoulders but I knew it wasn’t intentional. He dressed more for comfort and necessity. There was no vanity to Sean.

“Hi,” I said, uncertain and a little defensive when I should have been nothing but grateful. “I didn’t expect you to come.”

I found I was clutching my Arai helmet against my body like a shield. My legs had started to tremble and I had the horrible feeling I was just about to burst into tears but I couldn’t understand why.

“I know you didn’t,” he said, eyeing me closely. He turned back to Clare with one of those slow smiles of his. “Would you excuse us for a moment?”

“Of course,” Clare said, her cheeks dimpling.

Sean just gave me time to dump my stuff down on an empty chair before he took my arm.

Jamie, meanwhile, had kept his head down during the exchange. Now, he edged round the pair of us and sat down quickly in the chair Sean had just vacated. I wasn’t sure if I needed to introduce Jacob’s son to Clare, but Sean was already ushering me towards the door and I didn’t get the chance.

We got as far as the waiting area where I’d spent so much time the previous day before he stopped and put both hands on my upper arms, turning me to face him.

“Are you OK?” he said, those near-black eyes skimming over my face like a laser targeting system.

“Yes, no – I don’t know,” I said helplessly and my eyes began to fill. I shook my head, annoyed with myself. “Sorry, I’ve been fine until now.”

“It’s OK,” he said gently. “It’s not the first time you’ve been told someone you care for is dead. It was bound to be a shock.”

That was enough to set me off. I swallowed a couple of times, fighting it, but when he pulled me towards him I barely resisted, allowing him to gather me up and hold me close. Sean was too angular to cuddle up to, but being in his arms made me lightheaded with both tension and relief.

Those clever hands began to smooth up and down my spine, one of his habitual gestures. He traced the indentations of my vertebrae with his fingertips through the thin cotton of my shirt, like he was reading the signs of my body by Braille.

It was supposed to comfort, but it was making me only too aware of the length of time since we’d last done this, and how much I wanted to do it again.

Maybe it was recognition of that need, of the temptation to give in to it that made me stiffen. Footsteps sounded loud in the corridor behind me and poured a further mental bucket of cold water on my thoughts. I pulled back a little so I could see his face.

“When did you get here?” I said, striving for the mundane. “Have they told you anything about how she is?

He smiled as though he knew exactly what had been going through my mind. “I set off early this morning. I only got here about ten minutes ago,” he said. “Clare said there’s been quite a bit of nerve damage in her legs. They’ve been pretty candid with her about the fact that it might or might not all come back. They haven’t told me anything but then,” he added with a wry smile, “bearing in mind who one of her consultants is, I don’t think he’d be inclined to take me into his confidence, do you?”

I frowned. My father and Sean had never been on the best of terms. Not least because the uncovering of our clandestine affair had been part of my abrupt and ignominious exit from the military. I could have pointed out any of this to Sean, but instead I felt the need to defend my father.

“Yesterday they were talking about the possibility of Clare losing her legs,” I said flatly. “Whatever other failings he might have, my father is a bloody good surgeon.”

Sean pulled a face that could have been smile or grimace, take your pick. “I have cause to know that,” he said wryly, rotating his shoulder a fraction, “better than anyone.”

The silence beyond that stretched a moment too long and I rushed to fill it.

“Any news of Jacob?”

“One of the guys you found a number for is based in Wicklow, right down in the southwest corner,” he said, not commenting on my abrupt swerve of subject. “He reckons he’ll probably see Jacob later this week at an auction – if we haven’t managed to get in touch with him before then.”

I nodded, jamming my hands into the pockets of my leather jeans so they wouldn’t be lured into reaching for him again. “How long do you plan to stay?” I asked.

He almost smiled, his body suddenly very still. “As long as you need me.”

Release nearly had my eyes closing. “Thank you,” I said, awkward but sincere. “I really didn’t expect you to drop everything and come rushing up here.” But I wanted you to.

“It’s OK, Charlie,” he said. “It’s not a sign of weakness to need a shoulder to cry on every now and again.”

Sean had been through hell and back more times than I could count. The last time, in the States, he’d come within a whisker of execution and yet he would not – could not – talk about it, let alone cry. I turned and looked at him, dubious.

“Isn’t it?” I said.