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to be.
    He hunches his shoulders on the way to work, braces himself against the world. The wind has shifted, northerly, and it sends thick fleets of clouds scudding across the sky in its path. He arrives at the workshop after what seems no time at all, and he has to check his watch to convince himself that any time has passed since he left the house. He realises he has no memory of the journey.
    The workshop reeks of a disappearing age, the heavy scent of grease sharpened by an overnote of thinners and a bass drone of cigarette smoke. Chipped workbenches hug the walls, covered in bolts and bulbs and fossilised spark plugs, while dark gargoyles of metal hide in corners and peer out from beneath heavy tarpaulins. Two fragmented cars occupy the centre of the workshop like ruined castles, one elevated on a lift to allow access to its underside. A third vehicle shelters beneath a soft cloth cover closer to the back. Terry crouches beneath the elevated car, working a wrench at its filthy belly. When he notices John, he lays down the wrench and wipes his hands with a rag.
    “How are you doing?” he asks. His face is already streaked with grime, and when he frowns dark lines fire across his forehead.
    “Oh, you know,” says John.
    “Are you sure you’re OK?” says Terry, “We can manage without you if — you know, if you need some time. Craig says he can do Saturdays if we need him to.”
    “No, no, I’m fine. Probably best if I keep busy.”
    Terry’s an old friend. The oldest. He was the one who suggested they go into business together all those years ago.
    You and me, buying old cars, fixing them up and selling them on! We’ll make a pile! We’ll get a workshop! It’ll be great! What do you say?
    It’s a hobby for John, really. He put most of the money in up front, and he tinkers at the machinery, but Terry’s the one who really knows what he’s doing.
    He climbs into heavy overalls and turns the kettle on.
    “Craig in yet?” he says.
    “Not yet.”
    Craig is Terry’s son-in-law. They took him on last year, and they tell each other it was just to give him a chance, just to get him started on a career, never admitting to one other that the heavy lifting is starting to hurt the old back, that the close-in work is starting to strain the old eyes.
    John brews two cups of strong tea and hands one to Terry, then he walks over and slides the tarpaulin off the car near the back of the workshop. Terry walks up and stands beside him, sipping his tea noisily.
    “Got some good news for you,” says Terry, nudging him with his elbow.
    “Oh?”
    “Bill told me some Arab drove his Facel into the back of a lorry at about sixty over the weekend. Completely wrote it off. So I’ve got him to buy what’s left of it for us and ship it over. From what he says it’ll give you pretty much the rest of the bits you need.”
    “Doesn’t he want to get it repaired?”
    “Nah, he’s some oil sheikh; he’ll just buy something else. Bill says the guy told him he was getting bored with it anyway. Bored! Can you believe that?”
    John looks at the car. Sleek and muscular, heavier than its size suggests, the chassis a wrestler’s torso, the headlamps a pair of wide, surprised eyes. The Facel II. His Facel II. He’s built it with his own hands, piece by piece, from the scavenged corpses of the few of its brothers that have succumbed to accident, disrepair or time, born out of weekends spent on roads to Monaco and Reims and Geneva, hunting down doors, fascias, seat covers, gear sticks. Damaged pieces, refurbishments, replica parts. Hundreds of hours. Thousands.
    He’d bought the skeleton of it years ago, back when they’d just got the business started. There’d been no money for it, so he’d had to buy it out of his own pocket. He’d tried to convince Terry that they could make a profit out of it, but Terry hadn’t wanted it.
    “Too rare,” he’d said, “Not enough parts out there to rebuild it.”
    Terry was right; it was