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look at Clare. Her eyes were closed again and she lay still and quiet as a corpse against the white pillows.
     
    ***
     
    The same nurse who’d ejected me reappeared after a few minutes and passed me a set of keys. I recognised the key-ring as Clare’s and realised the nurse must have been sent scurrying back up to the ward to collect it.
     
    “Mr Foxcroft strongly suggests that you go home and get some food and some sleep,” she said. “He’ll call you as soon as she comes out of theatre.” There was a respectful note in her voice that hadn’t been there previously.
     
    I nodded. “I’ll be at Clare’s,” I said, and left her the phone number on another scrap of paper. I seemed to be handing a lot of those out today.
     
    I retrieved the Suzuki from the car park where, surprisingly enough, it hadn’t been either clamped or stolen. Then I rode sedately through the centre of Lancaster and back out again, heading north.
     
    And all the time I was turning over what Clare had said. The main feeling was one of relief that, no matter what Tess might have insinuated, Jacob could not be involved. I hadn’t thought so for a moment, but being able to prove it made things so much better.
     
    And then there was the accident itself. I appreciated that, as my father had predicted, she was pumped full of morphine, but Clare had seemed surprisingly clear about it. She’d known it wasn’t just a van, but a Transit, which suggested she might have a clear recall of exactly what had happened.
     
    And then we could find out who was to blame.
     
    ***
     
    I made a considerable detour back to the cottage on the way to Jacob and Clare’s place. I was conscious of the passing of time and the fact that I might be missing some vital phone call from my father, but I had to have some clean clothes or even I wouldn’t want to know me by morning.
     
    My home looked shabby and depressing when I walked back in. The sledgehammer was still propped up against the wall upstairs where I’d left it and a thick layer of dust had settled over just about everything, like I’d slept for a hundred years. I picked my way across the rubble and felt the weight of the work I still had to do there lying heavy across my shoulders.
     
    At the time I’d agreed to take the cottage on I’d desperately needed something that was physically demanding enough to occupy my mind. And, for a time, it had worked. Now, though, it just felt like a burden.
     
    My parents had bought the place intending it to be a weekend getaway but it had proved a little too rustic for my mother’s refined tastes and they’d barely used it.
     
    The idea in offering the cottage to me was that I’d oversee the alterations. Something to keep me out of trouble – and away from Sean. By the time they found out I was actually carrying out most of the work myself, it was too late for them to do much about it.
     
    Now, I stripped off my dirty clothes and pulled on my Dainese leathers, zipping the jacket and jeans together to form a one-piece suit and transferring all the accumulated junk from one set of pockets to the other. I stuffed clean jeans, underwear and shirts into a bag that I could clip onto the Suzuki’s tank. The whole operation took less than ten minutes. Then, with a last regretful look at the debris, I pulled the door shut behind me and was back on the road.
     
    It would keep.
     
    ***
     
    Twenty minutes later I was turning into the gateway of Jacob and Clare’s house near Caton village. It was big and old and rather beautiful in a faded kind of a way. A remnant of Jacob’s ill-fated but prosperous marriage, the house was a sprawling hotchpotch of a place, three-quarters hidden by creepers. The driveway swept down from the main road and across a field until it opened out onto a moss-coated forecourt.
     
    Jacob dealt in classic motorbikes and antiques from the outbuildings around the house itself. Because of this he’d always been security conscious and I