VII.

I stood and looked at the dirty marks on the door for a long time. The sun reflected off the white paint, and I could already feel it beginning to dry the dampness around my ankles. It was going to be another glorious day.

Jack would notice the fingerprints, and the door left open. Even if no one warned him, he'd know. He was one of the most observant people I'd ever met, and clever enough to be careful.

It would make a kind of peace between us, I thought, if I went back to Tyme's End and told him what I'd seen. There was no need to be dramatic. I came back to say goodbye, so we didn't part on bad terms. Oh, and by the way, someone might've been fiddling with your bike the shed door was open. That would do the trick.

I took a deep breath. I raised my hand to my face, rubbing my fingers together, smearing the black grease into the whorls on my fingertips.

Peace between us. A quietus, a paying of debts. I wanted that almost more than anything. Even now.

I looked at the marks for a long time.

Then I wiped the door with my shirt cuff, polishing the paint back to shining whiteness; no one could have known there'd been a mark there unless they were looking for it. I shut the door properly, the way Jack would have left it, so that he wouldn't know the difference.

I walked back through the trees to where I'd left my suitcase. I picked it up and walked down the drive at an easy, leisurely pace, until I was outside the gates and I'd left Tyme's End behind.

I made my way east, along the long, straight road that ran from Falconhurst to Tunbridge Wells. It was still very early, and I walked in the middle of the road, looking up at the treetops that almost met overhead, separated by a ragged strip of sky. The sunlight cast a delicate net of light and shade over the tarmac. I felt more alone than I had ever felt. It was heady and rather frightening. Perhaps it was because I hadn't slept or eaten, but I couldn't help believing that, now I'd felt it, the sensation would never quite go away.

There was a hum of something behind me. I thought it was an insect buzzing, at first; then, with a cold spasm in my guts, I realised it was a motorbike, a long way away. I walked to the edge of the road, and looked round.

The road was almost perfectly straight, and I guessed that I could see for nearly a quarter of a mile, the level surface stretching away under the trees and narrowing to a point in the distance. There was a little road that joined it from the right, as I looked; that was the road I had taken, the road that led back to Tyme's End. The insect-drone got louder, until it was unmistakably the sound of a bike. Then I saw the bike itself, coming over the lip of the smaller lane to join the road. It was still very distant, but approaching fast, and the road was so straight and the rider so steady that it seemed not so much to get closer, but to grow larger. It was Jack; I couldn't see his face yet, but I knew.

I stood still and watched him come closer. I wondered what he wanted. Was he coming after me? Or perhaps I was nothing to him, now, and he had other projects in hand, other ideas. All I could do was wait, and see if he stopped when he saw me.

If he stopped . . .

In my mind's eye I saw the door of the shed again, and the oily fingerprints. When I looked down I could see the stain on my shirt cuff, and the black grease ingrained in my skin. What had Fraser done?

Jack was only a little way away now: it would only be a matter of seconds before he reached me. I stayed where I was, as tense and immobile as an animal that scents danger. I didn't know if he'd seen me; in any case, he hadn't braked.

Perhaps he couldn't brake.

I watch him draw ever closer. I could have counted down: ten, nine, eight . . . The world slowed down around me. I could see his face, set and concentrated under his goggles. It was the same expression he'd had when he was pulling the legs off the beetle, on that heavenly golden day beside the river. I hadn't stopped him; I hadn't even said anything. I'd watched him quietly, because I loved him, and, after all, it was only a beetle.

I looked up, taking in the shining green of the trees above me. The motorbike was roaring towards me; in a few seconds it would have gone past. There was no time left to think.

I stepped out into the road.

Jack saw me, and his mouth opened. I looked into his face, but the goggles reflected sunlight and leaves, like the bulging, opaque eyes of an insect. For a moment I was standing in front of his bike while it hurtled towards me; suddenly, horribly, I felt how fragile I was compared to the terrifying momentum of metal and bone. I would have moved then if I could, but my limbs had frozen, too late. I watched my own death fly towards me, and thought of my father.

Jack swore, tried to brake, and dragged the handlebars round.

The bike skidded and screeched, the back wheel lifting away from the earth as though even gravity had failed. It seemed to pause, poised at an impossible angle, although the noise kept on, battering at my eardrums. I thought I cried out; then I flung my arms up to shield my face and dropped to the ground. In the darkness behind my eyelids there was nothing but the sound of crashing machinery, the bite of metal into flesh. I didn't know if the scream I could hear was Jack's or my own. I smelt rust and faeces. I waited for the pain.

It didn't come.

The world went quiet. When I raised my head there was no birdsong, or rustling in the undergrowth: nothing but the tick of cooling metal. The bike had skidded past me. It was dented and smashed, lying in the bracken as though it had tried to struggle home on its own, hopelessly wounded. I kept my eyes on it. There were stains on the body of it, dark brown against the metal, and I knew they must be blood; but slowly, as I looked, I realised that none of it was mine. It was strangely humiliating.

Then I made myself turn my head.

He was dead; Jack was dead. It was easy to see that. He was nothing but a stuffed, inanimate figure, like a guy, with one hand flung out to the side and his wristwatch shattered. It was half past five; it would never be any later. His skull had been smashed in sideways, and his temple had an odd, concave depression that trickled with blood and something whitish, like sperm. It was distasteful: not the stuff of nightmares, simply an unenviable state of affairs. I felt a faint sense of pity, as though he had walked into a crowded room with egg yolk on his tie.

But he had swerved.

He'd swerved to avoid me.

I stood up, picked up my suitcase, and walked a few paces. I felt fine: in fact, I was rather proud of myself for my composure, as though I had given myself a nasty cut while I was shaving and managed not to curse out loud.

He'd swerved.

If he hadn't swerved I would be dead; and he might not be.

My knees gave way. I folded awkwardly to the ground, shaking. I heard the crash again, saw it again. I pressed one hand over my eyes. Oh, God. He'd swerved. I hadn't expected him to swerve. Why had he . . . ?

I prayed, then. I wasn't especially religious, but I prayed that it had been reflex, and not a conscious choice; that he hadn't known what he was doing. I prayed that, if he'd thought about it, he would have chosen his own life, not mine.

Of course he would. I was sure almost sure when I thought about it, and that comforted me a little. It made it seem more like an accident.

But he had swerved, whether he'd meant to or not. I'd stepped in front of him and he'd swerved . . . The words went round and round in my mind, obsessive and relentless. He'd swerved, and I was glad he had.

I was glad he was dead.

I laughed, then, as though Jack were there to appreciate the joke. I laughed, and felt the tears start in my eyes, because I was alive, and unscathed, and free. Whatever had happened, I was going back to my mother in Peltenshall, back to Cambridge in October, back to the life I'd had. I felt an absurd rush of relief and triumph, as though it had all been a game. I had beaten him. I, Oliver Gardner, had beaten H. J. Martin. For no obvious reason, I remembered something I'd seen at school, in the Old Boys' match: our cricket captain bowling out his own father first ball, and the look on his face of pure, undiluted delight.

Then, for the first time in my life, I cried for my father.

After a long time I stood up, wiping my face. I looked back the way I had come. The sun had risen until it was shining full in my face, but even if it hadn't been, I wouldn't have been able to see Tyme's End from here. I shut my eyes and thought about it. I loved it; I admitted that to myself, now that I knew it was mine, and that I'd never live there. Jack had done his best to make me fall in love with it, and he'd succeeded. I'd never be as happy anywhere else. Wherever I was, whatever I did if I married, and had children I would think of Tyme's End. I wouldn't forget.

I swallowed. I'd go back one day. I promised myself that. Even if it wasn't for years and years, even if I was an old man. One more time.

It made it easier to turn away. I set my back to the rising sun, picked up my suitcase and looked down the road, towards the railway station and home. The sunlight filtered through the leaves around me, and the birds had started to sing again. It was over.

I started to walk. I wasn't tired, and I had a long way to go.

For more information about Bridget, visit her on.

www.jugjugjug.blogspot.com.

Also by B. R. Collins.

The Traitor Game.

A Trick of the Dark.

end.