She meant that the medics weren't saying that Paige had got worse, but Mr Kelly didn't seem to share his wife's optimism. In fact, he gave a small shake of his head as he led her away.

It was awful to see Paige still lying there. I'd seen her forty-eight hours earlier, hooked up to monitors and an oxygen supply, but at that time we were all still in shock, hardly able to take in what had happened. Today I really let the effect of her injuries sink in. Machines beeped and clicked while tubes connected to her body appeared from under a pale blue sheet in a spaghetti tangle, leading to saline drips and blood-transfusion equipment. Meanwhile the patient lay with eyes closed and stents inserted into her partly shaved head.

'You can talk to her,' a nurse told us when he came to check the monitors and make some adjustments.

'Can she hear us?' Jack asked in a whisper.

'Possibly. We don't know for sure. Anyway, why not give it a go?'

What do you say to someone you know well who doesn't look like the same person any more? You'll have realized by now that Paige is unstoppable, in your face and funny. She gallops across fields and charges over fences, heaves heavy tack and polishes bits and bridles. She isn't afraid of anything. But now, on this hospital bed, that 'she' just isn't there.

'Hey, Paige,' I said. 'It's me Alyssa.'

A machine beeped; a jagged green line on a screen showed the erratic rhythm of her heart.

'Don't worry you're doing great,' I murmured. 'They're taking really good care of you.'

What did the various charts hanging from the end of her bed mean? Where did the tubes lead and what exactly did the tiny stents drilled through her skull do? For the first time I noticed massive bruising above Paige's left ear, extending up and back across the shaven area of her skull.

'You're strong,' I whispered as I stroked the back of her hand. 'You can do this.'

Another nurse came and smiled at us as she added the latest information to one of the charts the reassuring, meaningless smile of a professional care-giver.

'Mistral is fine,' I told Paige, and for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of response a tiny movement of her eyelids as though Paige had tried but failed to open her eyes. 'There's not a scratch on him. Guy and Harry are looking after him, giving him all his favourite treats.'

The nurse smiled again, then went on to the patient in the next bed.

'Everyone is missing you. They all said to say hi Zara, Luke, Hooper. Especially Luke. They say to get well soon.'

Jack took a deep breath then got up from his chair and stood by the end of the bed.

'St Jude's isn't the same without you charging around everywhere telling us all what to do, making your sarky comments. Life's boring without you, Paige,' I murmured, and stroked her hand, then lapsed into silence until the first nurse came back.

'That's probably enough for now,' he told me gently.

So Jack and I said goodbye to Paige and tiptoed out, walking hand in hand down the corridor towards the lift.

Hospital parking is a nightmare. The Queen Elizabeth has an electronic barrier system that only lets a car in when another one leaves so there's always a massive queue out on to Longland Avenue, which is where Jack and I spotted D'Arblay and Harry in D'Arblay's white Range Rover as we set off on our bikes.

D'Arblay saw us and wound down his window to ask how Paige was.

'The same,' Jack told him.

'Well, we'll soon see for ourselves,' the bursar said, tapping his forefinger against the steering wheel.

Harry didn't say anything, sitting in the front passenger seat, speaking on his phone and nursing a bunch of Tesco lilies with the price ticket still on.

'They won't let you take those into the ICU,' Jack warned.

Harry frowned, checked his watch then stared straight ahead as the line of cars inched forward.

'So maybe they will what do I know?' Jack muttered, deciding to cut across the car park and round the side of the hospital to avoid the busy main road. His route took us across the staff car park where we came across someone else we knew. I was still thinking it was weird that Harry of all people had brought Paige flowers when I heard Jack swear under his breath.

'What?' I had to brake suddenly and stop for an old red Mondeo reversing out of a space without looking. Micky Cooke sat in the front passenger seat beside an older, look-alike driver, presumably his morgue-worker dad. Micky was speaking on the phone.

Jack swore again. He knew Micky had been in on the ambush in the JD workshop, along with scary-girl Ursula and Alex Driffield reason number one that Jack wasn't happy. Reason number two was that Micky was on the list of people who could have dumped Lily's bag at Tom's house.

'Leave it,' I insisted as Micky came off the phone then spotted us. There was one other passenger sitting in the back seat, also talking on his phone, so we were outnumbered. Anyway we had no choice because Cooke senior seemed to be in a big hurry. The Mondeo spewed out a plume of black exhaust fumes as he revved and shot forward towards the exit.

Jack and I cycled out of town under fast-moving, grey clouds and a cold drizzle of rain. Neither of us felt like talking. I was glad to be using up some energy as we cycled against the wind.

In the silence I let my thoughts drift from the stupid fight I'd had with Jack about Emily Archer to the info she'd given him about the owner of the green Toyota, which took me back to my snowy close encounter outside the church.

I'd phoned for the taxi, the gritting lorry had trundled by. A red car had crawled in its wake. It had turned into a driveway just off Main Street not just red, but specifically a red Mondeo.

'Jack, wait!' I called now, but he was twenty metres ahead of me and the roar of the wind drowned my voice.

A red Mondeo. I repeated that to myself in a couple of ways emphasis on 'red', switch emphasis to 'Mondeo' while realizing that I hadn't seen the driver when he'd got out of the car and slammed the door and, anyway, it might not be important. There must be thousands of the superseded rust buckets gasping their last, environmentally unfriendly breaths on Britain's roads, and in any case the driver hadn't been involved in what had happened next. No what I had to focus on was the Toyota edging out of Meredith Lane, the rider dressed in black leathers, crouching low over the handlebars. In my mind's eye I was again able to see the registration plate clear as anything KD58PDO, the black helmet with its inbuilt visor, a split-second glimpse of the eyes behind it when the rider mounted the pavement and was caught in the glare of a street lamp ten metres away, five metres and accelerating. They were grey eyes, wide open and fringed with dark lashes.

'Jack!' I yelled above the wind.

'I love you.'

The words came out of the blue. Jack said them after we'd got back from the hospital in, of all places, the Boris-bike store outside the sports centre.

'Yes,' I said. Meaning, Yes, me too, vice versa, I love you. Meaning a million whirling thoughts and feelings that were impossible to express.

It's never like they show it in the rom coms Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually. But, anyway, the words were said and the feeling was mutual.

We jammed the front wheels of our bikes into their stands and faced each other, bedraggled and windswept, cold and scared.

'I do,' he whispered.

'I know. I don't know what to say.'

'Just kiss me.'

So I did and nothing mattered in that moment except that Jack and I had each other.

He was the first to pull back. 'This guy on the Toyota is the same as the one in the stable yard you're sure?'

I nodded. 'I remembered the eyes.'

Jack shuddered then flung an arm round my shoulders. He didn't kiss me again, but instead walked me quickly into the sports centre. 'It scares the shit out of me.'

'I love you,' I repeated among the basketballs and weights, the gym mats and rowing machines.

It was seriously unromantic, one hundred per cent sincere.

Up in the mezzanine coffee bar, looking down on Jack and his coach, my heart soared.

He loves me. I love him.

We'd gone to Tom's party then fallen out over nothing. We'd been in lessons together, eaten meals, walked and cycled, fought and stumbled our way towards love.

He, Jack Cavendish, is in love with me, Alyssa Stephens.

I watched him play tennis with the balance, coordination and grace of a dancer. He pivoted and turned, ran and stretched, leaped and swung with total drive and focus. I loved him for that, and for being honest and for putting up with me when I acted like a spoilt brat and for understanding that it was because I'd lost Lily, and now Paige was lying in the ICU and we didn't in our heart of hearts believe she would make it.

'Hey, Alyssa.' Hooper broke into my thoughts. He sat down opposite me, with his back to the tennis courts the one person I didn't expect to see anywhere near a ball or a racket.

I was pleased to see him, as always. 'Hey, Hooper. Did you sign up for weight training?'

'Yeah, funny. No, actually, I was looking for you because I've got something else to tell you.'

'Go ahead.'

'No. First of all, how's Paige?'

I shrugged. 'Nobody's saying anything. They're keeping her in a coma until the swelling in her brain goes down.'

'How did she look?'

I shook my head, unable to go into details about tubes, stents, bags and screens. 'It was like she wasn't there. Her mum and dad stay with her most of the time. We saw D'Arblay and Harry there too.'

'I heard D'Arblay press-ganged Harry into visiting.' Hooper pushed his glasses further up his nose then closed his eyes. He opened them again, forcing himself to change the subject and get on with the original reason for him being there. 'I did some digging and found out more about Eleanor Bond.'

'Anything interesting?' If I didn't sound fascinated it was because 1938 was a long time ago and I had a lot of current stuff on my mind.

'About her mother you know she wasn't mentioned in the newspaper report and it turns out that was because she wasn't actually around at the time.'

'Why? Where was she?'

'Stuck in Vienna.'

It wasn't what I was expecting and Hooper now had my full attention. 'Go on.'

'The mother, Simone Bond, was Jewish. She'd flown to Austria on family business. The Bonds had an engineering factory in Birmingham and they'd been supplying engine parts to various European car manufacturers, including the VW Beetle factory in Berlin, but she got caught up in Hitler's takeover of Vienna in the spring of 1938.'

'Wrong place at the wrong time,' I commented. I knew about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, can even quote you an extract from Mein Kampf and Hitler's vision of the Aryan race Slim and slender, swift, tough we must raise a new man!

'The Nazis went into Vienna and rounded up every Jew they could find,' Hooper went on. 'Eleanor never made it back to England.'

'Never?' I repeated.

'No. Nobody in Austria was going anywhere at that time, especially if they were Jewish. They think she got sent to a concentration camp on the German border and starved to death, so by the end of 1938 Edward Bond had lost his only daughter and his wife. No wonder he became a recluse.'

'And apart from it being really sad and a long time ago, what are you thinking, Jack?'

'I'm not sure. Something about this is getting to me maybe it's just psycho man Hitler and his creation of the perfect Aryan race. Millions of people were persecuted and the guy who founded this school was directly caught up in that.'

'Really sad,' I repeated. 'But so what?'

'Anyway, I'm going to dig some more,' Hooper decided, getting up to quit the sports centre and return to his natural element the new library with its banks of computer screens and access to infinite knowledge.

Soon after this I left my Jack with his tennis coach and went for a walk in the woods to clear my head, hoping that this time I wouldn't run into the young journalist of the year.

'Hey, Alyssa, are you skipping lunch?' Zara called from the entrance to the quad. She was with Luke and Harry, but took a detour to talk with me.

'What's the latest on Paige?'

'Ask Harry,' I told her. 'He visited the hospital after me and Jack .'

'Harry how was Paige?' Zara called.

Harry shook his head.

'Come over here. Talk properly.'

My least favourite equestrian shuffled across, hands in pockets. Luke followed. 'They said Paige was too sick they wouldn't let D'Arblay and me on to the ward. Family only.'

I groaned inwardly, but tried not to let either Luke or Zara know that this must mean Paige had deteriorated. 'She's a fighter,' I told him. 'We all know that.'

I was searching for more of the right phrases when I noticed for the first time that Harry's right eye was bruised and swollen and his bottom lip was cut. 'What happened to you?' I asked.

'Nothing. I walked into a door,' he mumbled.

'Yeah a door called Jayden,' Zara mocked, making Harry swear and storm off ahead of her and Luke.

'Harry and Jayden had a fight?' I asked. 'When? Where? Why?'

Zara was obviously hungry and in need of lunch so she kept her answers brief. 'Last night. In town. Don't know.'

'But I saw Harry earlier today at the hospital.' Then again, I'd only had a view of the left side of Harry's face as he sat in the passenger seat next to the bursar. 'He didn't say anything.'

'Well, you wouldn't advertise it if you came off worst in a fight with Jayden. And everyone does come off worst, including Harry even though Harry's twice Jayden's size. You should see the rest of him his ribs, his knuckles, his knees all bruised and busted to hell.'

Hand on my heart, I couldn't say I was sorry not after Harry had galloped Franklin right at me and almost knocked me over but I was puzzled. And the mystery of this scrap between Harry and Jayden was what stayed at the front of my mind as I split from Zara and Luke then walked on through the grounds, skirting the last patches of melting snow and hurrying towards the trees. So much so that I marched straight on and out the other side, over the stream and across fields into Chartsey Bottom with only one thing in mind I had to find Jayden.

First I tried his house in Upper Chartsey.

'You're joking me,' Ursula snarled when she answered the door, before she slammed it in my face.

No luck there, then.

So I went down to the Bottoms and asked for Jayden at the JD workshop.

'Not here, love.' This was Alex's bald dad, speaking from the oil-stained service pit.