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Can’t wait to see you!! it read, followed by a string of smiley, excited, and kissy-face emoticons. Party’s gonna be awesome!!!
Alexia laughed out loud. She’d missed Lucy this year, with her relentless good spirits and her endless enthusiasm. The woman would have exclamation marks carved into her gravestone.
Carefully lifting the Hamlin file, Alexia slipped it into her desk drawer and locked it away.
Screw Henry Whitman. Teddy and I are going to see our friends tonight and relax.
It’s going to be fun.
Michael De Vere revved his new Ducati Panigale superbike, letting the roar of its powerful engine drown out the tumult of thoughts in his head.
He knew the route from Oxford to Kingsmere like the back of his hand, but today he’d deliberately taken obscure back roads, through Witham Woods, the ancient forest bordering North Oxford and into the Evenlode Valley beyond. It was a perfect day—how could it be anything other for his mother’s perfect party?—blue-skied and sunny and clear. On either side of the lane, high hedgerows teemed with life, honeysuckle and bumble bees and butterflies of all sizes and colors frothing like a fountain of buzzing, sweet-scented energy. Frightened by the noise of Michael’s motorbike, starlings and blue tits and lapwings took to the sky as he passed, in a stunning aerial salute. In other circumstances, Michael would have felt exhilarated, racing through the landscape that he loved with the wind in his face and the sun on his back. As it was, he felt agitated and jumpy, angry at the emotions whipsawing him as he leaned into each bend.
Some of them were easy to identify. Guilt, for example, squatting like a fat toad over his heart, suffocating his happiness. It had been a close call with Summer last night. Too close. He hated himself for lying to her, for becoming the cliché of the unfaithful boyfriend, a parody of the very worst side of himself. When they were apart, he told himself that he had things under control. That he could compartmentalize his relationship with Summer and his life here in England. That it would all be all right. Last night had brought home to him what a hollow self-deception that was.
I love her.
I love her and I’m an idiot and this has to stop.
Michael’s tangled love life was far from the only thing on his mind. For weeks now he’d been acting as if everything were normal. As if he didn’t know. He’d driven back and forth to Kingsmere, installing lighting and working on the ill-fated pagoda, as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. Something terrible.
And Michael De Vere hadn’t the first idea what to do about it.
He needed to talk to someone. But who? Talking to his mother was impossible. Even if he knew what to say, Alexia’s schedule was so jam-packed there was simply no opportunity to get her alone and focused. As for his father, Teddy De Vere had always lived in his own world, a fantasy of past family glories attached to some archaic concept of chivalry that Michael had never fully understood. Teddy could no more handle the truth than a four-year-old child could handle Michael’s new gleaming red Ducati. The truth would break him, shatter him into a thousand shardlike fragments like a dropped Christmas tree ornament. Michael couldn’t tell his father.
Which left him with Roxie.
Angrily Michael twisted the bike’s handlebars, pumping more gas into the already shrieking engine. Poor Roxie, his once-vivacious, outgoing sister, reduced to a lonely, embittered cripple for the sake of a worthless former lover. If Roxie were to suffer any more, it wouldn’t be because of Michael. She too was a closed door.
Last night he’d come close to confiding in Summer. But he’d stopped himself before he went too far. Saying the thing out loud, talking to another person about it, would have made it real. Michael De Vere had realized with sudden clarity last night that he did not want this to be real. He wanted it to be gone, hidden, buried, as it had been for so long. He wanted his innocence back, but he couldn’t have it, and it made him so mad he wanted to scream and scream and never stop.
I have to get through the party. Make it a success, smile through it for all our sakes. After that, I’ll deal with this. Decide what the hell to do.
He was approaching the top of Coombe Hill. From the peak one could see the spires of Oxford on one side and the slumbering Cotswolds on the other, mile after mile of honeyed villages and lush green valleys, still dotted with the white sheep that had once been the region’s lifeblood and primary source of income. Glancing down at his speedometer—he was already doing sixty, but it felt much faster on such narrow, deserted roads—Michael twisted the gas again, accelerating on the climb so that his wheels briefly left the ground as he cleared the top of the hill. He remembered the rush from childhood, doing wheelies off of humpback bridges with Tommy on their BMX push bikes. But the Ducati was a different beast altogether, wild and dangerous, like riding a leopard bareback.
Luckily, Michael was a skilled rider. Bringing the bike back down with ease, he leaned gracefully into the turn as the ground fell away beneath him. As the gradient grew steeper, he eased off the gas, but the speedometer needle kept rising, propelled by the Panigale’s own momentum. Michael squeezed lightly on the front brake. Nothing happened. Surprised but not especially alarmed, he squeezed more forcefully, instinctively pushing down on the front wheel with his body weight to slow the bike’s progress.
Nothing. What the hell?
The bottom of the hill was fast approaching. Adrenaline began to course unpleasantly through Michael’s veins. Mercifully there were no other cars on the road, but the bend at the valley floor was almost forty-five degrees, after which the lane almost immediately fed into a T-junction with the busy A40. Forcing himself to stay calm, he looked at the speedometer again.
68 mph.
71 mph.
At this speed, using the rear brakes alone could be highly dangerous, with bikes tending to skid out of control, but there was no other option. What were you supposed to do to keep control in a rear-brake skid? He willed himself to remember. That’s it. Keep your eyes on the horizon.
He looked up, but as he did so tears of panic stung his eyes. The horizon was no longer a placid, flat line. It was a tidal wave of fields and sky, hurtling toward him at breakneck speed.
78 mph.
82 mph.
Michael’s arms and legs shook as he gripped the rear-wheel brake, abandoning caution and wrenching it toward him with all his strength. His whole body tensed, waiting for the skid, for the jolting halt, but there was nothing. The brake rolled loose and limp in his hands.
That was when he knew.
