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If only I could see the world like I used to, again. Transport myself back to a time when I would take risks and do things just for fun and assume that people were inherently good until proven otherwise. I’d lost some of that spark, I knew I had. I’d become more cautious and paranoid as I’d got older. As though I was turning into my mum, which was the absolute last thing I wanted.
I bit my lip. ‘You’d have to drive slowly.’
‘Certainly.’
‘And I can’t be gone long.’
‘Fine with me.’
I followed him hesitantly over to the bike, a huge, shiny, black monstrosity that looked as though it had a life of its own. There was still time to change my mind. Right up until the last second if need be, I told myself.
‘Where’s your bag, by the way?’ I asked, thinking that if he was planning to have that huge thing slung over his shoulder, it would probably tip us both over.
‘You are concerned about the dead body inside?’
I gave him a sarcastic smile.
‘It is at my friend’s apartment. I will collect it later,’ he said, shaking his head to himself.
While I waited for Léo to find a second helmet I checked my ankle, slipping off my ballet pump and wiggling my foot around. It was still uncomfortable, but the pain was definitely easing off. I put my shoe back on and grimaced, they were soaked through and had started to leak; there was even brown sludge in the grooves between my toes. I crouched down to smear it off with my thumb.
‘Ah! Here,’ he said, after opening a compartment under the seat.
I stood up, taking my hair out of its bun and then putting it up into a neater, tighter one. I’d never even been on one of those little mopeds you zoomed about on in Greek holiday resorts because I’d always assumed that if I did, I’d be the girl involved in a fatal crash on the main road out of Kavos. As soon as I’d turned fourteen and had become more independent, going into London on my own and so on, Mum had kicked off her campaign to let me know that the world was a terrible, unsafe place full of evil people who were out to get me. She went on and on about all the bad things that could happen, telling me – in unnecessarily minute detail – about the awful stories she’d heard over the years, usually gleaned from either the local paper or the ‘real life’ articles in Take a Break magazine. I brushed them off at first, doing all the things she’d warned me about anyway, like getting off my face for seven nights straight in Tenerife when I went with Ellie and her parents, and accepting lifts from older boys who’d only just passed their tests. But after a while I began to see how much it was affecting Mum; she’d even cried one night when I’d told her I’d be back from Ellie’s at ten and hadn’t got in until nearly midnight. She’d wanted to keep me safe like any mother would, I got that. But in hindsight, I wondered whether there’d also been a part of her that didn’t want me to be out having fun. She was stuck at home, scrabbling around to pay the bills, while I still had my whole life ahead of me. I could travel the world and have a rewarding career and fall in love with anyone I liked. Before she’d met Tony, Mum had always felt hard done by and even now, some of that sadness had stayed with her. She just never seemed happy. It was as though she’d wanted more from life and was angry with herself for not getting it.
‘I’m really not sure about this,’ I said, my heart beginning to hammer harder in my chest.
‘What is it you are afraid of?’ asked Léo.
I looked around at the other motorbikes lined up next to us.
‘What if we have an accident?’
‘We will not.’
I nibbled on my thumbnail. ‘Nobody gets on a bike expecting to crash, though, do they?’
‘You think about death a lot, Hannah.’
‘I don’t,’ I said, although I knew I did.
He handed me the helmet. ‘If we imagined the most terrible things that could happen every time we step out of our apartment, we would never do anything, non?’
‘I suppose.’
I took it from him, swinging it about like a kettle bell. He did say it was the most efficient way to get around Paris. And the odds of surviving the journey were statistically in my favour.
‘Ok,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Let’s do it.’
I put the helmet on before I changed my mind. He fastened and tightened it for me, his fingers tickling the underside of my chin as he grappled with the clasp.
‘There. Ready,’ he said, shrugging off his leather jacket. ‘You must wear this,’ he said.
‘What for?’ I asked, noticing how everything sounded muffled now, as though I was underwater.
‘It can be windy on the back.’
I thought it was more likely to be in case I fell off – the leather would offer my skin some protection, wouldn’t it? I took it from him, anyway, slipping my arms into it. I could still feel the heat of his body on the quilted lining.
