With a Zero at its Heart. Charles Lambert

like a doll across and down and in front of his own bicycle, which tears at his back as his forehead skids along the road. Blood, blind.

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      She closes both eyes as soon as the bicycle begins to move at speed. She freewheels down the hill, the road the narrowest ribbon beneath her feet, a great rush and a darkness, a counting as far as she dares before she opens them. She is shaking with the wonder of her courage and the risk of it. Forty years later her son sits in a car at night, the lights turned off, and he is driven along a fen road, straight as a die, his eyes half-open, half-closed, by a woman whose eyes are entirely closed, and they are both laughing as hard as they can until she pulls up at the kerb and is sick into her lap.