Bywater yelped again, skipping my heart along at a quicker rate.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I tried, darting to the floor beside him, but he reminded me of a Barbie doll I’d abused as a child, his leg twisted spitefully past the point of repair.
Bywater began groaning steadily, unearthly sounds emanating from deep within his chest. The ashen expression on each of the other bikers’ faces galvanised me. Somebody needed to be in charge here.
‘Hannah?’ I yelled, turning to find Hannah wide-eyed and quite green beside me. ‘Hannah, call an—’ A clammy hand grabbed my arm.
‘Is it broken?’ Bywater demanded, his face filled with panic.
I was suddenly locked by desperate hazel eyes. I could feel the shock etched into my own expression and made a conscious effort to disguise it. ‘Just lay still, try to stay calm.’ Ignoring me completely, Rohan Bywater began trying to sit up. His foot tugged with the movement like a lifeless strand of flotsam not quite free of its mooring. I wasn’t convinced the nausea wouldn’t get the better of me after all.
‘Please! You need to stay still!’
Rohan looked at the bearded guy in the red helmet. ‘Billy, help me,’ he pleaded. Billy looked panic-stricken too.
‘What do you want me to do, mate? She’s right, you need to keep still until we can get you some help.’
Rohan hid his face beneath his arm again. ‘Have I broken it, Bill?’ Billy cast his eyes over his friend’s lower body.
‘It’s not looking good, mate,’ the shaggy spectator offered solemnly. ‘Bill, see how bad it is,’ he instructed.
Rohan put his other hand over his face too. He was coping remarkably well, considering. His pain threshold was incredible. I tried to second guess what the symptoms of shock were. ‘This has happened before,’ the shaggy one said calmly, casually nibbling on a stick of liquorice he’d produced from somewhere. I was processing that last statement when Rohan groaned again, clasping at the back of his knee while Billy began to cradle the twisted foot. ‘On three?’ Billy asked.
Still hidden beneath his arms, Rohan nodded.
I scrambled to my feet. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! On three, what? What are you going to do?’
‘Just do it, Billy!’ the shaggy guy said. ‘He’s ready, aren’t you, Ro?’
Rohan Bywater nodded again.
Billy took a deep breath. ‘One …’
‘Wait a minute!’ I squeaked. ‘What the hell are you doing? He needs an ambulance!’
‘Two …
I looked at Hannah for help of some kind but she was already shielding her eyes. She’d even shuffled back a few paces from the chaos unfurling in front of us.
‘Three!’ I snapped my head round as Billy sickeningly yanked hard on Rohan’s contorted leg. I watched, dumbstruck, as he pulled Rohan’s leg completely free of the trousers.
My stomach went into a death-roll. Rohan fell silent. Everything fell silent but the pulsing in my ears. So this was what shock felt like.
‘Good news, brother,’ Billy said cheerily, examining the contents of his hands. ‘You haven’t trashed it. But I keep telling you to watch the drops, man. It’s gonna hurt if you hyperextend.’
Billy was examining a metal prosthesis in his arms. At one end of it, Rohan’s black trainer remained neatly tied to its foot, the laces in a perfect bow. I eyed the scene. Rohan Bywater lay back, casually propped on his elbows. He was smiling at me.
‘You’ve … your leg,’ I managed. Hannah remained soundless.
‘Surprise.’ Rohan smiled.
His left trouser leg lay flat from the knee down. One of the others began to laugh. It was Billy, Bywater’s best supporting actor. The shaggy one with his mass of hair and Cat Stevens tee carried on chomping at his liquorice stick, Max – all blond and boyish – shook his head, allowing himself a smile. They were all waiting for my response.
I looked down at Bywater and couldn’t help myself. ‘You jerk.’
Behind me, Hannah gasped. I turned and stormed across the grass to where I’d discarded my satchel, somewhere near her feet. ‘Come on, Hannah,’ I snapped, stalking back towards the bank, trying to outpace the flutter of laughter breaking out behind us. Hannah caught up, laughing nervously beside me.
Bywater’s voice followed us over the meadow. ‘Oh, come on, don’t be mad. I was only pulling your leg!’
‘Ignore him,’ I instructed. We were nearly at the brow of the ridge.
‘At least I didn’t play dead!’ Bywater added. ‘You might have given me the kiss of life!’
He’d be dead a long time before then. I did not need this right now. I did not need joker clients adding to an already tense work situation. Who even does that? What kind of sicko thinks that’s funny?
‘I take it this means we won’t be giving him a fee proposal?’ Hannah enquired timidly, trying to keep pace with me. The colour had returned to her face. There was a very good chance that mine was somewhere past mid-pink too.
‘Oh, he’ll be getting one, Hannah.’ I was power-walking again. ‘First rule of business: if you’re client’s an asshole and you don’t want to work with them,’ I said breathily, navigating the soft earth in office shoes, ‘you price them out of the game.’
TUCKED AWAY IN the dining room, I didn’t hear the front door click to. It wasn’t until Mum had put her things down in the kitchen and given James’s flowers another approving sniff that I heard her at all. I closed down the stack of tabs where I’d wandered off task and had sporadically trawled the net for anyone else who had set a precedent for sabotaging their own adoption application this far in. Surprise, surprise, I hadn’t found anyone that self-destructive. Content that Mum wouldn’t stumble across my findings, I checked the time in the corner of my laptop.
‘Hey,’ I called through, ‘I wasn’t expecting you home until at least half nine.’ I began surveying the information that I was supposed to be concentrating on laid out on the screen in front of me. Rohan Bywater. Just reading his name was enough to make my neck bristle.
‘Hi, sweetheart. We finished early. Karen and Sue suggested we all get off early so we’re full of beans tomorrow evening.’ I saved my document and looked over my laptop at her in the dining-room doorway.
‘Why? What have the WI got on tomorrow? Fruity calendar shoot, is it?’
Mum shook herself out of her chunky calf-length cardigan and slipped the silk scarf she’d nicked from my room from her neck. ‘I wish. I quite fancy myself wearing nothing but a pair of currant buns and a smile. Alas,’ she sighed dramatically, ‘we’re preparing our argument for this ruddy council meeting at the community centre. We’ve got less than a fortnight and Karen and Sue want to rally as many faces as possible to show the officials that there are people, like us, who really do value the place. The community ruddy values it.’ Mum stopped folding her cardigan, an expression of illumination warming her features. ‘You should come, sweetheart! We could do with someone there to suggest how to give the place a facelift on a budget. They do it all the time on the telly, everyone coming together and chipping in with a few pots of paint.’
‘Earleswicke community centre? Ma, the place doesn’t need a facelift, it needs an identity. Or a bulldozer.’
Mum leant on the back of the dining-room chair