“It’s an automatic,” Lucas says. “Easy.” He does a slow loop of the yard, explaining the machinations of the enormous machine, demonstrating how easy it is, how it drives itself really, all I have to do is hold on. He comes to a stop in front of me.

“No,” I say. “I couldn’t possibly...” Lucas shrugs, turns the engine off.

“What time will your wife be back?” I ask him.

He shrugs again. “It could be five minutes. Or several hours. Or tomorrow. You know what babies are like, yes?”

“I do.” It feels good to know something with such authority. This is something I know. The unpredictability of babies. Kate’s labor took twenty hours and she was a tiny slip of a thing. Anna, a bruiser with an enormous head, shot out in forty-five minutes.

“If she is not back after lunch, I will ring a friend in Épinal and ask her to tow your car.”

I need to think.

THINK.

I think about what I know. I know I can walk back to the lake. Which will take me over an hour. Or I can wait for an hour until lunchtime is over and try and nab the village’s one taxi. Or I can wait for the Wise Woman to return from bringing the baby. Which could be a matter of minutes or next week.

I look at the motorbike.

In my mind, I see Iris. And my girls. And Brendan. All standing there, looking at me with their arms folded. None of them are in any doubt as to what I will do next.

“Automatic, you say?”

When Lucas smiles, his furious demeanor eases and a tentative boyishness settles on his face. I was right about the brown eyes. “It is...how do you say...kid’s play, yes?”

I nod, for who am I to correct his mostly excellent English? Besides, his meaning is clear, if misguided. Riding a motorcycle can most certainly not be classified as child’s play.

“But what about insurance?” I ask.

“Open insurance,” he says.

“I could damage it.”

“Then I would repair it.”

“I could get injured. Or die,” I tell him.

Lucas shrugs his enormous shoulders. “When it’s your time, it’s your time,” he says.

“Are you not worried that I might drive away and never come back?”

“No,” he says.

I step towards the bike. Now there is another worry, which is a good distraction from the worry of the motorbike itself. This worry involves my dress and its inability to accommodate the flinging of my leg over the bike. Tentatively, I raise my leg, but the confines of the dress permit it to rise only halfway to the saddle.

Lucas bends and grabs two enormous handfuls of his dungarees at the knees and hitches them up his legs, revealing a pair of massive, hairy ankles that swell into sturdy calves. He glances at me to see if I get what he’s getting at. I nod, turn back towards the bike, and bend to grab the hem of the dress, hitching it above my knees. In this way, I am able to swing my leg over the seat. I grip the handlebars and my feet find the metal platforms I presume are for feet. There’s a chance my knickers are visible, but luckily, the terror overrides everything, including worry about undergarments and their visibility to the general public or otherwise.