I turn the handlebar, as Lucas demonstrated. The engine roars into life, its vibrations charging through my body like a warning of horrors to come. I think I shriek, although if I do, the sound is lost in the throb of the machine. The sound is all around me and inside me. It is like the whole world is made up of nothing but this sound. The thrum through my body is enormous and sort of intoxicating. I have to shout to be heard. I ask Lucas to show me the important things again. He wants to know what the important things are. “Eh, the brake,” I say.

The brake seems vital.

I prize one of my hands off the handlebar and adjust the mirror. I glimpse my reflection as I do and it takes a moment to realize it is me. I look...most unlike myself. It could be my hair, a lot of which has escaped my ponytail and crowds around my face, which, I notice, has lost its pasty pallor, despite my heavy hand with the sunscreen. I try to stop smiling, but I can’t. It’s probably a nervous thing. My jaw aches from the width of it. The blue of my eyes has darkened to black with the extent of the dilation of my pupils. Then there’s the pink flush along my cheekbones I get when I’m embarrassed. Except I’m not embarrassed. I’m terrified. But also exhilarated. My breath is high and shallow, which happens when I’m anxious. Which I most certainly am. But it’s not my usual brand of anxiety—cold and clammy. This one feels hot. Feverish almost. If I open my mouth, I think I will laugh and the laugh will bear the edge of hysteria. So I don’t open my mouth.

I clamp the helmet on my head and manage to say, “I’m ready,” and my voice doesn’t sound hysterical, but it does sound small within the confines of the helmet and my throat, constricted by the hand of terror itself.

Lucas nods and walks back towards the workshop and everything about him is unconcerned. His loping gait, his tuneless whistle.

Now I am a middle-aged woman, alone behind a shed in rural France with a motorbike between her thighs.

It seems vital that something happens.

I turn the handlebar and the bike jerks forward. I brace myself. Brake. Turn the handlebar. Jerk forward.

In this way, I manage to get to the roadside. I indicate, look left and right as if to check for traffic even though there is no need, this being lunchtime in France.

My terror blunts at the edges, soothed by the steady click-click-click of the indicator. The absence of traffic.

Perhaps blood will not be spilled.

I don’t quite gun the engine but I do enough to encourage the motorcycle away from the garage, onto the right side of the road, wobbly at first, then steadier as I speed up. Everything blurs as it whizzes past us—for the motorbike has assumed a personality of its own—and I am tempted to shut my eyes, the better to ignore it, but of course, I don’t do that.