Much to her relief, she saw the spectator stands looming ahead, meaning they were about to pass the finish line. She almost wept with relief, only to scream loudly when Ade didn’t bring the car smoothly to a halt but executed a perfect handbrake turn that left her stomach in the top of her skull.

The world kept moving, even though the car had stopped, but Anna didn’t care. She scrabbled at the door handle, managing to catch it on the fourth try, and practically tumbled from the car and onto the tarmac.

She bent over, bracing her hands on her knees and gulping in great lungfuls of air. And then, very strangely, she began to laugh. And once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. It might have been endorphins or adrenaline or just plain old insanity, but she crumpled like a rag doll and sat on the track, laughing until she almost couldn’t breathe anymore.

Ade came around to help her up, his smirk finally gone.

It took two attempts to get Anna to her feet because she was giggling so hard, but when he managed to do it, their eyes met. He gave her a nod, and that little gesture might have contained a hint of approval. ‘You’re not dead, then,’ he said.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m not. I’m very much alive.’

Ade just grinned at her.

Anna sobered and narrowed her eyes. ‘No thanks to you,’ she told him, but instead of belting him around the chops as she’d planned to, she planted a big wet smacker on his cheek and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-Six

BRODY STOOD IN his garden, the scents and sounds of twilight all around him. Now and again a bat flittered between the nearby trees and the eaves of his outbuildings. It was past nine o’clock but, this far south in June, the sun still glowed behind the trees down the valley.

His phone rang and he pulled it from his jeans pocket. He no longer kept it on his desk until late in the evening, when he’d retire to his study to read and wait for it to light up. He’d got into the habit of keeping it on him. Just in case. And here was his reward. He smiled as he lifted it to his ear.

‘I did it, Brody! I actually did it!’

Brody smiled. Whatever it was that she’d done, whatever she was celebrating, he was glad she was sharing it with him. And by the sound of her voice, he was the first person she’d shared it with. A little flame of hope flickered inside his chest, but he snuffed it out. It meant something, but it didn’t mean that.

‘What did you do?’ he asked, but before her answer came, a thought flashed across his brain. ‘You used the voucher. You went to the racetrack.’

Anna gasped. ‘How did you know?’

‘I just… did. You had fun, then?’

‘No! I thought I was going to die!’ Anna erupted into laughter. Laughter with a slightly hysterical edge, it had to be said. ‘But I suppose, in a strange way, I did enjoy it. Not the actual experience, maybe, but the feeling afterwards.’