Page 122 of My Kind of Happy

‘You mentioned a brother but I never realised … Oh, Fearne.’

A second later I was wrapped in his arms, my head buried in his chest. His chin resting lightly on my head. I felt my body melt into his; it felt so good to be held.

‘I lost him, Sam and it broke my heart,’ I said, my voice muffled against his shirt. ‘I still struggle to understand how it could have happened, his nickname was even Steady because he never speeded.’

‘Steady?’ Sam pulled away from me sharply, his eyes boring into mine. ‘You’re Steady’s sister?’

I nodded, alarmed by the strength of his reaction. ‘You knew him?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he stared at me in disbelief. ‘He was my motorbike instructor.’

For the next half an hour, we sat out in the garden with cold drinks, filling in the gaps in both of our stories, side by side at the patio table.

‘You’re always in the car with the Hogg Property Services logo on the side,’ I said, stretching my bare legs out in the sun. ‘You’ve never mentioned that you had a bike.’

‘I don’t use it very often. The bike is my way of letting off steam. And today I thought it would be a good surprise.’ He winced. ‘How wrong can a man be. You’ve talked to me about your brother before, but it just didn’t click that you and Steady were related.’

‘You weren’t at his funeral, were you?’ I remembered the crowd of bikers who’d come to mourn. I hadn’t been able to look at them, let alone speak to them, as though they were somehow jointly responsible for what had happened.

He shook his head. ‘Sadly not. We were staying with Pandora’s parents in Lanzarote last summer when I heard the news about Steady. It rocked the biker community. I think we all moderated our speed after his accident. I even thought about him as I rode over here, thinking that he’d approve of biking on a day like today when the sun is cracking the flags.’

I gave him a reluctant smile. ‘That’s true. He’d have been up and off at dawn for a ride to the coast somewhere.’

‘And you?’ Sam studied my face. ‘Would you have gone with him?’

I blew out a breath. I’d avoided this sort of question for almost a year. The truth was that even though I’d never been tempted to have my own bike, I’d loved riding pillion on Freddie’s. I’d trusted Freddie all my life, I’d trusted him with my life, but now he was gone.

‘Probably.’ I admitted. ‘But bikes are synonymous with danger for me now. I don’t know what possessed him to ride along a road renowned for accidents in the wet. It was such an uncharacteristically stupid decision on his part.’

Sam’s eyes softened. ‘In hindsight, yes, but I guess at the time he thought the risk was worth it given the urgency.’

For a moment I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak.

‘What urgency?’ I said, wide-eyed. ‘Do you know where he was going or where he’d been?’

Sam stared at me and an expression passed over his face that I couldn’t read. ‘Well … yes, I do.’

My heart began to pound; was I finally going to hear the truth?

‘Where? Who was he seeing?’

‘OK. But, Fearne …’ He took my hands in his and held them tight. ‘I need you to know that this story doesn’t have a happy ending.’

‘Tell me,’ I stammered, ‘whatever it is, I need to know.’

He took in a sharp breath before speaking.

‘When I was taking my bike test, last spring, there was another guy doing it at the same time called Rav. We got on really well. He’d recently been declared cancer-free after having treatment for lumps in his oesophagus and he and his girlfriend were expecting their first baby. So he’d decided to buy a bike to celebrate both life events. We both passed our test within days of each other.’

‘What a relief for him to get the all-clear.’

‘It was.’ Sam nodded, stroking the backs of my hands lightly. ‘But the next thing I heard was via a text from Yasmin to say that the cancer was back and Rav was terminally ill. They were both hoping he’d be alive to welcome his baby into the world. But in the meantime she was organising some last things that he wanted to do.’

‘Oh, that poor man.’ My heart ached for them. ‘And what was it he wanted to do?’

Sam shot me a cautious look. ‘He wanted to ride his bike one last time but he wasn’t strong enough to go by himself. Time was running out, Rav was getting weaker. So Yasmin called Freddie and asked him to come straight away.’

I gasped. My mind raced ahead, filling in the gaps. ‘And he did.’