If Mum doesn’t . . .’ he bit his lip. ‘If Mum doesn’t make it, Leona’s all I got left.’ He turned and pointed towards the town. ‘She’s in there somewhere. Maybe she’s already on the road. I have to go and see.’
‘And then if we help you find her, we’ll go down and see London, right?’ asked Helen.
The boys looked at each other. ‘Jake, man? You wanna do that?’
He realised he couldn’t think of anything beyond finding his sister right now. As far as he was concerned he could promise them a trip to the moon, just as long as he found Leona first.
‘Sure, all right,’ he muttered.
Chapter 25
10 years AC
Outside Bracton, Norfolk
An hour later, they were on the A road out of Bracton on bicycles they’d pulled out of a toyshop, at just about the same moment Walter must have found the scribbled note Helen had sneaked back and placed in the yacht’s cockpit.
It was the only way Jacob could think she’d go, along the main road heading south-west, keeping herself to the middle of the road, and warily scanning the untidy gone-to-seed fields either side, the tall weeds and untamed bushes that threatened to encroach on the road from the crumbling hard shoulder.
He prayed she’d not been so lucky to find herself a bicycle to use, or if she had, that at least she wasn’t pedalling as hard as they were. He kept finding himself drawing ahead of the others, desperate to eat up the road ahead of him and find her.
Mid-morning he’d stopped yet again to wait for the others to catch up and to take a swig from a bottle of water in his shoulder bag, when he thought he saw some movement up ahead.
He squinted, trying to make sense of the uncertain distant dark outline on the road; something low and round. Glancing back he could see the other two, broaching a low hill, struggling to catch him up. He put the bottle back in his bag, lifted his feet off the road and cautiously rode a little closer until his useless long vision gave him something more to work with.
A wooden chair in the middle of the road and someone slumped on it, back to him.
Even from this far he recognised the slope of her shoulders. ‘Leona?’
She didn’t stir.
Please no . . . please no . . .
He pedalled furiously forward. ‘Leona!’ he whimpered, finally clattering to a halt a dozen yards away and tossing the bike down at his feet. ‘Leona?’ he called out again softly. ‘It’s me! Jake!’
This time he thought he detected the slightest movement.
He was taking the last steps toward her when she slowly turned to look round at him. ‘Hey,’ was all she said.
Jacob was about to reach out for her when he saw one hand resting in her lap, holding a knife, and on the wrist of her other arm the light and unsuccessful scoring of the blade; nicks and scratches that told of squeamish attempts at a decisive incision.
She laughed humourlessly. ‘You know me . . .’
He nodded.
‘Chuck my guts at the first sight of blood.’ She sighed and turned back to look at the road ahead, straight as a Roman highway. ‘I thought I’d just wait here a while.’
He knelt down in front of her; her eyes were over the top of his head and they remained on the flat horizon.
‘Lee,’ he whispered, reaching out for the knife in her lap. ‘Lee, can I have it?’
Her fingers tightened around the handle until her knuckles bulged white.
‘Lee?’ She was still far away. ‘Lee!’ Her eyes finally dropped down to look at him.
‘Sis,’ he squeezed her hand, ‘I . . . I need your help.’
She said nothing, but a lethargic curiosity made her cock an eyebrow.
‘I . . . my bike chain came off, Lee. Do you know how the shitting thing goes back on?’
She closed her eyes slowly and sighed. ‘Jesus, Jake. Can’t you do anything?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘No.’
She eased her grasp on the knife and he gently took it from her. ‘Not without you, I can’t. I’m rubbish without you.’
‘Always a dork,’ she uttered, and pressed out a wan smile.
He grinned, tears on his cheeks. ‘And you were always a stroppy cow.’
‘I know.’
Jacob glanced back up the road. Nathan and Helen had stopped their bikes a hundred yards short; sensibly figuring they ought to hold back for the moment.
‘Lee, you were always the strong one. You were strong for me once, do