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to start losing height in about seventy minutes,’ Dr D replied. ‘I’d expect Tracy to deviate from course and make the mayday call shortly after, so I’d say we’re looking at a landing in ninety minutes.’
    ‘Well, my boys are all ready and waiting,’ Schultz said, as he cracked a slight smile.
    ‘Just be sure they don’t move until I say so,’ Dr D replied firmly.
     
    Ning’s day had been tough. Fast driving required intense concentration, her butt was numb from the car seats and her calves ached from working foot pedals. But she was a fast learner and she was starting to feel like the bashed-up Volkswagen was an extension of her body rather than some weird alien device.
    Ning put the car into third and hit the gas as they rounded one of the track’s sharpest corners. When you got speed and position right, the car was close to skidding off the track and the steering wheel felt light, as if the car was gliding over the tarmac.
    When Ning hit the straight, she clicked the gearbox neatly into fourth and floored the gas pedal. It was dark, with the only light coming from the yellow cones produced by the headlamps and a misty orange glow from streetlamps on a nearby housing estate.
    James was in the passenger seat and looked at his stopwatch. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Look for the cone, you’re four seconds up on Alfie’s time.’
    As the speedo hit 110mph, Ning spotted the single orange cone in the middle of the broad tarmac straight. She braked hard and, once the nose was past, dropped down into second gear, reached for the handbrake and yanked the steering wheel hard left.
    Ning had practised handbrake turns for an hour that afternoon, but her success rate was barely half and dread shot through her body as she grabbed the lever between the two front seats.
    The combination of a tight turn and the handbrake threw the back of the car out violently. If Ning got braking and steering right and put power back on at the right moment, the Golf would pivot on its front wheels and change direction in under four seconds. But get the move wrong and she might veer off in any direction, or stall the engine and stop dead in a cloud of tyre smoke.
    Twenty miles per hour was a little fast, and Ning didn’t get the steering exactly right. She had to correct the steering to avoid hitting the cone as she straightened up, and there was a nasty moment as the engine choked, but she was gentle on the accelerator and nursed the car back up to cruising speed.
    Alfie was in the back and didn’t much mind that Ning was inside his time. After a tough day’s practice the pair had bonded and Alfie screamed and pounded his seat.
    ‘Nailed it, Ningo!’
    The final part of the run took the car off the track, down a single lane, past a line of run-down pit garages and into a car park behind the trashed main grandstand. Cones marked out a winding course, but in focusing on where she was going, Ning failed to see an old lady on the apex of the turn in.
    She swerved, but not soon enough to avoid demolishing the dummy and sending a hail of polystyrene clumps against the windscreen. A large white chunk squealed as it got trapped under the car, followed by a loss of traction as it went beneath one of the rear wheels.
    After clipping a couple of cones, Ning cut her speed for the final weave across the car park. She stopped at a white line, then threw the car into reverse, looked behind and reverse-parked into a rectangle marked out with bales of hay.
    As soon as she’d stopped, Ning cut the engine and gasped as she tugged at her crash helmet. Sweat was running into her eyes as she put the helmet in her lap and looked across at James.
    ‘Good news, bad news,’ James said, smiling as he showed Ning the face of his stopwatch. ‘The good news is that you were five point three seconds faster than Alfie. The bad news is there’s a ten-second penalty for killing Polystyrene Pauline.’
    ‘I wasn’t expecting her there ,’ Ning explained,