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happily.
    ‘They still do share it, technically. Jack and I have been restoring it.’
    Jamie gazed at the car as the memories came flooding back. Some twenty years ago, Olivier’s father Eric had stumbled across the Bugatti on his travels, had phoned Jack in excitement, and the two of them had gone halves, getting it for a ridiculous price as it was in a shocking state of neglect. As gleeful as two schoolboys, they’d brought the car back to Bucklebury Farm, where Jack had spent a long winter restoring it to its former glory. Everyone had assumed they were going to sell it on, make a quick, easy buck. Perhaps that had been their initial intention. But when they’d taken it to a vintage race meeting at Donington Park to put it through its paces, they’d both been bitten by the bug.
    From then on, every weekend during the racing season, from April to October, Eric and Jack would dash off all over the country to take part in death-defying races and rallies and hill-climbs, leaving their wives to wonder if they would come back alive. Jamie remembered their jubilant celebrations if they returned with a trophy; the hours discussing tactics if they were defeated; the evenings her father spent in the barn, fine-tuning the engine – the roar that sometimes frightened the horses as he turned it over and over. It had been their joint obsession, and how it had suited them: two devil-may-care jack-the-lads at the wheel of half a ton of precision engineering, competing for nothing but the glory of winning. There was certainly no money in it. On the contrary, it proved a most effective way of burning a hole in both their pockets.
    Of course, after they’d fallen out that summer, the partnership had come to an end. As far as Jamie knew, the car had been shoved under a tarpaulin in the barn and forgotten. But here it was, a phoenix risen from the ashes.
    ‘Hop in,’ said Olivier. ‘I need to get some petrol. I’ll take you for a spin.’
    Jamie hesitated. It wasn’t so much the car as the sight of Olivier’s long, brown legs disappearing under the dashboard that made her uncertain. Then a rumble in her stomach reminded her that she was on the brink of starvation.
    ‘I was about to go into the village anyway,’ she said,climbing in. There was no door; she had to scramble over the side and slide on to the leather bench seat next to him. There was only just room, and for a moment she felt disconcerted by their proximity, then realized Olivier was far more interested in the car than the fact that her dress was riding up her legs. Nevertheless, as he flung his arm carelessly over the back of her seat in order to reverse, she leaned forwards slightly, anxious to avoid physical contact.
    ‘Don’t you men ever do any grocery shopping?’ she babbled, feeling the need to bring the conversation round to the mundane in order to bring herself down to earth. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to eat!’
    ‘We tend to go to the pub,’ admitted Olivier sheepishly. ‘It saves washing up. Hold tight!’
    The next moment Jamie found her breath quite literally taken away as he roared out of the courtyard and up the drive before turning out on to the road that led to the village. The seat was so low to the ground, her legs straight out in front of her, that the tarmac seemed to rush by only inches from her elbow. She could feel every manoeuvre, every bump, every gear change, filling her with a mixture of terror and excitement, and had to bite on her lip to stop herself begging him to slow down. When she dared to look at the speedo, she was amazed to find that they were only just nudging sixty miles an hour. Nevertheless, she felt herself pushing her feet on an imaginary brake as they took each corner, feeling sure they’d never make it, that they would leave the road and be foundin a tangled mass of flesh and steel. She prayed that Olivier wasn’t showing off for her benefit; that he knew what he was doing and that he respected the Bugatti’s