Barbara gave two toots on her horn as she swung the Volvo out of the driveway and down the hill to the town. She was still smiling with pleasure at what Nick had said and at the compliment from her daughter.
It was a vote of confidence but, then again, they were probably both biased. Having said that, she had taken care to ensure that she was looking good and she was feeling good. It had been a very interesting night and today she was going to give them her best shot.
'They will need their heads examined if they don't hire me,' she thought as she spun the wheel at the main road and headed east past the shops.
In her head she thought through all the questions she might be asked and she hoped she wouldn't be overcome by nerves when she finally got right down to it. It had been a long time since she'd worked, but her qualifications were still good and she wasn't the nervous type.
Out through Westbay, past the allotments, round the slight curve at Milligs the Volvo ran smoothly. The streets were quiet, and there was hardly any traffic on the road. As she'd passed by the shops, there was nobody on the street, but that didn't register.
Barbara hoped that Paddy wouldn't tire Nick out, but she was sure her endless chatter and boundless enthusiasm just might. She was glad they'd taken to each other. Since that first day they'd met in the car park, and she'd suddenly been overcome with anger and fear when she saw the stranger talking to her daughter, she'd been thinking about him a lot.
He was different, naturally, from the boy she'd known, but there was something about him that was still the same. Yes, she had invited him home last night, then invited him upstairs and she had no regrets.
She knew there was a bond between them, and if she talked straight to herself she would have said it was too early to have that sort of feeling. Maybe she wasn't ready to talk straight to herself just yet. She had Paddy and she had the rather remote elderly man she called father, but there was something missing from her life and it wasn't just a man.
Something had been missing from her life for a long time. And recently, she had begun to think that blank space, that nagging empty spot, would be empty no longer. Barbara had not pondered the compulsion that had sent her back to her home town again after almost a lifetime away.
She had just done it, without questioning the drive. There were some things in life that just demanded to be.
Out across the low bridge over Strowan's Well, and the power steering took the sharp turn as easy as thinking, then rolling swiftly along the road, Barbara was glad she had come back.
Ahead the road took a lazy left and a matching right. The trees whipped past on either side, heliographing sunlight through on the firth side, darker on the north. After the second bend, the Kilmalid Bridge hove into sight. There was a sign before it giving the usual exaggerated picture of a hump-back bridge, which in this case wasn't too exaggerated. You couldn't see oncoming traffic from either side. Barbara slowed slightly, but the Volvo had enough momentum to whip over the hump and down the other side with an exhilarating stomach wrench like a roller-coaster ride.
Barbara was still thinking her thoughts when something flashed over the trees ahead and to the right, catching her eye.
The big white bird wheeled in the air, stalled and spun on a wingtip, then it back-beat twice before folding its wings and dropping from the blue sky.
It dived straight towards her.
Barbara had seen the flash of white and her eyes flicked back down to the road again. She didn't see the big bird swoop until it was only yards from her windscreen, and by then it was just a blur of white flashing in front of her eyes.
Instinctively, her hand left the steering wheel and came up to protect her eyes and her head jerked back against the headrest.
The gannet hit with a crashing thump that instantly snowed out the windscreen and covered her with bulleting glass.
In slow motion she saw the yellow spear of the beak stab right through, followed by the head and two brilliant blue eyes. Blood spurted all over her white suit and she screamed.
The eyes stared at her and the blood gouted, squirting from a jagged hole in the bird's neck and out through a beak that was opened in a wide, silent gape.
Suddenly, the whole window caved in, and that beak lunged towards her. Barbara's other hand came off the wheel and she jammed her foot hard on the brake. The car started to fishtail, swiping the hedges on either side.
Barbara was still in the world of slow motion, as if unaware that she was in a car, and that the car was hurtling along the Kilcreggan Road. Her eyes were transfixed by that gaping yellow and red maw and those piercing blue eyes that were now turning white. The beak opened wider, impossibly wide, as if it was going to rip the head in two. A thick splash of blood flew out on to her face.
And then the dead eyes turned pure white, and she heard a sound that was like a croak, but it was more like a low, vicious laugh.
The Volvo hurtled forward, despite the screeching of her brakes that left twin black snakes of burnt rubber on the road.
Even then, Barbara might have walked away from this, but for the petrol tanker that was rumbling around the corner ahead.
Jim Semple was taking the bends at a fast clip. Not too fast on a narrow road like this, but enough to give the satisfaction of handling his machine.
Up high in the cab he could see pretty well ahead over the hedgerows except for the places where there was a stand of trees, but he never drove beyond his limit. He'd been driving heavy goods, low loaders and tankers for a quarter of a century and had never had a bad one yet, touch wood.
Anyway, this high off the road, if he did hit somebody, even head on, the chances were that he'd be way above any trouble.
He whistled as he drove his first load of the day. He'd pump out at the BP station in Kirkland, then across to the little station at Luss where he'd shed the rest of it, and have a nice ploughman's lunch at the bar of the hotel and then back to the terminal.
Jim got round a tight bend, just skimming the hedge, and then powered up the gears on the straight, feeling the big engine pulling ahead, fairly shoving the load. At the end of the straight there was a left bend and he dropped down again at the right moment, keeping the revs just right, and giving the air brakes just a touch, just a hiss. Then he put the foot down and hauled on the wheel and was round this one, then same again for the right, smooth and powerful, the brakes sneezing hard to take the weight.
And just as he was getting into the far straight the Volvo shot right out of nowhere, fish-tailing straight at him.
Jim's eyes flew wide at the same time as he jerked on the wheel and hit the brakes. The Volvo was careering from side to side. Its front window was frosted right over, and there was something like a sheet, all white and red, fluttering across it.
He yanked hard on the wheel, pulling the tanker right into the hedge, and he could feel the big tyres digging hard into the soft soil on the verge and the rat-a-tat of small branches clicking off the nearside mirror.
The car shot past on his right and he flicked a glance down. There was a face at the window and then it was past. Jim hauled back again at the wheel, whipping the tail round, hoping it was moving fast enough in the swing to miss the car.
He felt, rather than heard, the jarring bump as the car's front headlamp and bumper clipped the rear wheel.
In the Volvo, Barbara's world whirled dizzily. There was a crump and a sickening wrench, and then she was upside down. The seat belt socked her right across the chest, and everything started to lurch around, as if her eyeballs were loose in their sockets and she was shaken like a rat.
Then came a huge, devastating thump as the dashboard and steering wheel came up and smashed her. Inside her chest she felt something break and there was a sickening pain in her head and everything spun away to nothing.
Jim Semple saw the Volvo in his rear-view mirror.
He didn't see the car hit, but as soon as he felt it, he shot a look at the glass and saw it spin crazily, like a ballet dancer, on one headlamp, and then it tumbled out of sight.
All this had happened in about the space of one second and Jim was still hauling on the big wheel and still standing on the brakes to try to get his speed down. The nearside wheel, still in the soft earth at the side, hit a rock and jerked hard to the left. Jim felt himself losing control.
A sick feeling swept through him.
The big tanker ploughed down twenty feet of hedge and tore a gouge out of the grass as the momentum carried it forward.
Ahead, the hump-back bridge loomed into view and Jim wrestled the wheel around. He felt the cab swerve back on to the right line and almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief. But that last wrench out of the verge had been enough to set the back of the tanker just off line and the big wheels dug up the grass as the full load began to shift.
The rear clipped a small ash tree and broke it off at waist height and then it just started to slide, jack-knifing round, demolishing the fence.
It started to roll just a bit and then the cab spun round on its pivot, hit off the main tanker, bounced and its wheels left the ground as the lorry started to roll.
Jim Semple was thrown against the roof of the cab and back to the floor as the tanker flipped over and down the gully, crashing through the saplings just at the edge of the bridge.
There was an immense crash as the cab hit the big black pipe, and then it was all over for Jim Semple. The pipe just broke in two, and the two-foot wide high-pressure stream of gas caught fire with a huge ker-whump that melted the glass and roasted Jim Semple to a cinder in seconds.
Five seconds after that, the whole tanker caught fire and the bowser, toppled under the bridge, exploded in a fireball.
The vast upward pressure lifted the whole arch in one devastating blast and scattered the rocks and stones all over the road.
By the time the fire engines arrived, the cab of the tanker had completely melted, and there was hardly anything left of the ruptured tank. There was nothing left of Jim Semple.
It was another ten minutes after that before anybody noticed the wrecked Volvo in amongst the trees. Two paramedics clambered through the undergrowth and found Barbara Foster lying in a pool of blood underneath the crushed steering wheel.
It wasn't until they got her into the ambulance that they found a heartbeat, weak and fluttery, but a beat all the same.
It took them less than half an hour to get her to the Western Infirmary, and by that time her heart had stopped beating three times.
A team of doctors worked on her for four hours, cutting, stitching, injecting, draining.
She had shattered her left thigh.
There was a bad fracture on her skull, and severe swelling of the frontal lobe of her brain. She had been given twelve pints of blood and had four splinters of bone removed from her lung.
Added to the multiple lacerations, contusions and abrasions, Barbara was in bad shape. But she was alive.
She was also in a coma.