'Yeah, right,' she said, 'and I'm the Queen ofWhatever.'

'Sheba?'

'That too.'

The only vehicle that the car rental agency in Edinburgh had been able to provide Jackson with that he could drive one-handed -an automatic with the handbrake on the steering wheel -was a huge Renault Espace that you could have lived in if necessary. Espace -space. Plenty of that. 'Are you needing child seats?' the middle-aged woman at the rental desk asked him. 'Joy' her name badge proclaimed, like a new-age message. 'It's a family car really,' she said disapprovingly, as if they had failed to fulfil her criteria for being a family. Rarely had a woman been so misnamed at birth,Jackson thought.

'We are a family,' Reggie said. The dog wagged its tail encouragingly. Jackson felt a twinge of something that felt a lot like loss. A family man without a family. Tessa was ambivalent about children. 'If it happens it happens,' she said, although she was on the Pill, so obviously not as devil-may-care as she made out. He hadn't really broached the subject with her, it seemed too personal a thing to ask. They might be married but they hardly knew each other.

If he had been Joy, he too would have been reluctant to hand over a set of car keys to someone who looked as if he had just been released from prison or hospital or both. 'Absolutely against my advice,' Harry Potter said when he discharged himself. 'Be it on your own head,' Dr Foster said. 'You're a bloody idiot, mate,' Australian Mike laughed.

The bruises and the gash in his forehead made Jackson look more criminal than victim and the arm in a sling obviously disqualified him from driving in the eyes of any sane person so Reggie had unstrapped his bandages and daubed the bruises on his face with her Rimmel foundation, "Cos you look like you're on the run or something.' Generally speaking, Jackson always felt like he was on the run (or something) but he didn't bother saying so to Reggie.

With a cavalier disregard for the law he used Andrew Decker's driving licence which Reggie had produced with a flourish (,It was with your things'). Unfortunately, the fact that he had no other form of ID proved a bit of a stumbling block to Joy who frowned with discontent at his lack of proven existence.

'You could be anyone,' she said.

'Well, not anyone,' Jackson murmured, but didn't argue the point.

He could have caught a train, of course, except that he couldn't. He had got as far as the ticket office in Waverley Station (Reggie sticking to his side like a little limpet) before a wave of adrenalin caught up with him. The climbing-back-on-the-horse-immediately theory was all very well when it was just a theory (or even when it was just a horse) but when it was the non-theoretical prospect of a brutal iron horse in the shape of an InterCity 125, pulling horrific memories behind it, then it was a different matter.

In the hospital they had told him that he might never remember what had happened in the period before the train crash but that wasn't so, he was remembering more and more all the time, a patchwork ofunsewn pieces -the High Chaparral theme tune on a mobile, a pair of red shoes, the unexpected sight of the dead soldier's face when he had turned him in the mud. 'CARNAGE', said the newspaper headline they had showed him in hospital. It was mere luck that he was alive when others weren't, a momentary lapse in concentration from the Fates that had led to him surviving and not someone else.

The old lady with her Catherine Cookson, the woman in red, the tired suit, where were they? Jackson couldn't help but question his right to be on his feet (more or less) when fifteen other people were lying in cold storage somewhere. He had to wonder about his alter ego. Was the real Andrew Decker still lying in the hospital somewhere -had he walked away unscathed, or was his journey fatally interrupted? The name still rang a bell in Jackson's battered memory but he had no idea why.

He supposed that this was what they meant by survivor guilt. He had survived lots of things before and not felt guilty, or at least not in a way that he was conscious of. What he had felt for most of his life was that he was living on in the aftermath of a disaster, in the endless postscript of time that was his life following the murder of his sister and the suicide of his brother. He had drawn those terrible feelings inside himself, nourished them in solitary confinement until they formed the hard, black nugget of coal at the heart of his soul but now the disaster was external, the wreckage was tangible, it was outside the room he was sleeping in.

'We're all survivors, Mr B.,' Reggie said.

In Waverley Station Jackson found himself unravelling and for the first time in his life he started to have a panic attack. He staggered to a metal bench in the station concourse, sat down heavily and put his head between his knees. Everyone gave him a wide berth. He supposed he must look like a beat-up drunk. He felt like he was having a heart attack. Maybe he was having a heart attack.

'Nah,' Reggie said, taking his wrist and checking his pulse. 'You've just got a case of the screaming heebie-jeebies. Breathe,' she advised. 'It always helps.'

Eventually the black spots before his eyes stopped dancing and his heart stopped jack-hammering his ribs. He sipped water from a bottle Reggie bought at a coffee stall and felt himself returning to something like normal, or what passed for normal in the post-traincrash world.

'Let's get one thing straight,' he said to Reggie, 'this isn't another saving-my-life situation. Understand?'

'Totally.'

'Post-traumatic stress or something,' he muttered.

'Nothing to be ashamed of,' Reggie said. 'It's like' (she said the phrase with a flourish) 'a badge of courage. You pulled that soldier out of the wreckage, didn't you? Just a shame he was dead.'

'Thanks.'

'You're a hero.'

'No, I'm not,' Jackson said. I used to be a policeman, he thought. I used to be a man. Now I can't step on a train. 'Anyway,' Reggie said, 'the trains are all diverted, we'd have to get off, get on a coach, get back on again. A car would be much simpler.'

'Nothing?' Joy bulldozed on. 'No passport? Bank statement? Gas bill? Nothing?' 'Nothing,' Jackson confirmed. 'I've lost my wallet. I was in the Musselburgh train crash.'

'There aren't any exceptions to the rule.'

Having no ID was less of a problem to Joy than having no credit card. 'Cash?' she said incredulously at the sight of the money. 'We have to have a credit card, Mr Decker. And ifyour wallet was stolen then how come you have money?' Good question,Jackson thought. Jackson bared his lone wolf teeth in an attempt at friendly and said, 'Please. I'm just a guy trying to get home.'

'A credit card and ID. Those are the rules.' No paseran.

'Dad's mum died,' Reggie said, slipping her small hand unexpectedly into Jackson's. 'We need to get home. Please.'

*

'Phew,' Reggie said as they headed for the Espace. Jackson pointed the grey wafer of an electronic key at the car and it gave a welcoming beep.

Begging pathetically had got them nowhere withJoy. The fact that she had, that very morning, been made redundant (,Surplus to requirements,' she sneered, 'like every other woman of my age.') was much more effective. 'You can drive off into the sunset with the bloody thing as far as I'm concerned,' she said, but only after having given herself the satisfaction of arguing them ragged.

He used the grey plastic wafer to start the car and explained to Reggie how to put the Espace from 'Park' into 'Drive'. Reluctantly he admitted to himself that he needed her, he wasn't sure that it was a journey he could make on his own, and not just because she knew how to strap his arm back up again and put the car into drive mode.

Jackson eased himself into the driving seat of the Espace. It felt good, it felt like home. Driving with one hand didn't unnerve him as much as driving with Reggie Chase in the passenger seat. Half child, half unstoppable force of nature.