31Above me, the nighttime gray color had bled from the sky. The fragile morning light was tinted blue, as if it were filtered through robin eggshell. At the top of the hill, I climbed back on the borrowed bicycle. The wind tore at my hair as I swooped down the incline. I felt the same exhilaration I’d known as a child, playing out my fantasies, racing my fat-tired Schwinn down country lanes. Casey to the rescue. Laughing as I sped toward danger. I’d become the reckless hero of my girlhood dreams.
I reached Totnes as a church bell chimed four times. The clouds on the eastern horizon had turned pink. I found the station and called the taxi service number posted beside the pay phone. The answering voice had the cigarette-ravaged rasp of all night-shift dispatchers. He gave the universal lie,
