My body aches. The bed is soft and warm and I long to rest but I’m too afraid to close my eyes. Every time I do, I see her face. Hanging there, a second before the bang. Her eyes are wide, staring into mine. Her eyebrows two neat wedges. Her mouth, the lips painted deep red, parted.

Then the almighty crash, the crack of the airbag exploding in my face, thumping me in the chest, my own limpness, thrown back and forth, as helpless as one of those stuffed crash dummies catapulted to and fro in slow motion.

A moment later, utter silence. Life was suspended. Traffic stopped. A high-pitched screeching inside my ears blotted out the living world. The dead world too.

I asked one of the paramedics, ‘Is she alright?’ My voice was a croak.

‘Don’t worry, flower. She’s fine.’

Their hands were thick and strong and worked briskly over my body, checking, assessing, easing me out, lying me flat on a stretcher. Above, the arc of a streetlight against low cloud as I was carried away from the wreckage. I wondered at it. A perfect curve. So graceful. The bending arm of a dancer.

They thought I was asking about Gracie, still ominously silent in the back. They lied, of course. She was anything but fine. That horror was still to come. But at that moment, in the madness of the accident, when the world was still spinning and I barely knew who I was, where I was, I actually meant her, that girl whose face was lodged in my head, that complete stranger.

Later, Richard told me.

‘It was instant,’ he said. ‘That’s what the doctors said. She didn’t suffer.’

What did they know? They didn’t see her eyes. The horror in them.

‘Don’t think about her.’

How could I do anything else? I couldn’t help it. I had to keep asking. All the time the doctor was examining me. How old was she? What was her name? I needed a name.

‘Don’t, Ella.’ Richard looked desolate. ‘Stop it. There’s nothing you can do.’

He was finally forced to tell me about Gracie when he put me in the taxi outside the hospital. He was all apologies, flustered as he handed the driver a bundle of notes to get me safely home. Sorry he couldn’t come with me. So sorry. He ought to be looking after me. He knew that. But Gracie – well, it wasn’t looking good. They weren’t sure she’d make it. His eyes were red.

He bent low to kiss me before he closed the taxi door.

‘You’ll be alright?’

I didn’t answer. I felt sick. Little Gracie. What if she died? Dear God, what if?

‘It’s not your fault, Ella.’ He read the wretchedness on my face. ‘You do know that?’

Wasn’t it?

---

There’s a tree outside the bedroom window. Its bare branches are sharp and scrawny, a scribble of black lines on white sky. A few more months and the buds will come again, leaves will clothe it. Sunshine and nests and greenery and she, that girl – they say her name was Vanessa – she won’t see any of it. All the plans she made, whatever they were, will never happen now.

Downstairs, the bang of the front door. I lie very still and listen. He goes into the kitchen and the fridge opens with a soft suck. The click and fizz of a can opening. Beer, probably. Or Coke. I wait.

His tread is steady on the stairs. When he comes in, I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. Why? I want so much for him to hold me. I want to cry on him and tell him it’s me, it’s all my fault, if Gracie dies, it’s because of me. I want to let it out and be comforted but I can’t. Instead, I build a wall. It’s what I do.

He stops moving and, in the silence, I feel him watching me from the doorway, wondering if I’m awake, unsure what to do. I hold my breath. Inside, I’m screaming: come to me, hold me, my love, please. The silence stretches, taut as skin.

Then it tears and he turns away, retreating, and it was my own doing; I’m pushing him away, and I shake, lonely for him. Why shouldn’t I hurt? What right have I to be safe and whole when Gracie struggles for life and that girl, Vanessa, is already cold?

Later, much later, the mattress shifts as he lies beside me. A warm arm threads itself round my waist and I shudder and sigh. He kisses the skin between my shoulder blades. Not a sexual kiss, just tender. Just kind. I don’t blame you, the kiss says. It’s not your fault.

Gradually, his muscles relax and become heavy and I wonder how he can sleep, after all that’s happened, knowing Gracie may not be alive in the morning.

He has come home to me but she will be there in the hospital, that dreadful woman. Sitting at her daughter’s bedside. White-faced and frantic and making a martyr of herself. She will blame me. I feel it already. It’s just one more reason to hate me. To wish I were the one who died.

I lie very still. My neck throbs. Richard breathes steadily against my skin, warming it. I am afraid to sleep and I keep myself awake for a long time, reading the shapes in the shadows. I don’t understand. How is it possible that, just this morning, a girl called Vanessa was alive and now she is not?

It terrifies me. Not the dying itself but the darkness, the oblivion that waits for us all. After all that’s happened, after all I’ve suffered, how could it not?

Was she afraid of it too? Did she have any premonition that death was stalking her? When she put on her lipstick, slid into the seat of her car and switched on the engine, did she have the slightest sense that she was starting an endless drive headlong into nothingness?