‘We had this fight, then I ran off. I was wasted and she was worried what I’d do and so she chased me down the stairs, she was trying to pull me back into the house. We stumbled out onto the street, it was dusk, the sky was this sort of purplish grey, I remember that. It all looked so surreal. She was telling me to come back and she was shouting at this guy to fuck off, and then it got nasty. She wouldn’t stop telling me to come in and I tried to push her away but she just wouldn’t get off. She wouldn’t leave me alone. We kept arguing down the street, and when we got to the corner I ran across the road. I shouted something at her. I don’t know what it was I said … but it must have stunned her because she stopped. Suddenly, in the middle of the street, she just stopped running as if the thing she’d been chasing had just disappeared.’

Saying the words, I feel that same sense, the dread stretching out in front of me, like a cave.

‘Then she looked up, it was like she already knew. As if she’d been given some warning. She turned as if to face it, the car …’

Tears run down my cheeks.

‘He was driving so fast. She was standing just in the bend of the road … I closed my eyes.’

I whisper these final words as if too afraid to say them aloud. ‘I didn’t see the crash, but I heard it. I heard the screech of brakes, a sort of crunching sound. As I turned, I saw her body, it was up in the air …’

‘Isobel …’ Maureen grabs my wrist, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It is.’

There is a pause and then I say it again, ‘It really is. You don’t understand. I heard it. I heard her body hit the floor. It was so loud … It was almost like … I can’t describe … it was like I felt my own body hit the pavement, and I couldn’t move. And then the car, it just drove off. He stopped for a moment, I thought he was going to get out, but he just kept going.’

My voice drops and I look at the floor, my soul drained.