But something weird was happening to Izzie in the next second, as if contradicting those words. No harm done? Actually she was trembling all over, because her mind kept producing these awful images of her smacking to the tarmac with a horrible crunch, of her flattened beneath the car wheels, and then her mum, dressed in black, doing proper ugly-crying at her funeral. Shit. That had been close. All the hairs on her skin were standing on end. That had been so close!

She tried to pull herself together, but it wasn’t happening. Her arms and legs had gone to jelly, her head was swoony as if she was about to fall over. ‘I . . .’ she stuttered and then it was suddenly really hard to breathe, however valiantly she gasped for air. ‘I . . .’

The woman gave her a sharp look. ‘Okay, don’t worry,’ she said, and put an arm around her. ‘You’re just a bit shocked. You’ll be all right in a minute. Take shallow breaths, get some air to your brain, that’s it. We’re fine, thank you,’ she yelled to somebody else in a voice that Izzie’s mum used sometimes, the sort of voice that said, Sod off, none of your business.

Izzie’s lungs were burning. Her throat seemed to be closing up. Her vision was pixelating, the woman’s lilac baseball boots turning grainy and weird as she looked down at them. Was this a heart attack? Was Fate having the last ironic laugh at her? You thought you had avoided being hit by a car – and then you died anyway. Ha!

But then, at last, with a gulp – a huge shuddering gulp – her body seemed to remember what to do again. Breath entered her lungs. She swallowed and unclenched her fists. ‘Sorry,’ she said again dazedly. ‘I feel really . . .’

‘You’re a bit wobbly, aren’t you? Listen, there’s a café right there – how about sitting down for a few minutes and having a drink, just until you feel better again?’

Izzie gazed in the direction of the blonde woman’s pointing finger to see a small cheerful-looking café, with benches and picnic umbrellas outside. People were eating pasties and drinking coffee from cardboard cups. Small children licked ice-cream cones while beady-eyed seagulls watched, heads cocked, hoping for a dropped cornet. Okay, yes, she could manage that. Except . . .

‘Um. I . . . I don’t actually have any money,’ she said in a low voice, feeling embarrassed. She didn’t have anything, she realized in the next moment: no phone, no money, no key to the holiday cottage; she had leapt on her bike and out of there as if she were some kind of crusading Tour de France contestant. Imagine if she had been knocked unconscious by the car and there was nothing to identify her. Mum would just have kittens, wondering what had happened.