They are the branch that falls on to the track and derails the train; they are the cigarette that starts the house fire, the one drink too many that pushes a night into chaos.

That’s what he was to me. I knew it the second we locked eyes, the second before I was hit by the car.

Not badly. He was too fast for that. Our eyes met, I knew, and he acted, sending the car veering away from where I stood. Still, the running board clipped my leg and sent me spinning to the ground.

For a moment, everything was a fog of dust, the world reeling around me. The car’s wheel was five feet from my head, and in its mirror-bright hubcap, I saw a face.

A boy was looking back at me. He had ragged dark hair and a fading bruise across his nose. There were purple rings beneath his eyes and blood on his lip. I spluttered out a breath and the boy did the same, droplets spattering the ground. Blood and sand …

All around, voices were shouting, feet scuffing. My English wasn’t as good then, but nevertheless I picked up some of what was being said. The British soldiers were angry, pointing at me and shouting, their candy-coloured faces redder than usual. I heard the words beggar and lying, more than once. I was afraid they would punish me for getting in the way of the car, and tried to rise, only to feel a stab of pain in my leg. I cried out, and fell back to the dust.

That’s when he appeared. Leather shoes like browned butter, the hem of linen trousers as pale as the car itself, silver flashing from his cuffs, and finally his face: his saint’s face, brought down from its altar.

It wasn’t flawless; nothing truly beautiful is. It was tanned, not the rough, burned tan of the British soldiers, but bronzed – that’s the word, bronzed – as though burnished by an artisan. As he took off his hat I saw brown hair, slicked gold by sun and pomade. Finally, I looked into his eyes, peering over the dark lenses. They were brown as well-worn wood, like the butt of a gun, like the handle of a knife.

‘Boy,’ he said in English. ‘Are you hurt?’

Above the dust I caught his scent, musk and soap and something rich I couldn’t name, and when he reached out a hand to me, I flinched away, ashamed of my grime. The movement made me cough, and in utter horror, I saw a droplet of blood from my lip land on his shoe.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the blood is what did it. You see, when he saw it staining my lips and teeth, he was afraid that my insides had been damaged, that I might die then and there on the road, and he might be held accountable.