I thought desperately of the drink tucked beneath my chair. I could see Amanda with her stopwatch. We must be nearing the break now, please God. I could feel myself beginning to sweat again as I flicked in and out of Fay’s words. The truth was – and how Renee would have loved this, should I have cared to share it with her – the truth was, the accident was too agonising to recall.

‘And I was travelling back to London to see my boyfriend, really excited, you know how it is when you haven’t seen them for a while.’ The audience ah-ed again. They loved a love story – though they definitely preferred a fistfight, given the choice.

‘I’d just walked up and down the coach to use the loo, too much tea, you know.’ She smiled up at the audience, the audience smiled fondly back. This girl knew how to work it. ‘I saw Maggie there when I passed, she was asleep.’ She turned her headlamp   eyes on me. ‘Sleeping like a baby, you know.’

My skin prickled. I didn’t remember ever having seen this girl before. But I suppose I had been – absorbed. I looked down at my hands.

‘And I kind of knew then that she was my future.’

My head snapped up in horror. What?

‘Call it intuition, if you like. Then I heard this woman scream, and we swerved violently. We – the coach, well, it started to tip, straight away, to go right over, you know. And that – that was it, really.’ There was a tiny catch in her sweet voice. I looked down, my stomach rolling with the memory. My tissue was in tiny bits over my good knee.

‘The coach just, you know, flipped, onto its back, you see, right into the other lane, you know, right into the oncoming traffic. And it wasn’t till – till after that we knew three horses had got out of a field next to the motorway, somehow the fence had come down and they were on the road, poor things.’

The audience clucked with admiration at her benevolence. A little tear escaped from one thick-lashed eye and trickled slowly down her porcelain skin. ‘The coach-driver didn’t have a chance, poor man.’

Renee asked, very quietly, ‘Did he –’

Fay shook her head mournfully. ‘No. He didn’t make it.’

Renee clasped her hands together across that magnificent bosom. ‘Sadly Fay is quite right, ladies and gentlemen. Tragic Stan Quentin didn’t survive the horrific accident, along with eleven other poor souls that awful night. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say’, big pause, sad smile, small dip of head, ‘each and every one of them is in our prayers.’

Frantic nodding from the audience. A few loud sniffs. Renee neatly changed angles for her close-up in Camera One.