In silence we packed up the cottage and the car and then we headed back to London. Somewhere along the way the car began to smoke and stutter and then the rain began and we argued until we both began to scream, and I told him he’d broken my heart, cliché or none, he’d stamped all over it with his big shambolic feet and it could have been so different but it wasn’t. And I told him I couldn’t see him any more, it was over – until he sorted himself out, at least – and he was so angry his bashed-up face was white with rage and he said fine, and I nearly said I didn’t mean it because I’d never loved a man the way I loved him – but then the AA man turned up and dropped me at the coach station because the car was fucked. The car had died just like our stupid love, and Alex wouldn’t look at me as the tow-truck pulled out again, he just glowered into space, although Digby panted happily through the windscreen at me as if he were just popping round the corner; and I climbed onto that packed coach in Bristol with a dead feeling in my heart and head. And then the coach took me to my terrible fate.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

My chin hit my chest and I jerked awake again. Two teacher’s ticks before my tired eyes; two hypnotic slashes that went back and forth, forth and back – although the rain had long since stopped. Turning the wipers off, I opened the window wide for a blast of night air, realising how fast I was approaching the spot. I pulled onto the hard shoulder.

The bitter wind whipped my short hair into peaks as I got out of the car. A supermarket juggernaut thundered by, sounding his horn, and I staggered in the wind-tunnel before wrapping my coat tight around me and stumbling up the bank in the dark.

Lest we forget: to the brave souls lost on that tragic night.