They landed the air ambulance in Peter Trevenna’s field to take me to Truro hospital. I remembered very little about the whole thing except feeling terribly sick, which was, they later told me, the concussion I’d sustained when the car hit the tree. I vaguely recalled Alex being in the helicopter too – I thought he might have even stroked my hair, but when I woke up the next morning in the hospital, it was my father and Jenny beside my bed.

‘Maggie –’ my dad leaned forward to kiss my bandaged forehead, ‘thank God!’

‘Hello, darling,’ said a beaming Jenny, her usually immaculate hair hidden under a scarf. ‘I’ll go and get some coffee, shall I?’ She vanished down the ward with a tactful swoop of her poncho-type affair.

‘We must stop meeting like this,’ I joked feebly, and my father gave my hand a little squeeze. He looked grey and exhausted and old, and I felt the eternal twinge of guilt.

‘I really would like to know what’s been going on,’ he said weakly, and I thought he was trying not to cry.

I remembered the utter hatred in Seb’s eyes the previous night and the venom with which he spat my name out. With a huge shudder, I thought of being in bed with him the first time we’d been to Pendarlin – the other time. And then I saw Digby’s small body as Seb flung him at the tree, and my eyes began to fill.

‘I don’t suppose –’ I gulped hard. ‘Digby, he –’

My father squeezed my hand again. ‘I’m so sorry, Mag. He’s – well, Alex found him when he went back last night, poor little chap. Alex has, you know, taken care of things.’

‘Oh God.’ I stared at my father, tears brimming now. ‘I don’t understand any of it, Dad. I don’t know what I did to Seb, I really, really don’t. He was just so – so bloody mad last night.’

A dough-faced nurse plodded up to the bed. ‘Morning there, my lover.’ She popped a digital thermometer into my ear cheerily. ‘And how are you doing this lovely day? Bit sore, my sweet?’ Turning to read the display, the morning sunlight caught the fine hairs of her bleached moustache. I smiled feebly at her and wiped my eyes.

My father cleared his throat tentatively. ‘There’s someone here who’s very keen to see you, Mag.’

‘Alex?’ I asked, brightening.

My father eyed me warily. ‘Not Alex, no. He’s had to get back to Bristol. He sent his love, though.’

‘Oh,’ I mumbled. ‘Of course.’

‘No, a policeman called Fox has been here since first thing.

He wants to take a statement as soon as possible, apparently.’

My father must have noticed my shiver.