Stephen couldn’t remember the way back to the Tube station, only that he needed to go down the hill. In any case he thought he might walk for a while, try and get his head clear. The other driver had been drinking, he knew that now; knew that it hadn’t been his fault. Yet everything was complicated by the fact that he’d known there was going to be an accident: he’d just felt it in his bones. He hadn’t pictured the car crashing, it wasn’t a visual thing at all, more like a sensation in the back of his head, a tingly kind of pushing. He kept getting flashbacks to the party, to lying out on the grass with Georgie, listening to the sounds of music and people’s disembodied voices. Out there on the grass the feeling had weighed down on him, a sense that something bad was going to happen. That’s why he’d been driving so slowly. Well, you couldn’t really drive fast, not on the banked, narrow lanes. But he’d been planning to take it gently, still, once he got on to the Truro road.

Was it possible, though, that the bad feeling hadn’t been specifically about the car accident? Could it be that the sense of foreboding had actually been because Celia was going to throw him out, bringing the summer to such a cruel and abrupt end? Or was it both? Did the feeling foretell the accident and then the accident bring about his expulsion? In which case, was more horrible stuff going to happen; going to keep on happening? Was it like a chain of bad luck?

He could feel his heart beating faster as this idea took root. First there was the feeling. Then the accident had happened. Then Nick and Celia had decided to make him leave. And now Helena – sweet, sunny Helena – had thrown him out too. Oh shit. Was it going to stop there, or was it just going to keep coming, the bad stuff? How could he make it stop?