Helena and I had been going to a party and I’d just passed my test. I was seventeen to her nineteen. In the country you learn to drive at a young age, unless you want to be dependent on your parents, or dreadful public transport, so Mum and Dad were not unduly concerned when, one night, they saw us both off. Helena was in the passenger seat, having promised not to drink and to drive us both home. The party wasn’t her age group, so it was less of a big deal for her. I was at the wheel, dressed up and excited. We’d literally barely left our lane, we were scarcely a mile from home. And it was his fault, luckily for me, the motorcyclist’s. I don’t mean luckily – there was nothing lucky about that terrible night – but he flew across the T-junction when it was my right of way, and I was travelling quite slowly. And then he didn’t really stand a chance. In my darkest moments I still see him, somersaulting fast through the air in black leather, and then plastered against the windscreen, his face, through his helmet visor, towards us. I still hear Helena’s piercing screams, her hands over her face, as I sat shocked and silent beside her.

After that, it’s a bit of a blur. Police cars arrived, sirens blared, blue lights flashed. My parents arrived, white-faced, in the fading summer dusk. I remember a police station in the local town and a kind female detective, my parents beside me. Helena sobbing quietly. Then nothing, really. It was the end of the summer holidays and I went back to school for my final year to take my A-levels. My friends were kind, sympathetic, but I found I couldn’t talk about it. Didn’t want to. And I couldn’t for some time. Not when I went to university the following year, where I thought it would be a relief for people not to know, where I could turn to a new chapter in my life, to be someone else; but in a way, it felt almost worse somehow. I felt as if I was hiding something. Deceiving everyone around me.