Now turning me down would have been an unkindness, so he relented. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Oh all right. But go easy on me.’

‘No. You have to really race. Like it counts. Because it does!’

‘Sure.’ He handed Mum his school bag. She was already carrying mine, her phone in the crook of her neck.

From ahead came another crash of bottles; from behind violins surged, full of engine revs.

‘To the lamp post,’ said Mark.

‘Yeah, the one outside the house.’

This wasn’t our first race; we both knew where the finish line was.

‘Want a head start?’ Mark asked.

‘No.’

He shrugged. ‘You say go then.’

I looked up at him. He had our father’s sharp features, softened by Mum’s long eyelashes and wide mouth. The sun had brought out his freckles. His eyes were green, smiling yet somehow serious, giving me my due in the moment.

I took a deep breath, a step back, shouted, ‘Go!’ and hurtled off.

I really had improved. A growth spurt, or something new in my technique, had helped me win the sports-day race with ease, just as I would beat Mark now. I heard my feet pounding the pavement, felt my arms pumping me forward, was amazed by the sense of my own acceleration. My reflection flickered in the windows of parked cars. I was in the lead. I could hear Mark behind me, but as we rounded the postbox on the corner I was still holding him off. The pavement widened here. I took the middle line, ran for all I was worth, convinced I could beat him yet at the same time expecting him to surge past me.

The lamp post was in sight, right outside our house. To get to it we had to cross the street. Approaching the pavement-dip, our footsteps hit the same rhythm, but his stride was longer. I could sense him coming up alongside me, hear him breathing hard, gaining with each step. We were flying. In that moment I both loved and hated him with all my heart.

Somewhere behind us the man in the Mini had finally managed to swing around the recycling van. With his violins and his groomed beard and his convertible with the roof down in the sunshine, he must have felt freed, entitled to accelerate too. But I didn’t know that. I didn’t hear the engine pitch rise, or feel anything other than the straining of my own body at its newfound top speed. I knew nothing until I jinked off the pavement ahead of the crossing and heard an almighty screech, felt something huge and solid swerving behind me, saw the reflected light from metallic green paintwork bouncing off windscreens as the Mini careened sideways into the rear wheel-arch of a parked Ford Fiesta, ramming it into Mark.

He wasn’t killed instantly. When I realised what had happened and turned back to see the driver of the Mini climbing out of the passenger door, and Mum running as fast as she could up the pavement, shedding school bags as she came, Mark was still conscious, though pinned between the crushed Ford and a garden wall. I reached him first. He looked confused. His free arm struggled weakly as he fought for breath. It was as if I wasn’t there. His eyes blinked straight through me and then his head slumped sideways against his shoulder, and Mum was screaming, and the Mini driver, to his credit, was tugging in vain at the Ford’s back bumper. He was wearing pointy shoes with no grip. The last thing I remember is seeing him slip and sit down in the blood pooling beside the car.