Some people swarmed the car, while others shouted in agony, calling for help. I stood, rooted. The man beside me dropped my arm and leaned in to whisper into my ear.

‘Keep breathing. You’re okay,’ he said softly.

I was too stunned to reply.

‘Just take a breath. That’s why I’m here,’ he said. When I tipped my head for his meaning, he added, ‘To save you.’

I couldn’t speak so simply stood watching the chaos whirl around me. Seconds later an ambulance came and scattered the onlookers. Then the police arrived and with them more screaming as the shock that had silenced some, dissipated. Somebody bellowed something about the driver bleeding or being close to death. A man in shorts and a basketball vest was warning a teenager not to move a woman who was lying in a puddle of blood. But amongst all this activity, was I, frozen, staring at the point of impact. I had been standing at that precise spot. If the stranger hadn’t pulled me back exactly when he had, I would have been dead.

‘Thank you,’ I said and turned to look at him, but he’d gone. I scanned the crowds behind and in front, but the man had melted away as if he’d never been there at all.

3

Now

‘I’d like to start by asking you a bit more about how you found yourself there on that rooftop. How did you know her?’ He is reading from a page of notes decorated with scribbles. When he finishes the question he looks up, pen poised.

‘I told you. I’d never seen her before.’

‘Just take a moment and have a look at her,’ he says and slides a photograph across the table.

Her face smiles at me. The picture’s been taken on a sunny day in the park. The light squeezes her eyes nearly shut. And then with a metal thud I remember she is dead. ‘She is beautiful,’ I say. ‘But no.’

He flares his nostrils. ‘Her beauty isn’t going to be much help to her orphaned children.’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I say, quicker than I expect.

‘How did you end up there? On the roof?’ he says, looping around again.

The questions are too quick. I need to answer some, slow him down before I get myself into trouble so deep I can’t climb out. But that question isn’t straightforward; there are so many threads in the answer. The tapestry they weave, grotesque or charming, is the important thing. The picture that resolves behind the coloured yarn. But I can’t get there without drawing the threads together, and I don’t want to do that yet, do I?

‘Russell. It’s Russell, my husband, his building. Well, he works there.’

‘So, you were there with him, your husband?’