Last night the horror of the crash and the strangeness of the man had seemed like an indelible thing. But now in this sanitised office space, the whole scene evaporated, as if the tonal greys of the walls rejected something as frivolous as a stranger saving me from certain death – the idea too silly for the dead air of a mediocre solicitors’ firm.

The lights fizzed up above, setting my teeth on edge. I opened up another electronic file and skimmed some witness statements to take my mind off the buzzing. There was a part in the file where the claimant had drawn his road traffic accident as rectangles colliding on the exit of a circle. I needed Alice’s help.

‘Alice, can I have your cars?’ I called across the room.

She looked up from her screen. Alice was often mistaken for being shy, as if that flame hair needed all the oxygen there was. But she wasn’t shy. She just didn’t like people much and didn’t understand small talk. For pleasure she read court judgments, dissecting bodies of law into sinew and skin.

‘Sure,’ she said and walked over with two matchbox cars she’d pulled from a drawer.

‘How,’ I said, spinning my screen so that she could see, ‘exactly does that car there hit that one on the front nearside from that trajectory?’

She took up the cars and began tracing the journey. ‘Well, if,’ she began and then stalled. ‘No. That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Here,’ I said, taking the cars. One was a red Ferrari and the other was an old blue Capri. My father had a Ford Capri once, so I always took the time to handle it whenever I could. I improvised a possible route on the desk when, without warning, the man’s face returned. Just his smile at first. Then the intense eyes blinking away the sun. The vision of him was so vivid that it made me start. I didn’t know what had triggered it.

Did it have something to do with the model in my hand? Did he drive a Capri? There was something there on the fringes of my memory.

‘You okay?’ Alice asked. From this distance I could see a silver hair working its way out of the flames.

‘Yes – I just,’ I said, and for a moment I almost told her everything about the evening before, but instead I handed the Ferrari back to her. ‘Can I hang on to this for a bit?’ I asked, keeping back the Capri.

She raised her eyebrows at me and returned to her desk, squeaking gently to herself as she did.