I had a chance to say no. I knew I should. But the part of me that had been chasing a story since I was twenty-one said yes.

‘Sure,’ I said quickly. ‘Always. Let me know what you want to do.’

At bedtime I realised Effie’s efforts at breakfast meant we were out of milk, forcing me to unearth a reluctant James from the studio. Leaving the kids glued to Alice in Wonderland, I drove to the garage at the end of the lane.

Pulling my cardigan over my head, I dashed through the driving rain to the kiosk, plucking a carton of milk from the fridge. As I joined the queue, there was a sudden screech of tyres on wet tarmac and a collective gasp. A small sleek silver sports car had taken the corner too fast, swerving to miss a motorbike, mounting the grass verge outside the garage and coming to a juddering halt inches from the Entry sign.

She looked like the mermaid from Alicia’s book of myths, the young woman who flung herself from the car, and she was wailing. Her soaked green dress flowed round her body like seaweed, her face streaked with black kohl, her long hair dark and tangled under the fluorescence of the petrol station forecourt. The rain drummed down and the queue shifted and muttered as one organism, succumbing en masse to horrified fascination – for a moment, I couldn’t drag my eyes from her either. I stared out of the kiosk window at this beautiful barefoot woman weaving unsteadily between the petrol pumps, the silver Porsche abandoned behind her, driver’s door flung wide. In this light it was hard to see where the rain ended and her tears began.

I looked away, discomfort palpable in my chest, gazing instead at the damp and rather dirty neck in front of me, its owner now halted in her laborious counting out of coppers as she too stared, the silver raindrops on her beanie glistening.

‘She’s pissed out of her head,’ the burly man in the next queue muttered. ‘She don’t know what she’s doing. Look at her.’

‘Someone should call the police,’ an elderly woman said, her whiskers twitching, her face a sagging mask of disapproval above her ill-fitting mac. ‘It’s a disgrace.’

The mermaid raised her face to the heavens and howled into the night, her words incoherent. There was something so primal in her voice that all the little hairs on my arms stood on end. I pulled my old cardigan tight around me and willed the cashier to hurry up.

‘You should call the police. They should, shouldn’t they?’ The man looked to me for approval as he folded his newspaper, but I found that I was speechless, as round-eyed as one of my own children.