‘I’ll try,’ she said and then she dug in her bag, fished out her earbuds and turned the music on her phone to full volume. ‘The Power of Love’ flooded into her ear canals, shocking her with its volume, but blotting out the hospital sounds around her. It was from her Christmas playlist covering the decades. As she walked down the corridor she concentrated on her breathing; perhaps she was having some sort of mini panic attack. She needed to get out of here before they insisted on putting her onto a gurney and checking her over too.

She told herself she was fine; all she had to do was breathe. This anxiety rising up in her was only a reaction to the fright of almost being killed less than an hour earlier. Yes, she told herself, she was suffering from shock. That made more sense than thunderbolts and lightning from a complete stranger – no matter how unnervingly attractive he happened to be.

She raced from the A&E, through the ambulance exit to avoid any of the nursing staff and soon she was out in the freezing night air. The journey back to her flat was oddly depressing. The bus was half full of late-night revellers. Stragglers from the pub bundled up in coats and oncoming hangovers. The rest were like Liv, workers eager to make their way home after long shifts that had emptied them out of any Christmas cheer for a few more hours. The window beside her was wet, condensation from too many journeys seeping down along the cracked rubber at its base. The smell of damp coats and the disregarding faces of the other passengers absorbed in their phones only added to the heaviness that was settling in her stomach. And she couldn’t help wondering how Finn O’Connell was doing now.

The EMT was right, she decided as the bus pulled into her stop. She might as well make the very most of the Christmas holidays from here on in. She checked her watch as she made her way into the flat. Almost one o’clock. It would take about twenty minutes for Pete to swing by and collect her. She had packed her bags the night before, so all she really had to do was scoot around to make sure that everything was switched off, the place was secure and they could pull into one of the all-night garages to pick up coffees and sandwiches for the journey home to Ballycove.

Back at the flat, she rang Eddie to distract herself while she waited for Pete. Voicemail. He was probably tucked up in bed now after a night in the pub with a couple of his mates. No doubt he spent the evening sitting at the bar counter in the warm glow of catching up before the open fire in Flannelly’s snug, chatting about whatever they talked about when she wasn’t there.