The knife had come from the wood block in Pierce’s kitchen. He was holding it close to his hip, pointed out, forward, at the young man in front of him. I could see no reason in the writer’s eyes, only frothing animal impulse.

‘Pierce, listen to me,’ I began, but I had nowhere to go.

‘I created you!’ Pierce shouted, with enough ragged force that the young man quailed a little; for a moment I imagined he might be asking himself if he really was a figment of Pierce’s imagination, but it was a quite natural reaction in the face of an unpredictable, distraught person carrying a knife. Even if he was having doubts about his own existence, I found mine melting away. I knew at once that Pierce had invented nothing: Night Traffic was the whole truth.

But Pierce sincerely believed that he had invented it – and if he sincerely believed that the people in front of him were no more than phantasms that he, the author, could summon and dismiss, then we were all in terrible danger, not least the man presently under the point of the knife.

‘Pierce, they’re real, they’re all real,’ I said.

It was too late. Pierce moved, the start of a charge, intent on carving an edit into his ‘creation’. And I moved, incapable of subtlety, astonished that I could be doing the same act twice in less than a minute, no more than a lump of dumb matter, an obstruction that could be placed in the path of disaster.

We crunched together, a clumsy heavy-coated mismatch of joints and weights, and I felt the knife between us, like a toothpick caught in closing jaws; then we hit the ground, Pierce on top of me, and the knife, caught between us, did not turn one way or another but went rigidly in.

Pain, at my lowest rib on the left side. A point of light.

Pierce rolled off me, and I put my hand to the hurt, expecting worse pain and torn cloth and slick warmth. No.

The three men had backed away, nonplussed at what had happened. One was hissing, ‘Fuck sake! Fuck sake!’ to himself.

A white shape swooped over me, slicing through the smoke still erupting from the burning car and sending it coiling and curling. I felt the downbeat of wings against my face.

The shape burst into light. I was dazzled, and night was made day. The long, cold grass around me was made green and lush, and every detail of the scene was made perfect. Was I that badly injured, to have come to the Elysian field? I felt fine, not dead, but how should the dead feel but fine? Standing, I thought I might see that I had left my body behind; but it had stood with me, we were still very much connected. I was alive.

I winced into the light and shielded my eyes. Rotors whined.