And then she woke up.

2

‘It’s okay. It’s over. It’s just a dream,’ Pip whispered to herself, repeating the mantra she had been desperately clinging to for the six months since the accident. Slowly, inch by inch, she pulled herself round to consciousness as her breathing levelled out and her heartbeat began to return to normal. She could feel her pyjama top sticking to her shoulders. The damp sheets beneath her were already growing too cold and clammy to sleep on.

Was this her life now, Pip wondered, being woken every night as her mind replayed the accident on a never-ending loop? It had been six months, and yet the dream was still as vivid as if she had hit the boy yesterday. And each time, she woke at exactly the same moment. It wasn’t the shock of the impact that ricocheted her from sleep into consciousness, although she could still feel the thud of the boy’s body as he hit her bonnet. No, the last thing she saw before she snapped awake was always his eyes, wide and staring at nothing. Those eyes haunted her, day and night.

Gradually Pip started to focus on the familiar space of her childhood bedroom. How had she ended up back here, after all those years trying to get away? She had been gone for over a decade, but the room still looked as it had done when she was eighteen. The baby-pink walls were speckled with dark Blu Tack marks where photos and pictures cut from magazines had promised her a life beyond the farm, and her bookshelves still bowed under the weight of teenage paperbacks and folders stuffed full of A level notes. When she was here, it felt almost as if she had imagined the life she had created in London, or that it had happened to someone else. It felt as if it was floating further away from her with every passing week.

She heard a door creak open and then the soft pad of footsteps on the landing.

‘Pip? Are you okay?’ her mother asked in hushed tones through her closed door. ‘Can I get you anything?’

Pip cursed under her breath. Why couldn’t her nightmares be silent so she could keep them to herself? She imagined her mother lying awake in the dark next door, just waiting for her terrors to make their nightly visit, her father snoring gently next to her, oblivious.

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring and not irritated. ‘Go back to bed.’

She heard her mother creep away, the bedroom door opening and then not quite closing behind her. Was this what her future looked like now, with her unable to make it through a night without reliving every moment of the accident, and her mother watching over her like a hawk? How was that a future?

But what did she expect? Pip had taken a life, and for that it was only right she should forfeit her own. The inquest had found her to have no legal responsibility for the boy’s death; it had simply been a tragic accident, but that made no difference. She knew what had happened was her fault, and she couldn’t imagine ever being able to forgive herself. Guilt was her constant companion, never once leaving her side, so she couldn’t forget, even for a second, what she had done. And her life, destroyed by panic and guilt, seemed a fair price to pay. A life for a life.