Matty leant over, stomach and throat spasming, the pain monumental. Nothing came out.

‘You’re OK,’ Brigid said, there with a hand on one shoulder.

‘It wasn’t my fault.’ The words emerged in a whisper.

‘I know.’

Matty waited for her to say she had to pick up the phone now. That she was sorry it had to be like this, but it was the right thing to do.

‘Do you want a drink of something?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘A hot drink.’ She looked resolute, and almost ethereal.

Forehead, filled with blank space. ‘Why are you helping me?’

‘Because you were attacked. Weren’t you?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t mean to. I thought he was going to—’ The words were whittled to tiny points.

‘I know,’ she said again. ‘You might have died. Don’t try and talk if it hurts.’

‘I have to go.’ Another grotesque half-whisper.

Brigid put her hands between her knees. ‘You said yourself, the van’s distinctive. I’m not saying it was spotted. It was pretty tucked away. But just to be safe.’

‘You could take me. Take me to a station. Or an airport.’ The last place he was seen was the pub. Visions of being recognised at a desk, descriptions put out, an official holding a finger up and talking quietly into a phone as the police rushed up.

She nodded slowly. ‘I could. Though you’ll be leaving the van in that case. You could, of course you could, but then I’d have to deal with it.’ She sniffed, a detached sound. ‘Stay here for a few days, lie low, give those ribs half a chance. It’s quiet round here.’

Exactly, Matty thought. It’s quiet. ‘I’m noticeable.’

‘Not so much.’ She managed to say it in a way that sounded like a compliment. ‘Did anyone see you? Anyone who might blame you?’

Dale’s friend, in the pub. The barman. Others in the pub, though they’d seemed absorbed in their meals. ‘I don’t know.’ A hand, up in the curls. ‘I don’t know.’ An uncontrollable shiver.

‘You’re safe here, Matty.’ Her look was frank, and comforting. ‘Keep your head down for a couple of days. You need to rest.’

***

Lie low. Matty lay in bed, lungs and throat on fire. Dale, found in the bogland by a dog-walker or a farmer, or police dogs after the report of the car. He’d driven away, grown dizzy, crashed. Drifted onto the bogland. Bleeding from his arm and side onto leaves and mud. Eyes open. Eyes shut.

Matty got up and found the road map. The place where he’d been found was three or so miles from the lay-by where everything had happened. The same long road.

It had gone past retching. The feeling, the knowing, had sunk into something tight and small, a fist deep in the stomach. A feeling that could never go away. The dead man.