‘Hey, Kath, didn’t I see you with that jerk the other day?’ asked Tom. ‘What’s his name again?’

‘The only jerk around here is you.’

‘Forgotten his name. Great big guy. Arms like a monkey.’

‘You’re the jerk. And you’re drunk.’

‘I wish.’

‘Leave her alone,’ I said.

‘What’s it to you?’ said Kath. ‘Think I can’t defend myself?’

‘Dunno what I think.’

‘We women are incapable of doing anything without you, is that it?’

‘I never said that.’

‘Do you two always have to ruin everything? It’s Saturday night,’ said Tom.

I’d have liked to punch him in the face, sitting back there with his face half in shadow and a beer wedged between his knees. It was always like this. He’d start it, I’d just join in, but I’d always get blamed for everything. We were supposed to be best friends, though, and I probably didn’t want to destroy the myth. A gust of wind slapped the windscreen, and for a moment I had the feeling something heavy had fallen from the sky right onto our car, right here, in the deadest part of the deadest town in the world.

‘Summer’s over,’ I said.

‘We’re almost out of beer,’ said Tom.

‘I’ve had enough,’ said Kath.

We drove around for a bit. Westwards down the approach road out of town. No one followed us. No one came the other way. We were the only light, the only living thing for miles. The wind whipped the rain across the asphalt, and at the roadside the earth seemed to be boiling.

Something shot across the road in front of us, and there was a muffled thud. I was catapulted first forwards, then to the side; something hard slammed into my chest, maybe the steering wheel, maybe the gearstick, I don’t know, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. Then I was sitting upright again. I was breathing, but it sounded weird, a hollow, dark bubbling, and I was in terrible pain. I looked around. The car was tilted forwards and the bonnet was buried in a field. The engine had cut out, but the headlights were still on. The radio was dangling from the dashboard on its wires, hissing. The windscreen had shattered, and it fractured the light into thousands of tiny jigsaw pieces. Something was dripping onto my hand, but it wasn’t beer.

‘What was that?’ I heard Tom say in the back. He was sitting there just as he had been a few moments ago. But there was a long, gaping wound in his cheek, and blood was pouring out at the bottom and running down his chin.

‘A fox or something,’ I said. ‘Not a person, anyway.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Too small. And there’s no one around out here.’

‘You sound weird.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s that on your shirt? Is it blood?’

Kath, who’d been sitting slumped over with her face on her knees, sat up. ‘He’ll kill me!’ she said. ‘He’ll kill me!’

‘Oh, come on, they’ll be able to fix it.’