There was a catch in her throat, and she didn’t dare to speak, as she remembered how she had fought her instincts, committing to an act of faith in Michael that went beyond all reasonable expectation. She found it hard, now, to understand why. She should have known better. She dragged her eyes away from Li’s and nodded. “Yes,” she said finally. “And I didn’t follow it.” Her hands were clasped in her lap, and Li saw her knuckles go white. “And I should have.”

They drove past the top of Wangfujing Street and into Wusi Street, which took them into Jingshanquan Street and past the rear gate of the Forbidden City. The car in front of them braked suddenly to avoid a child on the road, careening sideways into a trolley bus amidst a shower of sparks, before spinning across two lanes of oncoming traffic and ploughing into the cycle lane. Vehicles travelling nose to tail slithered into one another, locking fenders. All traffic ground to a halt, horns blaring, a trail of devastation across the road. The child who had caused the accident ran away, unharmed, down the far sidewalk. Several cyclists picked themselves off the dusty street, and started examining buckled wheels and twisted frames, shouting oaths at drivers, remonstrating with one another. Some were bleeding from grazes on arms and foreheads, others had torn trousers at the knee and shirts at the elbow. Above the noise of horns and raised voices and revving engines was a woman’s single, repeating scream.

Li had swung the Jeep side-on across the middle of the road and planted a flashing red lamp on the roof, and was now making an urgent call on the police radio. Margaret was shaken, but unhurt. She could hear the woman screaming, but couldn’t see her. She got out of the Jeep and started running between the vehicles and the people standing arguing in the road. There was a crowd gathering around the car that had slewed across the street in the first place. It had half mounted the sidewalk and buried its nose in the trunk of a locust tree. The dazed driver was staggering from the vehicle. Margaret grabbed him and looked at the wound on his forehead. He would live. The woman was still screaming, a babble of hysterical voices rising from the crowd around the front of the car. As she rounded the bonnet, Margaret saw the buckled remains of a bicycle under the front wheel and a woman trapped beneath the bicycle, gouts of blood spouting from a wound high on her left leg. She was screaming more in fear than pain as she saw the life flooding out of her. Li appeared at Margaret’s shoulder. “She’s going to die if we don’t stop that bleeding fast,” Margaret said. “We’ve got to get her out of there.”