This must mean, if it really had been David that I had seen when I first went to the garage door, that the whole accident had taken an infinitesimal amount of time; but they say that time seems long to drowning men, so why not to a woman with her legs squashed by a car?

When David arrived things began to happen: he came running over, a crowd began to collect on the pavement and he and Wyndham and a man out of a baker’s van managed to heave that huge monster of a thing a couple of inches off the ground, so that I could finally move. I stepped out, or David pulled me out, I forget which, and then I fainted.

I came round a few moments later, lying on my bed, to the sound of Wyndham telephoning for the doctor. David was sitting on the bedside chair. I shut my eyes again quickly and said:

“Don’t ring for that doctor, send for someone different, please.”

“Don’t be silly,” said David, and there was nothing more that I could do.

It turned out that I had not done anything really terrible to my legs, though it was a long time before this consolation was offered to me, and there was sufficient mess for me to worry for a good few hours about amputation. I had injured one of my kneecaps in a very nasty and painful fashion, and my legs from the thigh downwards were covered in the most appalling bruises I have ever seen. I think that they wanted to take me to hospital, but I would not leave the children. It was the same doctor, and when he came I cried and cried and kept saying that I was sorry, as though he really had been my father, and as though a moral error had been committed, discovered and punished. Throughout the day I could hear Wyndham and David in the next room talking about me as though I were dead. Wyndham kept saying things like, “I could never have known she’d have moved like that, but I should have been watching more closely. I admit I wasn’t watching,” and David kept saying, “It’s not your fault, for God’s sake, don’t apologize, it’s not your fault. She should have realized. It’s not your fault.”