‘Don’t you ever wish you’d turned yourself in?’ Her words were daggers. I twisted away but she grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to face her. ‘Don’t deny it, Abi. I know it was you who killed her. You were the driver who didn’t stop.’ I tussled with her but she wouldn’t let me go. ‘That’s why you tried you kill yourself in our first year. Isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I wrestled my arm free from Grace’s grip and sidestepped her on the narrow path. Thunder crashed overhead and the rain intensified, running down our faces like a shower.

‘You’re lying!’ Grace shouted. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about! It took a while for me to put it together, but it makes complete sense. Your nightmares. The way you paint! Your first paintings. They were of this road, weren’t they?’ She looked me up and down as if she were repulsed. ‘It explains how you are. What you’re like. Why you bought her house!’ She stabbed me with the last sentence, each word a staccato jab of pain.

‘I’m going now, Grace. Back home.’ I pulled away.

‘If you were wondering, that’s why I didn’t let you die,’ Grace said, quieter now. Sneering. ‘I could have let you take those pills. Could have watched you froth at the mouth and die. But that would have been the easy way out for you. Wouldn’t it? That would have been the selfish, cowardly thing to do.’

I stopped walking and stood motionless. I had to concentrate on breathing: in, out, in, out.

‘You thought I was saving you, didn’t you?’ Grace scoffed. ‘But why should you get off so lightly? Don’t you think you deserve to suffer? You deserve to suffer a lifetime!’ She laughed bitterly, and I hated her more in that moment than I ever had before.

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ The words burst out of me like dynamite. ‘She shot out of nowhere! I didn’t even see her! She hit the car and… I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do!’ I sobbed. ‘I panicked! I was only eighteen myself! I was a child!’

Grace’s breath was coming hard. I could see her chest rising and falling; her nostrils quivering as she tried to control her voice. ‘You could have done something,’ she said levelly. ‘You could have taken responsibility. You could have held her hand. You could have made her comfortable. You could have told her she was loved. You could have called an ambulance and waited with her.’

‘There was no need for an ambulance.’ The words fell like a guillotine.

‘You drove off. You left her dead on the road.’

‘I was scared!’

‘Poor you!’