They ran together out onto the driveway. It was dark now and a steady drizzle fell. The driveway made a tunnel of darkness. The hanging lights looked forlorn without the chattering couples illuminated beneath. From inside the Hall came the low, slow hum of the final tunes of the night.

‘What did he say?’ She looked around her as if the empty scene could give her some answers.

Peter peered at her quizzically. She must sound desperate. ‘Just that someone’s been hurt. Two chaps, out on the road. Bad crash, apparently.’

‘One of them or two of them?’ She tried to make herself sound calm. One, Peter thought, but he didn’t know which one. The man who found them, out for an evening drive in his recently purchased motorcar, was in the Hall now, making a telephone call. Someone else from the dance had run out to the scene of the crash. He was bringing them back, Peter said. There was nothing they could do. She had an image of a bloodied head and a broken, limping body. It alternated between the two of them. One of them. It was only one. It shouldn’t matter which one it was. Yet she knew with a nauseous inevitability that she ought to be concerned about Arthur. She had been kissing him just a few hours ago! But the face of the injured man in her head would not rest on Arthur. It kept turning into the bright-haired American.

‘God, will you stop pacing up and down, you’re making me nervous,’ said Peter.

‘Shut up, Peter.’ She lit a cigarette, hesitated, then offered one to her brother.

‘Did you get these from Jack?’ he said accusingly.

‘I might have done. What do you care?’

His long body visibly bristled and she saw a flash of pain on his face. He did care. She scrambled in her head for something to say but nothing materialised. Then from the end of the driveway tunnel came the noise of feet on the gravel.

From the gloom, two men appeared on the drive. They were holding up another man, hanging down between them like the carcass of an animal. His hair hung limp, orange-red in the yellow pools of light. Blood dripped onto the gravel in neat red dots.

She must have called out his name because Peter grabbed hold of her. He held on fast and she remembered almost tipping forward but she didn’t hear herself saying anything. One of the men carrying the body looked up. It was Arthur. She caught his eyes and there was anger and hurt in them. She saw immediately what she had done, in her thoughtless, idiotic way. A gust of rain blew across her face, clearing her head, and she knew she mustn’t act like a fool. She broke from Peter’s grasp and ran to Arthur and held onto his arm.