In the train carriage, she looked out of the rain-spattered window and tried to squeeze the tears back in. A stout woman opposite her in an enormous hat offered her a handkerchief, but Verity took out her own and pushed herself closer to the window. The train passed two horses grazing in a field next to the sidings. When she got home, she would take Gyps out and ride and ride. She’d put her face into his mane, feel his unquestioning love for her. She would ride and not come back. This was nonsense of course, but the feeling of something bursting inside her was real.

Out of the window, her eye caught movement. One of the horses was chasing the train, his tail flying out behind him, the other following.

She thought of Jack speeding ahead of her on his bike the first time she saw him after the Midsummer party. It had been late July, after the town carnival. The holiday season was in full swing and she was avoiding the woods.

Sick of mooning about the house, she’d been at the end of Leafy Lane, approaching the corner of Dogger Lane and the Pilchard pub. She was putting her cardigan around her shoulders when she saw Jack. He was standing side on to her, leaning against the wall of the pub, smoking, wearing a brown leather US Air Force jacket. He was an arresting sight, incongruous in his American clothes next to the old terraced houses. He was scratching the side of his nose and twitching it as if it irritated him. There was the terrible motorcycle, the cause of the destruction. How could he bear to get back on that thing after the accident? Instead of acting quickly and ducking back up the lane to hide, her feet stuck to the ground. What would he look like now? She remembered the bloodied face on the rain-slick driveway and, with grim curiosity, steeled herself to be repulsed. Would he look like one of those soldiers returned from the war with their faces half torn away, the kind one turned away from, too late? And as she was thinking this, her legs moved and brought her within two feet of him.

‘Hey,’ he said, turning to her with a wide grin, before she had a chance to say anything. ‘I thought I might see you.’ Across his nose and cheek, a purplish, jagged line had ripped his once unblemished flesh. Although it must have faded it was still so striking, so incredibly stark against his pale skin, she recoiled, and the smile that had responded automatically to his boyish grin stuck fast on her face like a mask.

‘Look like the elephant man, don’t I?’