‘I think so,’ she said. She turned sideways to look at Pete. He had a huge raised lump on the side of his head and a gash down his right arm. But he was awake, staring straight ahead with a dazed expression on his face. She was about to ask him if he was okay when she became aware of something: The silence. There was still silence. It was eerie . . . why was it eerie? What was it that she wanted to hear? And that’s when it hit her. Why couldn’t she hear . . . crying?

Her thoughts flew to the back seat. To her babies. Her twin girls. What the hell was she doing just sitting there when she didn’t even know if her babies were okay? They should be crying. They should be wailing at the top of their lungs. Her motherly instincts were finally kicking in and all she could think was, Please let them be okay, please, please let them be okay.

‘The babies,’ she said, and she climbed out of the car, pushing past Darren to move around to the rear door to yank it open. Both girls were still strapped into their capsules and incredibly, both were wide awake but quiet. The two of them staring up at her, as though nothing had happened. As though everything was perfectly normal. She started patting her hands over them, checking their little bodies, their arms, their legs. She started crying.

‘They’re okay,’ she said to Darren. ‘They’re both okay.’

‘Thank God,’ he said.

There was a cough from the driver’s seat and Darren darted around to the other side.

Mimi felt guilty for barely having checked on Pete, but her first priority had been those two tiny humans whose lives depended solely on her. If she’d failed them, she never would have been able to forgive herself.

Now that she knew they were all right, she dashed around to her husband. He still looked stunned and confused and she felt a rush of love and sympathy for him, but she couldn’t stay to help him. He was conscious . . . he was alive. And Darren was with him.

‘I’m going to find the girls,’ she told him. ‘Stay with the twins.’

Pete was groggy but he understood. He nodded. ‘Go.’

Mimi stumbled back from the car and looked around, squinting through the darkness as she tried to properly take in the scene around her for the first time. To one side — Jill’s Volvo. A stranger next to the car with a phone to his ear. She looked the other way and saw the crumpled convertible — the car they’d watched slam sideways into Jill. And then she recognised it. That was Andrea’s convertible. And there was Andrea slumped over the wheel. Mimi’s stomach turned. Andrea needed help.