It was a scream not of pain but of fear. The hysterical caving-in of the walls every mind recognises as its fate: bewilderment at the accumulation of the past, the impermanence of the body, the bloody-minded insistence of death. Tristan waited. Wherever it was Grace had travelled to, she had gone there alone. Eventually the screaming choked itself to submission. There was a gulping for breath, accelerating to a kind of whimper.

Tristan’s hand found her shoulder.

‘What is it?’ he whispered, worried his voice might be enough to set off the next avalanche.

‘I’m frightened.’

Nothing more than that. Simple and unanswerable.

‘It’s a good sign. It’s the place beyond fear we need to worry about,’ Tristan bluffed.

‘I didn’t think there was anything beyond fear,’ Grace bluffed back. He heard it in the steadying inhalation, then the rush of her voice, forcing the sentence out in a single breath.

‘Exactly. After the fear, there is nothing.’

‘Thank you.’

Her body turned rigid as another wave of pain flowed over her. He said nothing, waited for it to pass, thought how quickly the grotesque becomes unremarkable.

‘For what?’ he asked.

‘Talking.’

Tristan could hear the fight in her voice. They were stubborn, the two of them, stubbornly alive. There was a new pain, something like a stitch only it would not remain confined to his stomach. It stabbed upward, into places he’d never been sure about. His heart was there, in behind his lungs; what else, he couldn’t say. Whatever it was, the nerves joined the chorus with sadistic fervour.

‘What is it?’ Grace asked.

‘Nothing,’ he lied, feeling light-headed as hopeful chemicals flooded his veins, seeking to defend the breach.

‘Give me your hand.’

‘Leave it,’ Tristan told her. ‘When light comes there will be doctors. Until then it is best we try not to move too much.’

‘No, look, I think I can get free from this. I think I can cut the belt.’

He marvelled at how hope rallied. Grace took hold at the place where his thumb met his hand and guided it gently through the darkness, over the smooth surface of the dress that on the street had shone so brightly. He felt his broken fingers trailing over her warm body, the involuntary twitching of a muscle ticklish to his touch, or something darker; he did not want to think of it. The geography was unfamiliar to him. He thought he detected the cavity of her navel and the gentle rise beyond. He felt something sharp and metallic. She guided his crushed fingers to the ragged edge where the structure beneath them had ruptured.

‘Hold this,’ she whispered. ‘Keep it from slipping back. If you stop it moving, I can use it as a blade—’

An elbow caught Tristan in the eye. If she noticed she felt no need to apologise. He felt the metal edge moving beneath the force of the rasping belt and he tightened his grip. His body tensed to accommodate hers. She worked quickly as he struggled to hold the makeshift blade in place.

Victory was marked with a small grunt.

‘Free!’ she whispered. Tristan painted a picture of her gleaming eyes.

‘Okay, see if you can move…Ow.’

‘Sorry.’

The wriggling intensified and Tristan closed his eyes as each movement found another wound.

‘What’s…’

‘If I can just…’

‘Can I help?’

‘It’s just the…No. No no no!’

Banging, loud and insistent. Bone against metal. In her rage Grace was butting against the metal that had them pinned. Tristan found her head and held it with his broken hand but she bucked away, rocking in frustration.

‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

‘It isn’t.’

She pulled away from his arm and when he tried to calm her she brought her free leg violently forward, catching his hip with her knee. Instinctively Tristan moved to her, attempting to smother her anger. Beneath them the cab began to rock.

‘Don’t. You’re going to—’

The car lurched. There was a terrifying moment of suspension before it rocked back. Tristan felt the roof changing shape beneath his head. And then the slipping, as loose rocks shifted and the earth let go. They were moving, sliding headfirst into the dark future. Tristan braced for the final impact. They bounced down the slope in hard jagged collisions. It lasted no more than a few seconds, although, in the stretched-out world of panic, he experienced it in hundreds of slices. They rocked, once, twice, then settled. The wind howled and the car shuddered its reply. Tristan imagined them balanced over a precipice. He had seen the sharp walls of the rock-toothed valley. They were a single slip away from death. He didn’t dare move.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘What were you doing?’

‘I was angry.’

‘We have to be still now. We have to be careful.’

To be still, to choose slow death over the quick end they perched above. Let me get out of this, God, Tristan thought, and I promise…but he could think of nothing. A god who would strike such a deal was too hard to believe in. He could feel the pounding of Grace’s heart at his shoulder. He loved her. He whispered the words secretly to himself, thrilling in her proximity. She, whose broken body he supported with his own. He loved her. She was right to question his long absence, but he had always loved her.

‘Tell me the rest of your story,’ Grace said.

‘You might not like hearing it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t like living it.’

‘I already know the ending.’

‘It isn’t finished yet,’ he pointed out.

‘We’ll be all right,’ she said.

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Time is passing,’ Grace replied. ‘And we are not. It’s the best we can hope for.’