Tristan watched the outline of Grace’s head, failing to make the connection. Grace noticed first.

‘It’s getting lighter.’

‘The rain’s stopped,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps it is just the clouds clearing.’

‘No, it’s almost morning.’ She spoke like a child awake too early on her birthday, willing light into the sky. ‘We’re going to be all right.’

Her optimism broke like a wave, threatening to capsize him. He wouldn’t allow it. Not yet. She stared back at him, each looking into the darkness of the other’s face, waiting to see.

Tristan squinted. He could make out only a hint of her face. Her eyes, which shone so bright in his memory, were shadowed pools, sunk deep in fear. They darted, searching as his did for the mirrored details of their decline. There was no colour yet; dried blood matted hair to her forehead in thick black lines. She tried to smile, revealing gaps where teeth had been.

He could find no word to describe the wreckage, no place in his mind into which this image could be slotted. It floated free, rising up even when he screwed his eyes tight against it.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I did this to you,’ he said, counting his teeth with his swollen tongue. ‘I did this.’

‘We’ll get out of here,’ she replied. ‘Soon, when it is properly light, the traffic will see us. Somebody will come.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘Don’t think about it. Finish your story.’

‘I’ve nothing left to tell,’ Tristan lied, turning away, daring her to break the silence.

Grace took his hand. The fight was leaking out of her. It was over to others now. The car would be seen or it would not. Thus all things reduce.

Tristan looked again at Grace’s hair, trying to make out something of its colour. There was nothing but shade. He closed his left eye, which throbbed the least of the two, and the world went dark again.

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t see.’

‘You have your eyes closed.’

‘Only one of them.’

Tristan opened it to see Grace looking away.

‘What is it?’ He felt fear fall out in a rush. ‘What can you see?’

‘We are both hurt,’ she mumbled, fixing her gaze on the shattered screen. ‘It is to be expected.’

‘Tell me what you see.’

‘There is nothing to tell. Some swelling, that is all. A cut across your forehead. It doesn’t look too bad.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Why would I lie?’

‘To make it better.’

‘We are not children.’

Tristan wriggled frantically, ignoring the fireworks of pain in his hip.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I want to see. I want to get to the mirror. I want to see.’

‘And how will that help?’

‘Then I’ll know.’

‘You won’t know anything.’

In his panic Tristan couldn’t find his reflection. He reached for Grace’s neck.

‘Tell me!’ he screeched, feeling his fingers gain purchase in the yielding flesh. She didn’t resist. Her face set in stony absence, a look he had seen on the monks when they meditated. He let go.

‘I am sorry.’

‘Again.’

‘Yes, again.’

She waited before speaking, asserting the terms.

‘I am no doctor, Tristan, but from what I can see your eye is swollen almost closed.’

‘What can you tell from that part that is open?’

‘It is red.’

‘Bloodshot?’

‘More red than that. There is only red.’

Tristan raised his hand to his face. The movement was slow and clumsy. His fingers were too damaged to tell him much and the rawness of his pulpy face sent him into retreat.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said.

‘You say that more often than I say sorry.’

He could make out the window now, a white cobweb of fractures, yet resolute. The world beyond was taking distorted shape: the dark edge of a rock face, tall grass running to seed, and, beyond, the grey-blue of distance as the world dropped away. They had not hit the bottom. What was above them would determine the outcome. If they had settled beneath an overhang there was no way of their being seen from the road. Fate, determined yet unknowable.

‘You should have called out,’ Grace said. ‘When you stood at my window, you should have called out.’

‘What difference would it have made?’ he said.

‘We can never know.’

‘No.’

‘What happened to you that night?’ she asked. ‘How did you find me again?’

‘What does it matter? They will find us or they won’t. That is our story now.’

‘I am interested.’

‘You will wish you hadn’t been.’

‘Life is full of risks,’ Grace replied.

‘It is no risk. It is certain.’

‘Then I will be responsible for my pain. I have told you how I came to be standing on the street. Now you must tell me how you came to be driving by.’

There was no avoiding her question. If they were to die, she deserved to know why. And if they were to live, she deserved the opportunity to hate him. His every instinct cried at him to lie to her, to lose the story in a tangle of invention, but he would not. Could not.