Amy watched her dad come towards the TurboChaser. She noticed he was also holding a crash helmet. She was frightened, but decided to pretend she wasn’t.

“Hi, Dad!” she said, waving from inside the car. “Cool helmet! Can I have a look?”

He tutted, but handed it through the cat flap.

“Amy,” said her dad, as she ran her hands over the top of the helmet. “This is ridiculous. This whole thing. Doing all –” he waved a hand towards the body of the TurboChaser – “this to your wheelchair. And then driving it all the way up here! I can’t believe you made it! Even though I instructed Mobilcon to send out a retrieval drone!”

“Oh, that was … you …”

“I have no idea what happened to it.”

“Um. Yeah. Me neither,” said Amy.

“But that aside, it was far too dangerous for you to do this journey! With all these other children, including your brother! And – oh my God, what is that terrible smell? Anyway … what on earth were you thinking of?”

Amy looked at his cross, scrunched face, his wagging, raised finger. And it came to her what the answer to his question was.

I was thinking of YOU, Dad. I was thinking that I wanted you to see my amazing wheelchair-car. I wanted you to see how good I am at driving it. I suppose I thought that if you saw all that, you might think that I was … I don’t know … what you want me to be.

That’s what I was thinking of.

But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she just drove off, leaving him standing there, open-mouthed.

She didn’t know where she was going. She also couldn’t see where she was going, as her eyes had filled with tears.

But she knew the one thing she felt OK about at the moment was driving. She felt like, despite the admittedly terrible smell, everything might be fine, as long as she could drive and never stop. Or at least, never get out of the car.

Wiping her eyes, she could see, behind her, Suzi and the other parents get back into the van. Worryingly, she could also see the police cars moving off. And her dad, putting on a new helmet, joined by two other men in boiler suits. She drove as fast as she could round the Facility building. On the other side of it she could see, beneath her, the racing track. There was a small paved road that led directly to it.

The black cloud that had been hanging in the sky for a while burst, and it began to rain hard.

Amy drove down the hill to the racing track. Then she made what some might think is a strange decision. She turned on to the track, which was fenced on either side, there was a black and white line painted across it – a starting line.

She stopped the TurboChaser there, put on the crash helmet, and waited.