And then the car hit the figure side-on with a sickeningly loud bang, and the figure flew backwards, as though snatched away by some vast predator. Suddenly the car was spinning madly, and the tyres were screeching, and Jackie was being thrown about as if she weighed nothing.

Even as pain exploded in her shoulder and knee as she whacked them on the seat and door, a sharp, almost searing memory came to her of being seven years old and clinging to the safety bar of the waltzer in the fairground and wishing it would stop. And then, hot on the heels of that, she thought with an almost lucid calmness: This is going to be the biggest impact I've ever known. I wonder if I'll die.

Then suddenly there was silence, and she was lying at a strange angle across her seat, pressed back by the air bag. There was a smell in the air, fumes and hot metal, and she could taste blood in her mouth, and when she tried to move her leg a hot, jagged corkscrew of pain leaped from her shinbone to her hip, making her cry out.

Joe spoke. She couldn't see him, but she heard his voice, cracked and shaky. 'Jacks, are you OK?'

She opened her mouth to answer and it was full of blood. She spat it out.

'Hurt my leg,' she said.

She heard Joe shift beside her, then grunt softly in pain. 'I need to call for help,' he said, 'but I can't get a signal. I think it's this bloody fog.'

There was a screech of metal. Jackie couldn't think what it was at first, and then realised it must be the sound of the buckled driver's door being pushed open.

'What are you doing?' she said, fighting down panic.

'I need to get help,' he said again. 'I'm going to walk back along the road a bit, see if I can get a signal.'