Declan swerved to the left, jammed on his brakes, and felt the Honda bike skid to a shuddering stop. Then it toppled over. There was a blinding pain in his left leg, then nothing.

Katie felt herself flying through the air. She landed on her left arm. The black leather jacket ripped apart. She felt her head crash into the hard surface of the railing in the centre of the road. Her helmet tore loose. It wasn’t attached to her head any more. It flew across the road, landing far away from her. Then darkness, and silence.

The motorbike had come up out of nowhere. Steven saw it vaguely out of the corner of his eye. He’d thought he could make it across, in the last moments after the lights changed, just before any traffic came from the other direction. But here came this bike, way before anyone could have expected it. He dragged on the wheel, tore the Mazda round away from the bike, towards the right. Had he managed to miss it?

He was crashing into something – he wasn’t even sure what. The concrete bollard with the blue direction arrow in the middle of the road, perhaps. A moment later, his head hit the windscreen. And then there was nothing more.