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The pair stood in silence for a second before the woman spoke again.

‘I really think you should call an ambulance,’ she said.

Holly was about to refuse, only then she realised just how much her arm was throbbing, although the pain seemed to come in waves, along with the dizziness that accompanied it. Unfortunately, the colour of her hands confirmed it was definitely blood now, trickling down from her forehead, but her left arm was in the worst state. The top layer of skin had been scraped off from her elbow to her wrist, and there was something not quite right about how it looked. Adding to the fact she couldn’t put any weight on it at all, the obvious assumption was a broken bone. If this had happened to any of her friends, she would have sent them straight to the hospital too…

Holly pointed to her front pocket and spoke to the woman. ‘Can you grab my phone for me? I’ll ring my friend. She’ll know what to do.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to ring an ambulance first?’

‘It’s fine. I’ll ring one in a minute, but she lives close. She’ll get here faster.’

The woman fumbled through Holly’s pocket and grabbed her phone, after which she typed in the code Holly told her, then went straight to the contacts.

‘Who is it you want me to call?’ she asked.

Holly took the phone from her and scrolled down herself, using just one hand. There was only one person she could ring at a time like this.

41

‘What happened?’ Jamie asked. She had gone straight there, although it was a miracle she found them, given how Holly had started sobbing the moment she answered the phone. Somehow, she had now stopped, though it was probably more to do with a lack of tears than anything else.

‘I just needed to go out for a drive. That poor woman.’ Holly glanced over at the driver of the car, who was still standing on, waiting to see if she could be of help. ‘She keeps apologising, and it wasn’t her at all. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I can barely remember what happened. I was just thinking about Maud.’

‘The sweet shop lady?’

‘She’s dying,’ Holly said. ‘Pretty soon, by the sound of it.’

‘Oh, Holly, I’m sorry. I know how much she means to you.’ Instinctively, Jamie went in for a hug, only for Holly to gasp as a bolt of pain shot up her arm towards her spine.

The waves of throbbing had become constant, and ever growing. And as much as she hated to admit it, Holly knew the woman was right. She needed to get to the hospital.

‘Evan is going to kill me,’ she said, as Jamie single-handedly pulled the Vespa out of the undergrowth and rolled it towards the back of her van. The beautiful paintwork was now chipped, the handlebars bent at a funny angle. None of it was sparkling any more.

‘Too right, Evan is gonna kill you,’ Jamie said. ‘But not because his Vespa is a write-off. In fact, I’m going to kill him for getting you a Vespa in the first place. He’s going to kill you for hurting yourself and ending up in a hedge.’

Holly could feel the tears welling in her eyes, and Jamie saw it too.

‘It’s fine. Come on, let’s get you to the hospital. And take that poor woman’s number, too. You can send her a box of chocolates or something. I think she needs them.’

Holly had heard about the current waiting times in A&E on the news, and expected to be sat around waiting for quite some time, but it was a testament to the place, or to her injury, that she was ushered straight through for an X-ray.

‘You don’t need to wait for me,’ she said to Jamie, as she followed the nurse. ‘And can you message Ben? He’s got Hope tonight, so he doesn’t need to know any of this.’

‘So you want me to message Ben, to not tell him about this?’ Jamie tried to clarify.

Holly found herself unable to answer.

‘What I mean is?—’

‘Go and get your damn X-ray, will you?’

Unsurprisingly, the results of the X-ray showed that Holly’s left arm was broken in two places.

‘It could’ve been a lot worse,’ the doctor said, as he pointed to the lines on the scan. ‘There is no dislocation or movement in the bone, so it won’t need pinning. Which, if you ask me, is a miracle. But it’s good for you – no need for a nasty operation, and the recovery time should be quicker, too.’

At least that was something to be grateful for.

‘So how long will it be?’ Holly asked. ‘I run my own business, and I’ve got a daughter on my own. I’m a single mum, sort of.’