so much of it—when she heard what sounded like a car speeding.
At first she’d ignored it, but then she realized that rather than slowing as it rounded the corner into the housing development, it had sped up. She had turned around instinctively to where her own car was to make sure it didn’t crash into it, and by the time she turned back, there was a huge howling screech from the wheels as it mounted the curb—deliberately mounted the curb—and she saw . . . the only thing she saw was the glint of a phone, bouncing up in the air, spinning, catching the light, almost lovely, so slow . . .
And then everything happened so fast and there was a twist and a turn of a hideous shape; a thumping noise, horrible, wet, and loud, reverberating around her head; something unthinkable following the phone; and the car’s wheels, still moving, engine still revving, and the even harder cracking noise as the huge, unthinkable shape hit the ground, lay there, twisted, misshapen. Lissa couldn’t actually believe what she was looking at, that it could not—absolutely could not—be Kai, and she lifted her eyes and found herself staring straight into the face of the driver, whose mouth was drawn back in a snarl, or a leer, or something; something, thought Lissa, through her incomprehension, through her panic, that she couldn’t figure out, not at all, as it screamed something about “staying out of Leaf Field”—and then the car revved and sped on.
THERE WAS A moment’s silence, then the yelling started: disbelief, fury; and suddenly Lissa found herself clicking into action, found her training propping her up, propelling her forward.
“I’m a nurse. Move away please, I can help.”
She expected to have to clear a path, but the other youths bounced upward, shouting their heads off, and dashed screaming in pursuit of the car.
“Dial 999!” Lissa shouted as she knelt down to examine Kai, pulling her phone out of her pocket. She had no idea if the lads could catch the car and was terrified they’d get hit again; there was only one way out of the development, it would have to double back at some point—but she had to prioritize.
She looked down at the figure on the pavement, his head sideways on the sunbaked stone, next to cigarette ends strewn in the gutter.
“DARLING.”
He was beautiful, fifteen years old. Lissa couldn’t get over it. Not that that mattered, of course; of course it didn’t. It had absolutely nothing to do with it. But as she bent desperately trying to save him, as she finally, finally, heard the sirens she’d been waiting for, she couldn’t get over it: the sheer heart-stopping beauty of the young soft skin, the curve of the neck, the dark hair. He was a child. She couldn’t bear to think of how the family was going to take it. She cursed herself; her best friend had deleted Ezra’s number from her phone, for her own good. She couldn’t even call him.
Even when the paramedics arrived she didn’t stop CPR. She carried on compressing, using the heels of her hands as they joined her, monitoring the oxygen, grabbing the adrenaline to shoot into his heart. She knew the paramedics and they trusted her and brought her along, Ashkan working with her, Kerry driving like a fiend as the blue lights screamed over the traffic, even if that clogged up the overwhelmingly crowded London roads, too stuffed full with lorries, vans, Ubers, motorbikes—everything jammed up so tight they could barely find room to pull over to let an ambulance through.
But on this trip, they all knew, deep down, blue lights wouldn’t matter. No matter how quickly they moved, how urgently they shouted and cleared the way. Back at the crime scene, a policewoman would be kneeling down in a pool of blood on the pavement, concerned citizens gathering around, but anyone who could have been involved was long gone into the cacophonous city. The sun had gone down and now everything felt chilled.
Kai suddenly contorted, bounced in the air as Ashkan shouted, “Clear!” and Lissa had jumped back instinctively, watching him twitch, wondering if the policewoman sitting in the blood had started the weary business of figuring out who he was, had started the weary, unbearable process of contacting his family.
Lissa let the training take over completely, wouldn’t let herself think, automatically putting the oxygen mask back on the boy’s lips, still blue; injecting another shot of adrenaline; loading another pint of