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of Sally.
    Which is why the car hit her and not him.
    The car just seemed to materialize. No one heard it coming, it was just suddenly there, speeding round the corner, making no attempt to stop, a flash of blue paint, the blare of a horn, Sally turning in horror to see the car bearing down on her.
    Jim, Maria and Mrs Webster stood staring in numb shock. Bobby turned back, his eyes wide with horror. The moment stretched interminably.
    And all the while Mrs Webster was moving, vaulting the fence and running for Sally like a charging football player! It was impossible, an old lady could not have done it. But she had done it. She was moving for Sally, getting within centimetres, split seconds of snatching her to safety.
    The effort was superhuman. But it was not good enough.
    There was a terrible thud as the car struck Sally and tossed her aside and then it was speeding away again and Sally was lying broken on the road.
    Mrs Webster, still moving at full speed, two-stepped like a footballer dodging a tackler and raced to Sally’s side, dropped to one knee, and then did something very strange.
    Her sweet face was suddenly distorted with rage. Swiftly she lifted her weed killer like a shooter looking for a target; in this case the target was the speeding blue car which was even then turning a corner out of Middle Street and thus out of sight.
    Whatever it was Mrs Webster was intending she now put to one side as she laid down her weeder and checked Sally’s condition.
    By this time, Jim, Maria and Bobby had recovered themselves enough to run over. They found Mrs Webster kneeling by Sally, checking vital signs, but in strange places. She was taking a pulse at the ankle, looking at the skin color on the inside of the arm, feeling each side of the chest. ‘She’s going to be all right,’ Mrs Webster said. ‘We’ll get her into my place!’
    ‘No!’ Jim countermanded. ‘We can’t move her till the ambulance gets here.’
    ‘I’ll ring them,’ shouted a neighbour who had come running, and she moved off to do so.
    Maria was kneeling by Sally, checking her throat pulse, moaning, ‘Sally! Sally!’
    ‘Is she going to be all right?’ Bobby said, and then looked off in the direction the hit-run driver took. ‘Didn’t even stop!’
    ‘I’ve got stuff in the house,’ Mrs Webster said to Jim.
    He shook his head savagely. ‘No one moves our daughter till the ambulance gets here! Understand?’
    ‘I can’t feel her heart!’ Maria cried.
    Mrs Webster was touching both sides of Sally’s rib cage. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got a strong pulse,’ she said, her voiced pitched to soothe.
    ‘But there’s no heartbeat!’ Maria said, feeling for it on the left side of Sally’s chest.
    ‘Further down, Maria. I promise you she’s going to be all right.’
    Maria ran her hand down to where Mrs Webster was touching the side of Sally’s rib cage, and looked at Mrs Webster, her anguish for a moment replaced by amazement.
    ‘She’s going to be okay,’ Mrs Webster again said calmly, and then looked up the street. ‘Is that the ambulance coming?’
    Jim and Maria looked in the direction Mrs Webster indicated so they did not see her stick something that looked like a small, circular, flesh-coloured sticking plaster under Sally’s hair.
    But Bobby saw. Mrs Webster looked up at that moment, caught Bobby’s puzzled expression, and put her finger to her lips.
    It was then that Bobby knew something very weird was going to happen.

chapter eleven
    It was like a politician’s motorcade. First came the ambulance, siren going, with Maria and the unconscious Sally in the back with one of the paramedics, followed by Jim and Bobby in the family station wagon, and then, following them in the same little beat-up car in which she had arrived twelve years ago (and about which the neighbours had been saying ever since, ‘Where does she get spare parts for that ancient thing?’) was Mrs Webster.
    If the whole thing had not been so desperate,