“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Alex threw off his seat-belt and hauled open the door. There are a couple of steps down but he skipped them with a flying leap to the gravel below.

I followed, without the leap, but with my stomach churning. Was the kid alright?

I rounded the stubby front of the truck’s cab and found the mother of the boy with her arms wrapped tightly around him, tears streaming down her face and Alex, looking very green, standing beside them trying to find out if the child had been hit.

The boy began to squirm and wriggle in her panicked embrace. “Mam, lemme go. You’re hurting me.”

He couldn’t be too bad if he was protesting like that. The urge to vomit left me, but so did the ability to keep my knees locked into a ver...

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