There was a girl in the road.

I stopped the car and got out, looked around. The street was empty. Two a.m.

I checked for a pulse, my hot hand on her cold, sweet throat.

Dead.

Dead and not a mark on her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

My heart was pounding, time was of the essence.

I placed her gently down in the boot of the car, folded her long arms and legs in. Then I drove home.

Twenty minutes later we were sitting in my living room.

There on the wet tarmac, her blue skirt, the blond curls heaped over her face like gold shavings. Waiting for me.

“Where have you come from, where have you come from?” I asked her silent, down turned face, my breath rich with the whiskey I was drinking to calm my nerves.

Seventeen and not a mark on her.

Fallen from heaven. My answered prayer.