After coming down a little lane — still in holiday mode — I arrived at the junction and stopped but went a bit too far out. A car came round the corner and caught the front of mine, ripping the bumper off.
The other car spun round and ended up in a ditch halfway through a hedge on the other side of the road. I got out and ran over to the woman who was driving, absolutely terrified that I had killed her or that she was seriously hurt.
She was fine, thank God, and I started apologising and crying. She was very shaken so we went back to my car and waited for the police.
It turned out that it was her first day back at work after maternity leave — something she wasn’t looking forward to — so while I was apologising she said: “Oh, don’t worry, it means I don’t have to go in to work.”
Her husband came to pick her up and the last I saw of her she was in the back with her baby, overjoyed that she didn’t have to go to the office.
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Once I realised she was fine the worst thing about the crash was two men who pulled over to shout abuse: “You could have killed her,” one of them said.
I was already shaking like a leaf — why those men thought they had to come and get involved was beyond me. It was a terrible thing to think I might have hurt someone and those men made it much worse.
Lesley Pearse is a bestselling author. Her latest book, A Lesser Evil, published by Penguin, is out now