Racing through Paris by car without a satnav, TPR’s erratic driving along this haphazard route was bound to end in disaster. We were meant to be heading into town – not out of it – and now I was pretty certain that we would soon hit the péripherique.
I was right. The huge roundabout ahead of us was not Place d’Italie. TPR, however, was undeterred. He said that he would simply zip round the roundabout and head back into central Paris by reversing the route. Such was his enthusiasm for this plan that he took the roundabout at immense speed, the car spun off it, and we came to an almighty halt upside down in a field of winter crops.
Miraculously neither of us was injured, nor was anyone in the family of pedestrians that was walking beside the field at the time. Phew!
However, my relief was short-lived when a teenage girl pointed out to us a corpse lying in the road. A young man had been flung out of his own vehicle when he crashed into another car as it made an emergency stop to avoid us.
I took TPR to one side. Would we be held responsible for this man’s death? Would the GPS data on my iPhone implicate us? Could it be deleted?