Kamila shot off to give menus to customers who’d just come up the stairs as Zac explained.

‘Everyone voted for a government that promised to end right-wing austerity. Now the left is in power, playing a different tune. Every local council in the country must approve an annual budget by the end of this month.

‘Local governments are cutting back on social care, education and housing. Closing libraries and leisure centres. Old people won’t get care. There will be less social workers looking after vulnerable kids. No money to repair school buildings, bigger school classes and less choice of subjects.’

Georgia could hear her dad saying, Money doesn’t grow on trees … She had nothing on, but bought thinking time by checking Google Calendar on her phone.

‘I’ll feel like a freak,’ Georgia said awkwardly.

‘I’ll introduce you,’ Zac said. ‘There’s a fair few teenage activists and none of them bite.’

Georgia laughed as she broke the top off her muffin. ‘Any good-looking ones?’

Zac flicked one eyebrow. ‘If you don’t come, you’ll never find out.’

FOURTEEN

Rain hit as Duke’s scooter twisted its way out of the crowd. Dust turned to coffee-brown slicks and potholes flooded. The downpour would make skating the penguin pool impossible, but the violence had left Julius too shocked to care.

He’d spent enough time around his mother and uncle to know political success depended on the loyalty of key groups. Army, police, area boys, churches, university cults and the big unions were all courted with money and favours. But knowing was different to being on the ground, watching a stallholder punched and robbed, or seeing the desperate face of the woman tangled in the fleeing crowd.

It was a ten-minute ride north to Duke’s apartment block. He wheeled his bike down to a metal storage cage in his building’s basement, then warned that although the electricity was currently on, they’d be stuck in the elevator for hours if it cut out.

They had a good-natured chase up thirteen flights, clothes dripping wet, and an interlude helping an elderly lady with two sacks of rice.

‘Rain’s come late this year,’ the woman said as she unlocked the metal gate over her apartment door. ‘We need it to clear the stink.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ Duke told the woman, refusing a 100 note, then giving Julius a shove and sprinting back towards the stairwell.

Julius bounded three stairs at a time to catch up. Duke smiled as he crashed into the wall on every landing, making screeching noises and giving a commentary like a kid driving Hot Wheels.

‘He rounds the last corner beautifully. The gangling Julius Ade-beastie is catching up, but it’s the final stretch and he’s not going to make it past the six-time champion of the universe …’