The employee and political groups mostly looked civilised, but the other element in the crowd made Georgia uncomfortable. Thuggish blokes, older and scarier than her posse of teens.

Rolf, Gerard and a lot of the lads dispersed, but Georgia stuck with Kamila, Maya and Sam as they moved through a loosely packed crowd towards the town hall entrance.

The building was a grotty post-war job. Eight storeys of dirty concrete with underground parking. The window frames were rusting and a tacky refurbishment with brightly coloured cladding was like lipstick on a rotten corpse.

A split ramp led down to a fountain featuring supermarket trolleys and a basement theatre that had been shuttered for longer than Georgia had been alive. The ramp going up was a single-lane road leading to the town hall’s glass atrium. The small parking lot in front had spaces marked for bridal convoys and disabled.

With protests all over southern England, the cops didn’t have enough officers to patrol the town hall concourse. Since the protestors’ aim was to stop the council budget meeting from taking place, they’d placed a line of waist-height barriers in front of the entrance ramp. A dozen officers were spaced behind this barrier to stop the demonstrators climbing over, while a command truck and two vans filled with cops in riot gear were parked down a side street.

‘Comrades,’ Kamila said happily when she caught up with a big group from another branch of SAG. ‘Do we have tactics?’

‘The pigs are protecting the ramp, but the cars still have to cross the concourse,’ a hobbit-like man with dark glasses explained. ‘We’ve got lookouts at the side and rear in case they try to sneak the councillors in.’

It stayed calm long enough for Georgia, Maya and Sam to saunter around the square, people-watching. Everything snapped into focus when a pair of cop cars came tearing along the town-hall access road, with a red Nissan X-Trail sandwiched between them.

The crowd charged forward, blocking the road towards the upper ramp and atrium. Georgia found herself at the back of a crazed mob. People were screaming scum, shame and turn back. Free-range eggs pelted the red car with four council members inside, while others pounded on the front of the cop car that continued inching towards the barriers.

‘Do not obstruct the police vehicles,’ a loudspeaker inside one of the cop cars announced as Georgia found herself engulfed by shoes and elbows.

A bunch of cops had jumped out of the riot van. They formed a line and banged batons on their plastic shields as they advanced. The crowd outnumbered the officers by at least thirty to one, but the drumming was a psychological trick designed to intimidate and most of the crowd fell for it and backed off.