When the meter installers came, Molly, Pauline, Thomas and Nicole parked their cars around the van, blocking it in before the lads even managed to get out of it. A round bald man, who introduced himself as Paul Preston, rolled down his window, a takeaway coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. A smaller, leaner fella was sitting in the front with half a bar of chocolate in his hand. A big heavyset fella leaned over Paul’s shoulder from the back with a wrench in his hand.

‘What are ya playing at?’ he said to Molly, who rolled her window down; they would have been eye to eye except her car was tiny and low to the ground.

She looked up at him. ‘What do you think?’

‘You can’t just trap us in the bloody van.’

‘Well it looks like anyone can do what they like these days, so if ya can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’

He rolled up his window. Half an hour passed with the man drinking coffee, eating a second doughnut and taking calls. The fella in the back was getting agitated. He opened the sliding back door, but Molly’s car was lined up too close for him to squeeze out. He banged on her roof.

‘Let me out,’ he shouted. ‘If I can’t get past you I’ll go through you,’ he said, pulling on her locked back door. ‘I’ll pull this bleedin’ door off.’

‘You can try,’ Molly said.

‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ he said.

Molly grinned. ‘We can.’

He kept wrenching at the locked door, and when she became worried that he might actually pull the door off its hinges, she unlocked it with the press of a button and he fell on his arse back into the van. The other fella in the front seat laughed. She grabbed the door again and locked it before he managed to get off his back. He was holding his ankle and crying out in pain. Paul sighed and shook his head.

‘That’s assault,’ he said.

‘Assault, my eye – you’d know if I assaulted you. I could break your back without breaking a sweat,’ she said, and the big fella slunk back; he could see she had hate in her heart.

The smaller fella leaned across Paul. ‘I really need the loo.’

‘Tough shit.’

‘When is this going to end?’ Paul Preston said. His large workmate was now trying to stand up in the back and was limping.

‘I think I’ve turned me ankle.’

‘When you agree to leave here and never return.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or the next time I burn this fucking van to the ground.’

‘Do you hear all this?’ he shouted to the other protesters. They all nodded. ‘And you’re all right with this, are yis?’ he asked.

‘Delighted,’ Nicole said, and she blew smoke out the small crack of window she’d opened.