I continue my work. Run water in the pan, set it on the hob, ignite flame, break eggs. Simple, mundane things. I’m humming. When I turn around Danny hasn’t moved. He raises an eyebrow at me.

‘I’ll go and check the scarecrow,’ he says. And he is gone.

I poach the eggs, boil the spinach and make hollandaise sauce as best as I can with only a whisk and a teaspoon of white wine vinegar. There’s not much on the radio but I turn it on at low volume to find the local station is still on air, probably broadcasting from one of those tower blocks, Danny says, as they’d be fools to advertise themselves from a maisonette council flat, or anything on the ground like our place. We’d debated that for weeks, whether we should move to higher ground: there were pros and cons and even the pros were negligible. Danny had wanted to go, I said we should stay, and we went at it for ages, arguing back and forth right up until Sherwin came home. Of course, that changed everything. Danny said the obvious, if he’d found us it was easy for others to. I countered that by saying it wasn’t such a big deal, he just remembered, didn’t he? I couldn’t run the risk of him being a Symp and all, I couldn’t run off and leave him like so many others did family, lovers and friends. I wasn’t built that way. And Danny loves me so much he understood. He let us all stay in the building, together.

I’m singing to jazz on the radio, swaying my hips when Danny comes down from the roof. He looks serious. I slide the eggs onto my homemade muffins, turn.

‘What’s up?’

‘I think I saw that guy.’

I stop singing and put down the pan.

‘He was walking along the street. Didn’t look up, but he was searching for someone. Maybe you, maybe someone else. I don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. I’m looking at my trainers.

‘It’s OK,’ he says, and kisses my forehead. I’m grateful for that. ‘We’ll just have to be a bit careful when we go down.’

‘Sorry,’ I say again. He nods and gets out the plastic cutlery.

I dish everything up and put on the crowbar. Danny’s managed to tie a piece of rope to each end so I can carry it across my back like a samurai sword. We’re desperately short of weapons – all we have are some knives, a baseball bat, his gun, but we’re too wary to forage outside of the streets we know, and the Tsois won’t sell the weapons they have; they need everything they can get. If there’s anyone else left they’re holing themselves up better than we are. We probably wouldn’t trust them anyway.