I finish my tea and replace the slat. Wander around the flat. We have leftover sausages and I can mash the few potatoes we have for tonight’s dinner. I hope Danny comes back with meat. His parents’ house is just past Ravenscourt Park, a twenty-minute walk. The first time he went he stayed for almost a week, scared me so much he promised he’d never do it again. They’re dead, of course. His parents. Danny made sure of that. He goes over every few days and gets most of our food from there, raiding their massive freezer. It won’t last for ever, we know that. Then he’ll have to forage elsewhere. Danny calls it work and I let him because men need purpose in life, plus it gives us a sense of normality. Before this I worked too, real work, but foraging isn’t a job either of us wants me to do. I play the traditional role now. Truth is, I don’t mind. Better than being out there.

I need a cigarette. Danny doesn’t smoke, which means I have to go onto the roof. I gather my smoking paraphernalia, lock our flat, open the door to old Mr Fallon’s, cover my nose against the slaughterhouse stench, go into the attic and up the metal ladder, pull myself onto the roof, into fresh air. There. Needed that too.

The roof is flat, open. When the wind blows hard enough, dust circles like a hungry pet. There’s a rusting barbecue in the corner, a threadbare sofa that stinks of cat piss, and of course the scarecrow. He’s roped to a sun lounger and it’s only then that irony strikes me: Sherwin and old Mr Fallon, both tied up, both dead. I want to laugh and can’t, even when I force it. I avoid the scarecrow and sit on the edge of the sofa, light my cigarette.

By week four we’d realised we hadn’t heard anything from old Mr Fallon and we began to get scared right away. What should we do? What would he return as, Symp or Syke? The government statement the radio man read told us it took three days. We put our heads against the wall and listened for a sound. We reasoned that he’d left the flat without us noticing. Slipped away, not into a quiet old man’s death, but into cold winter night.

Later we heard movement from the flat downstairs. We looked at each other. It was him.