A gap suddenly appeared in the crowd, one of those inexplicable gaps that are made for extreme violence, to give it the room it needs, and I saw the young black copper on his knees, holding a gash on his forehead, uncertain of where he was or what had happened.

And I was hammering against the glass doors of West End Central, pushing against the screaming tide of humanity that pressed up against them, preventing me from going anywhere, leaving me helpless to watch the vicious kick to the face that put the young copper on his back.

And then Troy was standing above him, the gap in the crowd getting bigger, so that Troy could take a step forward, his tattooed face seething with a pious fury and his boot stamping on the young policeman’s face, rising and falling, again and again, the hate without end.

25

I watched from one of the loft’s giant windows as Mrs Murphy came back from walking Stan and Dasher.

It wasn’t easy.

Freed from the role he had trained so long and so hard for, Dasher had good-naturedly decided to do his own thing. And water was his thing; the filthier the better. The muddy puddles that surrounded Smithfield meat market were his favourite habitat and I watched as he eased his hefty two-year-old golden body into a muddy puddle as if it was a Jacuzzi. As Mrs Murphy did her best to persuade him to get out, the Labrador-Retriever grinned at her, his pink tongue lolling, and rolled around, just to make sure he was completely mucky.

Stan had the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel’s allergy to water. He craved human contact as much as Dasher craved a muddy Jacuzzi. So while Mrs Murphy did her best to persuade Dasher to rise from the dirty water, Stan stood on his hind legs, scrabbling at her coat, bug eyes gleaming as he demanded her full and undivided attention. It was the dog walk from hell.

Dasher finally emerged from the puddle and began to furiously shake off the excess water as both Mrs Murphy and Stan recoiled with disgust. They had almost made it to our door when Stan spotted a pristine poodle on the far side of Charterhouse Street and attempted to throw himself into the oncoming traffic so that he could find true love, or at least have a sniff of it.

Mrs Murphy reeled him in, breathless with the trauma of it all.

As she struggled into our building with the wayward dogs under her feet, my face was hot with shame.

Every lone parent needs a network of support to help raise their child and Mrs Murphy was my network of one.