In my mind’s eye is the zonal map of London I carry in my head. Red Zones are the areas I stay away from now: Camden, King’s Cross, Dalston, Bow, Mile End, Peckham, Old Kent Road. There are air holes there which are safe but those aren’t places I can be in for long. Those streets have been colonised by gangs that will stab a person to earn ranking points. I could head for the neutral Blue Zone: Vauxhall, Camberwell, Elephant, Oval. I can be in those spaces and stay unmolested for a time. The Green Zone, where I am now, is supposed to be fine: Dulwich, Chelsea, Fulham, Westminster, City, Holborn. But I was attacked right in the middle of it. Nowhere is completely safe. It’s a question of playing the odds. For example, I stay away from the Purple Zone, the truly unpredictable spaces: Paddington, Edgware, Caledonian Road, Seven Sisters, Tottenham. Safe, if you know what you are doing, but take a wrong turn or even the right one on the wrong day, and there’s no telling what will come for you. I breathe and push through the metal gates. The sirens are following.

The rain is coming down in sheets. I need shelter. I need to get somewhere dry, to give myself a chance to heal and recover. I consult the map in my head. Walworth Road leads to the Elephant and Castle. The Elephant to St Georges Circus. St Georges to Waterloo. Waterloo to the Strand. I am grateful for my head when it works. That this map is here, always ready to use, dry and crisp, the Zones pulsing. I look around and slowly through the throbbing in my head I come to a realisation – I don’t know where I am.

I try to recalibrate. Where was I? I had been in Hyde Park. It feels like a certainty until suddenly, it no longer does. Have I been running or hobbling in this rain, in this dark, wet cloak of a night, for this last chunk of time? I can’t tell. This pounding in my brain is relentless, a dull, thick fog that I cannot reach through. That boot to the head has really done some damage.

I feel myself panicking now. The sirens are still chasing me. The rain is throwing itself down and all I can feel is the slick soak of my clothes. I have to get dry. I have to find some shelter. This has happened to me before and I nearly died from the pneumonia. You could recover from it, this cold and this rain, but for me it would take days for these clothes to dry out. I couldn’t survive it in my state. I’d drop into a wet death like that.