It wasn’t the road he’d planned to use, but the streets were on a grid and having the casino towers at his back gave Harry confidence that he was moving west. A motorbike speared the silence, shooting down the empty road at more than a hundred miles per hour, closely followed by another.

Harry wondered if they had some mission, or had decided to use the empty roads as a racetrack. A right took him into Olive Palm Drive, a short cul-de-sac with houses fanning off a turning circle at the far end.

It seemed unusually bright, because everyone was home with the lights on. Harry spotted number eight and imagined Charlie inside, watching TV with her foster family. The front lawns didn’t offer cover and Harry felt exposed as he saw the alleyway leading to a kids’ play area.

Two masked sisters played catch in their back yard as Harry jogged, wooden fences tight on either side. The little park was shabby, with two out of three swings broken. He recognised the wood and plastic climbing castle from Charlie’s photo. He ducked beneath a wooden ladder and reached into a gap, where a turret was bolted to a bright red tunnel.

Harry’s gloved fingers touched a plastic food container and it took a hard tug to strip the plumber’s tape holding it in place. The tub was slippery with condensation, and Harry popped it open and got splashed with melted ice, which Charlie had packed around the glass vials to keep the vaccine cool.

A scuttling sound came from Harry’s left, making him back out and bash his shoulder on a wooden prop. As he glanced around, shocked and with water from the open box trickling inside his shirtsleeve, Charlie stood up at the end of the slide.

‘You scared the tits off me!’ Harry gasped.

She was dressed not to be seen, in dark purple leggings and a black hoodie.

‘I was hoping you’d show,’ Charlie said, grinning behind her mask. ‘But when this big muscle guy arrived, I scrambled up the slide.’

‘I started doing push-ups,’ Harry joked, pulling his mask away from his face for a moment to catch fresh air.

Charlie stepped forward and held her arms out wide. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Me too,’ Harry said, masked face to masked face, each wrapping gloved hands round the other’s dark clothing.

‘Crazy times …’ Charlie said as she took a half step back. ‘Everything happening at once.’

‘For sure,’ Harry said, nodding.

‘Your mods look good. So many guys go overboard.’

‘I get told that a lot,’ Harry said, flattered. ‘I mainly got it because of my acne. I’d look in the mirror and hate myself.’

Charlie nodded thoughtfully. ‘You should inject your vaccine now. Full immunity takes at least a day to build up, but it should improve your ability to fight a virus within hours. I take it you know how to inject yourself?’