From nowhere, a missile hit the ground and smashed. The crowd parted, and for a second, people didn’t know what to do. Cameras whirred, journalists shouted, children screamed. Another missile hit, and this time it made contact with a child’s head, causing them to wail.

Sharon appealed for calm. Thomas had no idea where the sudden violence had come from, but it wasn’t from the police.

‘Don’t allow yourselves to be tricked! Stop!’ she pleaded.

A bottle hit her in the stomach and she bent over, winded and in shock. Before anyone could catch her, she’d fallen off the car bonnet and crashed to the ground with a thump. Thomas grabbed Millie and dragged her away from the scene, which was deteriorating quicker than he’d imagined possible. He turned back for Sharon, but she was surrounded by people trying to help.

‘Dad!’ Millie struggled to get to Sharon too, but she wasn’t strong enough. Thomas pulled her behind a house to safety, and held her tight. She stopped wriggling and they sat down on the patch of grass behind the house, not caring who it belonged to.

Police sirens mingled with screams, and Thomas covered Millie’s head and held her close to him. A woman came out of the back of the house wielding a broom, threatening to knock the living daylights out of the pair of them, until she saw Millie’s terrified face. Thomas explained that they were innocently caught up in the trouble going on in the road, and the woman quickly ushered them inside and locked the back door.

They could hear the noise of pure wrath now, to the front of the house. Thomas left Millie with the woman, who’d taken it upon herself to hug her, and moved towards the window, peering through the closed curtains. The scene was one of carnage. Abandoned banners littered the road, people lay injured, police holding riot shields hit anyone in their path, knocking some of them senseless. Blood splattered on cars, smoke billowed from engines and children ran around rootless and terrified. He knew he had to do something.

His first instinct was to call 999, but he saw the foolishness in that as fast as it had come to him. He asked the woman if he could open her front door to see if he could get some of the casualties inside. She nodded.

‘No, Dad!’ Millie screeched.

He ignored her and ran to the front door. ‘In here!’

A few people were cowering in the front garden and they ran inside to safety. Others saw him but were incapacitated or trapped on the wrong side of the police line. He made eye contact with an officer in riot gear, about to whack a woman over the head, and had an idea.