Now Mark lifts his eyeline and slides his hands under his chin. His head feels heavy, and he wonders if it’s grief, or just the aftereffects of a night in a police cell. Although at least it was warm in there. That metal excuse for a bed was far from comfortable, but the radiator pumped out a heat that he hasn’t felt since the day he found Jon on Clapham Common and slept under his blanket, the same day that Stew chucked him out. That was the final injustice after a shitshow of disasters, and the one that dealt a killer blow to his dream.

With a sigh, Mark leans back against the wooden slats of the bench and extends his legs over his rucksack. After he accepted the caution, Mark was free to leave Wandsworth police station, but it was made clear to him that the squat is permanently off limits. Which is pretty irritating because, after four weeks bedding down there, it was starting to feel like home. Jon had pleaded for the front room with the big window as soon as they arrived, and Mark had been happy to oblige because he wanted the storeroom out back, somewhere private to work out how the hell he was going to get his life back on track.

The electricity supply had been turned off, but there was running water and various extras like an old sofa (Jon won that in an arm wrestle but expected Mark to lug it to the front room for him) and a cardboard box full of biscuits and long-life milk. They’d been given an old camping stove by a day centre in Clapham, and Mark had been able to have a cup of tea first thing in the morning again.

It’s gutting to think all that effort has gone to waste.

In a fit of frustration, Mark kicks at the hard concrete with his heels. Some part of his brain is telling him not to blame that woman, that she did a good thing, phoning the ambulance and trying to save Jon’s life. But then her image takes over, her look-at-me dress and those big doe eyes, thinking she’s better than him and Jon. Too blinded by her own arrogance to realise the only thing that separates them is luck. She’s been trying to get them off her street ever since they moved into that shop, threatening them with some residents’ association legal action, pulling her kids close every time she walks past. She’s never once asked how she could help.

Even that night, earlier in the evening, she’d been at it. Mark had gone on a vodka hunt, and Jon was fuming about her when he got back. Then a few hours later, not only does she rid the street of them both, she has a ringside seat. The fucking irony of it.