‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Your legs, oh …’

My trousers had been badly torn, and were now stained by the blood that dripped persistently from a series of scratches and gouges.

‘The glass,’ I said. ‘It’s fine, it’s nothing.’

‘I told them,’ she said, breathless. ‘They didn’t know if anyone was down there, they thought most people had gone to work, and I said, he’s definitely down there, he won’t have gone out, you’ve got to get him out.’

I winced – not at the pain from my legs, which was no more than a distant throb. ‘I do go out,’ I said. I immediately regretted the annoyance in my voice, but Bella did not appear to have noticed it, the proximity of disaster giving her a glittering, jumpy energy.

‘It was so close,’ she said. ‘We saw the tree had moved, of course, and I saw the crack when I got back from my run, and we could hear noises – I called the fire brigade.’

She embraced me again – not swooning onto me, seeking my support, but holding me as if I were the one who needed propping up. Again, I felt the resentment build. But she had possibly saved my life, and she had been made homeless too.

That last thought swung around and struck me like a long plank in a slapstick routine. I was homeless too. I was homeless.

A siren whooped, and then struck up a full wail. A car alarm had started when the houses had collapsed, and continued, only now audible to me. The dust clouds, which had briefly been thick enough to obscure everything but Bella and the luminous moving swatches of the hazard gear worn by the various emergency services, were thinning, beaten and torn by the blades of the helicopter. The line of the street was made visible again, redacted in the middle. All that stood of my former home was the black iron fence and gate.

A firefighter walked towards us, arms outstretched, as if wanting to join in a group hug, but his intention was to herd. ‘OK, folks, we need you to move back in the direction of Belgrave Road, the area’s still not safe.’ He caught sight of my legs and signalled to the green-clad paramedics nearby. ‘This one needs attention.’

My bleeding legs meant that we weren’t rushed to the outer cordon, but directed to the tailgate of an ambulance. However tender the shepherding, though, there was steel in the hand that guided my elbow. A line of spectators was gathered behind the police tape on Belgrave Road, and they gawped at us as we approached – Bella in her running gear, me in tattered work clothes, both of us coated in dust. The crowd’s not-so-secret enjoyment of the sight of us was entirely legible to me: the second-hand thrill of our victimhood, our status as a promontory of the bizarre into the placid sea of the normal, walking exemplars of the not-everyday. They got to enjoy being present at a proper event, while not being as unfortunately over-present as me and Bella. I recognised a couple of the guys who served in the corner shop where I bought my cans. Did they recognise me?