‘So I hid. I picked up a fire extinguisher and I hid, round a corner near to where Abby was lying, and when the doc came out of his surgery and went to her I hit him over the head. That wasn’t like the films either. He just said, “Ow,” and fell over, clutching his head, not knocked out at all. He’d dropped one of his syringes, though, and I grabbed it up and stuck it in his back and pressed the plunger down. And he jumped up, with the needle sticking out of him, and he stumbled about, ranting and raving, and I hit him with the fire extinguisher again and again, and in the end he sat down on the floor and blew bubbles and his eyes rolled up and went white. I dragged him into the room with Tommy and locked it shut and, as far as I know, he’s still in there.

‘Then I waited for Abby to wake up, too weak to do anything else. Sitting in one of the plastic chairs like I was waiting to see the doctor, and I thought about how weird the world had become and how horrible and depressing. I’ll tell you, that was one of my low points, one of the very lowest, and I’ve got a lot to choose from.

‘It took a few hours, but eventually Abby woke up, or at least she choked and puked herself awake. When she was feeling OK enough, we talked about what we were going to do and we both agreed we didn’t want to stay there any longer. So twenty minutes later we were out on the street, carrying as much medical gear and drugs as we could.

‘Turned out Abby had been brought to the medical centre by Rav, same as me. She’d been hanging out with him. Part of his gang. They’d been hiding out in Brockridge Park, near his school. There was a building there called Brockridge House. Some rich family had once lived there and the park had been their land. The house was almost a sort of castle and it had a garden with high walls. Rav had made a good choice. Easy place to defend. Open space around it. It’d been a place where you could get cream teas and things, and there were two big rooms you could hire out for parties and weddings. Upstairs was a gallery, I think.

‘Now it was a fortress.