‘It was about a half-hour walk to the other side of town. The streets were quiet, but that didn’t make them any less scary. I knew what it was like to get ambushed, and so did Abby. She’d broken her arm when a load of sick teenagers had tried to kill her. Luckily we didn’t see anyone. No kids. No adults, nothing. Like in cheesy old films where somebody says, “It’s too quiet …” Only in those films the next thing that happens is some big-ass attack. None came, but we were still way tense and by the time we arrived at Brockridge House we were both done in. Abby was still throwing up from the injection and I was hurt all over and bleeding through my bandages. Anyway, Rav was there with his little army of kids from the school. They were pretty amazed to see us.

‘Rav said he’d had me down for dead. And there I was, walking around. Well, staggering and stumbling and bleeding all over the place. I really must’ve looked like one of the walking dead just then. They were excited to see us at first, especially Abby, as she was one of them. But I could tell they didn’t like having me around. I freaked them out. I was too weird, too much like a diseased and rotting grown-up.

‘I mean, for the first few days I was a hero, escaping from the mad doctor, bringing Abby home. Then the next few days after that I was cool, a curiosity, the boy who’d survived an attack, back from the dead. And then I was a freak. Ugly and mashed up and no use to anyone. Even Abby didn’t want anything to do with me. She was back with her old friends. Siding with them. Soon there were whispers, people giving me dirty looks, complaining – you know, “He’s not one of us. Why should we feed him? What can he do to help?”

‘You can’t blame them, I suppose. They were looking after their own. Trying to get by, to survive. I got talking to a little group of kids I’d sort of made friends with. Kids on the edge. Ignored by the others. Guy called Andy who had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair, his friend Susannah who had the thickest glasses I’d ever seen and a permanently runny nose, a big wiry boy with a shaved head called Henry. Henry had some kind of learning difficulties and had been in a special school. Didn’t have a mum or dad. Didn’t really know what was going on. He had fits now and then and kept swearing really quietly, muttering these rude words all the time.