‘First thing we had to do was find a source of food. I talked to the others. We were sitting out under a tree in the park, hadn’t gone that far from the camp. They told me they knew about a supermarket full of food that nobody could get into. Sounded like a magic supermarket to me, but they claimed it was real. All locked up and the windows impossible to break. So I said we’d go there. Work out a way. It was something to do. The supermarket was just outside town with a big car park and a petrol station. It had been built in the same red brick as the older buildings in Rowhurst, to try and make it blend in, but it was huge and out of scale and still looked like what it was – a big shed full of food – like it didn’t really belong there.

‘There were some cars in the car park and a long line of abandoned shopping trolleys. When we reached the supermarket entrance, we found three dead bodies lying there. A middle-aged woman and two younger men. They’d been half eaten. Whether by animals or by other humans it was hard to tell. One of the guys was missing both his arms. We all tried not to look at them, tried not to think about them. Pretend they weren’t there.

‘The shop doors were bolted firmly shut. We pressed our faces against the glass. It wasn’t exactly full. That would have been too good to be true, but there did still appear to be some stuff on the shelves. How were we going to get at it, though?

‘I asked if anyone knew how to hot-wire a car. Not something they taught at Rowhurst. Well, that set Andy off. He was one of those guys who knew everything about everything.

‘He was all, like – “It’s very difficult with modern cars. Almost impossible with any model built after 2004. They have too many security systems. With earlier makes it’s easier, but you’d need tools, wire-cutters and electrical tape and a screwdriver. I’ve never actually done it, but I’ve seen videos on YouTube. It’s quite complicated.”’

Malik said all this in a squeaky, nasal voice and Ella giggled.

‘Yeah, Andy knew a lot of stuff,’ Malik went on. ‘Couldn’t do a lot, stuck in his chair, but knew a lot.

‘So I’m like – “What about those dead bodies? They might have driven here; they might have car keys on them.”

‘“Go on then,” said Andy, and he was almost sort of grinning. “Why don’t you take a look?”

‘I told him no way and he said it wasn’t like I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, I didn’t have to eat them or anything. “Just got to think of them like a dead fox or something, a dead bird.”