‘What did we know? This was early days. We had no idea what was out there. How dangerous it might be. It was just a school maths problem. They never asked that in the exams, did they? Like, “If John walks at three miles an hour from London to Brighton, and he’s attacked by rabid grown-ups four times, and they bite his right leg off, how long will it take him to bleed to death?”’

Malik laughed again.

‘We were just four dumb kids with a lot of stupid hope.

‘It was Andy who suggested we look for some more car keys. I mean, it had gone so well before, hadn’t it? I’d only been knocked out for a few seconds. So me and Henry searched the supermarket. Andy and Susannah stayed behind to guard the storeroom. Though what use they’d have been if anyone got in and attacked I don’t know. Susannah would just shrug, I guess.

‘We found an upstairs bit and we found the manager’s office, and we found the manager, hanging from the ceiling, with his belt round his neck, and his trousers round his ankles. He hadn’t thought about that. How he’d look if he took his belt off. I must admit I laughed. But Henry didn’t really have a sense of humour. He was determined, though, I’ll give him that. As I looked round the office, he went through the guy’s pockets. I found his keys in his desk. House keys, work keys, car key. For a Volvo. We looked out the window that overlooked a staff car park behind the supermarket. Henry knew a bit about cars and he recognized the Volvo.

‘Ten minutes later we were packing our supplies into the boot. It didn’t have a whole lot of petrol in it. The info panel said twenty-seven miles. We knew we probably wouldn’t be able to find any more petrol anywhere. It had run out quickly when the disease hit. The tankers had stopped delivering. Everyone ran dry, got stranded. But twenty-seven miles was better than nothing. It would get us halfway there. It felt like a good sign. We were learning how to get by. We felt like we’d sort of achieved something.

‘It was a good thing we had the car because five minutes down the road we ran into a big gang of grown-ups, blocking the street. We braked hard and they came after us, but we managed to turn round and go a different way, and that felt like a good sign too.