‘If it was today,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘I’d have taken them on. Smashed them to pieces. But I hadn’t learnt to fight then, and I was still weak and in a lot of pain, bleeding, limping, half blind, a useless piece of chewed-up meat. There was nothing I could do except stand there. There were too many of them; if I’d tried to do anything they’d have massacred us.

‘I watched as Susannah managed to get up, and she got into the Volvo. She got it started. I’d left the key in the ignition. She went zooming off out of control, smashed right into one of the petrol pumps and knocked it flat. No petrol had spilt out, but you could smell the fumes pouring out of the damaged pump. The kids were running towards the car to get the stuff out of the boot, laughing, jeering. And then Susannah must’ve of tried to start the engine again and there must’ve been a spark because next thing there was a big sort of whoomph sound and a fireball around the car. Some of the chasing boys were knocked over and I felt a hot blast, like a kick. That was enough for me. I was back in the Citroën. I turned the key and we were out of there.

‘Andy was crying and Henry kept asking about Mary and was she going to come and help and I felt sick. I’d hardly known Susannah, but I hated for this to have happened to her. You’d think you’d get used to it, people dying, friends getting killed, but somehow, for me, each new one is worse. I made a decision then that I was going to save people. Somehow I was going to save people.

‘I didn’t do a great job, did I? The next to die was Andy. In Slough. Not a great place to live. Worse place to die. The Citroën got us there. Only took us about half an hour. But when we arrived I wondered why we’d bothered. Why had we come here? What was I expecting to find? Happy families dancing in the street? My sisters rushing to meet me with big smiley faces? Yeah … Slough had been banged up much worse than Rowhurst. The whole town was ripped apart. It was chaos. Looked like there’d been a riot, or a war, or something.