‘But I looked in the mirror, the cracked mirror in our bathroom that the vandals had smashed. I was still a little feverish and I had a vision that it was me – my ugliness – that had cracked the mirror, like in a cartoon. I was worried that if I went out on the streets looking like that any kids who saw me would think I was a grown-up.

‘But I had no choice. I couldn’t make it on my own. I knew I had to get help or die. So I grabbed my secret emergency food stash that I’d been saving just in case – don’t know how I’d got through the madness without cracking and eating it all. I had some cans of Coke and some chocolate bars left over from our supermarket heist, Mars and Snickers and stuff. I filled up a carrier bag and went out on the street.

‘It was the middle of the day. The sun was at its highest and brightest. From watching before I’d noticed that this seemed to be the quietest time. There were way less grown-ups out and about in the day. I was still more nervous than you can imagine, expecting at any moment to be mobbed by a gang of mothers and fathers. I passed the car that killed Andy, a twisted metal skeleton, and carried on down the street, limping along. I must’ve looked like Gollum’s ugly cousin.

‘I worked my way towards the centre of town and at last, after what felt like hours but was probably only about twenty minutes, I saw some kids. They were throwing stones at a house, smashing windows, maybe thirty of them, all laughing, all armed, wearing hoodies, their trousers hanging off their arses. They were the sort of kids my mum used to tell me to avoid when I was home in the holidays. They didn’t like posh kids who went to private school. Muslim kids called Malik. I could see that some of them were holding beer cans.

‘They didn’t notice me until I was quite close. I wanted to shout out to them, but was worried my voice would be too weak; my throat was still really painful and swollen. In the end one of them turned and pointed, getting his mates’ attention. I raised a hand to wave to them and tried to speak, but it just came out like a strangled croak, not like speech at all, like I was some mad frog. I panicked that my throat was totally damaged, that the disease had broken it and I’d never speak again, and that made it worse. I tried again. Epic fail. And then they started throwing stones at me. Their aim wasn’t brilliant, but a couple of them hit me. Not big stones luckily, but it still hurt.