The car that wanted to kill my family.

‘I’ll see you inside,’ I told Leo and Marlon.

Neither of them moved.

The car was getting closer, still gathering speed.

I felt a surge of anger as I stepped into the middle of the street.

The driver slammed on his brakes and the car stopped.

I saw now that the Smart car man was even older than I had thought. He must have been around Leo’s age, somewhere around sixty.

‘Twenty,’ I said, my voice shaking with emotion.

‘What?’

Just one word and I hated him even more. I heard an educated voice, and a life of privilege and money and education. It infuriated me that you could have all of that and still be so stupid, so arrogant, so careless with the safety of others.

‘Twenty,’ I said again. ‘The speed limit on this street is twenty miles an hour. What were you doing in your stupid car? Fifty? Sixty?’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ he said, and it sounded like a second language in his mouth.

Fark orf. Even the way he cursed me got my blood up.

We glared at each other and then he drove past.

But as the car reached the end of the street, his arm appeared from the window as he raised a middle finger at me. Not two fingers, in the British style, after the fashion of our archers taunting the French at Agincourt. But the more international middle finger.

A man of the world. A global kind of guy.

Leo and Marlon had still not moved. Leo was holding Marlon close, shielding his eyes, as if he did not want his grandson to witness my total inability to keep him safe. I looked at Marlon’s face.

And that is when I snapped.

The car was still idling at the end of the street.

He did not drive away.

He wanted me to see.

The middle finger was still in the air. And when he saw me watching, the finger began to slowly move up and down.

‘Daddy?’ Marlon said, fear and uncertainty in his voice.

I looked at Leo.

‘Please take Marlon inside now,’ I told him.

And they still didn’t move.

There were recycling bins on the pavement ready for tomorrow’s collection, one of them so full that the lid was half-open.

There was our empty bottle of Prosecco on top. I snatched it up by the neck and stepped into the street.

‘No,’ Leo said, coming after me. ‘Christian – no!’

The bastard was still giving me the finger when the bottle left my hands.

The police arrived within the hour.

At the time, I wasn’t sure if that was fast or slow. I watched them coming from the window of the living room.

Two uniformed officers. A young woman and an older man who looked too long in the tooth to be in uniform. The squad car was parked right outside, and they took their time strolling up the path. In a few windows up and down the street, our neighbours watched the show.