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gone out to meet there. I saw no one under the age of twenty.
    From the distance came the cry of someone in pain. After a second it cut to nothing.
    Sweating-scared now, I ran down a narrow service alley. But walking towards me were five men of about forty. I forked off to the left along a narrow back street flanked by high brick walls.
    This’s getting shitty, this’s getting shitty …
    I looked back. The men were following me.
    Shit.
    Ahead, blocking my way, was a hulking great orange truck, the driver’s door open against the wall.
    Heart juddering, breath turning ragged, I ran faster. I’d have to duck under the high door of the van and run until I bust. Or I’d be like Steve. The bastards would dance on my heart and lungs then leave me to be picked by rooks.
    I slammed through the gap between the truck and the wall then ducked under the door, but stayed crouching there, the door above my head. Twenty yards ahead three men walked slowly along the alley toward me.
    No, it wasn’t a deliberate trap. But it had become one.
    Behind me, the other men had nearly reached the tailgate of the truck. I scrambled into the cab.
    At that moment I felt God still loved me. The keys swung from the ignition.
    The engine fired as I slammed the door and punched the lock shut. Outside two faces appeared to stare in at me. They were impassive; no expression – just like those of the mob before they attacked Steve and me.
    Hands shaking, I struggled to knock off the handbrake while revving the motor until clouds of blue rolled down the alley. The guys in front had nearly reached the truck; the faces at the window pressed closer; the muscle beneath those faces tightened into an expression of sheer, fucking, alien fury.
    â€˜Come on, you stupid bastard!’ I yelled at myself. My hands and feet were like mashed potato. Nothing worked; the engine roared like a bleeding elephant; gears screamed, shredding splinters of steel. Beside me the door handle turned. They wanted in. They wanted to tear my skin. They—
    BANG! Gear connected to axle.
    The truck moved. I stamped on the pedal. The engine roared and the brick walls blurred orange. I was, thank Jesus and all his sweet, sweet angels, really shifting.
    I looked away from the side window. I didn’t want to see what happened to the faces.
    I thundered that truck along the alley like a shell through its barrel, a paint-stripping hand’s breadth to spare at each side.
    The truck powered out from the side of McDonald’s, the building now blazing. I swung right.
    It was a one way street. I was going the wrong way. But I couldn’t care less.
    I wouldn’t stop this big orange truck until the town was miles away. What’d I do then? God only knew …

Chapter Seven
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    Cutting myself from Doncaster felt like cutting an umbilical cord that had connected me with that town for seventeen years.
    It hurt. But I had to do it or it would kill me.
    The truck was slow, as noisy as a tank, but its sheer bulk felt reassuring.
    I cut off onto minor roads that took me into the flat countryside that surrounds Doncaster in a vast pancake of fields.
    There was no traffic. I saw no one. No one moving, that is. I powered the truck through small villages, sometimes seeing a shape at the side of the road. Often they looked like big dolls or just a mound of children’s clothes. I knew what they were.
    In the front garden of a vicarage with roses climbing round the front door were the remains of a bonfire. Charred shapes with arms stretching up as stiff as branches lay in the ash.
    A country hotel. From the window three young men hung head first down the walls like carnival decorations. In a dislocated way I wondered how it had been done. I guessed they had been dangled out of the windows while someone had nailed their feet to the window ledges. Beneath each corpse blood streaked down the