LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

      Although my love life was pretty much a disaster, things were going well at work and I’d managed to save enough money for a deposit on a flat of my own. So when my flatmate, Connie, went to live with her boyfriend, I arranged to rent the spare room in my friend Cara’s flat until I could find somewhere to buy.

      It was August 2011 and I was alone on what would be my last night in the rented flat Connie and I had shared. I’d already taken almost everything I was going to need in the short term to Cara’s place and stored the rest in the garage at my parents’ house in Devon. So all I had to do that evening was pack a small suitcase to take with me the next day. I was looking forward to buying a place of my own and starting the next phase of my life, and after having a nice dinner out with friends I was just thinking about heading off to bed for an early night when I heard the sound of breaking glass.

      The flat was above some shops on quite a busy street, and my first thought was that there’d been a car accident. But what I saw when I looked out of the window was like a scene from a dystopian film. There were people running in every direction, most of them wearing hoodies and scarves that concealed their faces and some of them hurling what looked like bricks and bottles through shop windows. At first, I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. Then, as I watched, with my back pressed against the wall beside the window so that I couldn’t be seen, a group of people started rocking a car from side to side, before stumbling backwards when smoke began to curl around it and then flames exploded out of it.

      I was shaking as I phoned the police. ‘There’s rioting all over London,’ the police operator told me. ‘So it might be some time before anyone gets there. Just stay in your flat. Whatever you do, don’t go outside.’

      I moved away from the window after speaking to her, and was crouched in the hallway when my phone rang. ‘Dad and I have been listening to the news,’ Mum said, sounding less worried than she would have done if she’d known the true situation. ‘Is there rioting where you are?’

      ‘It’s fine,’ I told her, walking from the hallway into my bedroom at the back of the flat and closing the door as I spoke, so that she wouldn’t hear the sounds from the street.

      I didn’t know the neighbours, who’d only recently moved in to the flat next door. But after I’d reassured Mum, I knocked on their door and asked if I could sit with them for a while, because I didn’t want to be on my own. Something had been thrown through their living-room window just a few minutes earlier, and after they’d shown me the shards of glass that covered the carpet we sat in their bedroom, as far away from the street as we could get, and waited for the police to arrive. In fact, things had already started to calm down a bit by the time they got there, and I decided to go back to my place and try to get a couple of hours’ sleep.

      It felt as though my head had only just touched the pillow when my phone rang again. It was Connie this time, and her voice was tight with anxiety as she asked, ‘Are you in the flat, Alice? It’s on TV. I’m watching it now. They’ve set fire to the shops underneath. You’ve got to get out.’

      I’d been so tired I’d fallen into bed fully clothed and I was just grabbing my suitcase when there was a knock on the front door. The fireman who was standing there when I opened it told me, ‘We’re evacuating the building. They’ve fire-bombed the shop on the corner. You need to leave – now.’ So I followed my neighbours out on to the smoke-filled street, where the last of the rioters were being herded past the burning buildings and around the corner by police.

      Someone had opened up a café a few doors down from the flat, to provide a refuge for people who’d had to be evacuated from their homes. It was about four o’clock in the morning by that time, and all the other people there looked as exhausted and dazed as I felt. Fortunately, the fire didn’t spread to my flat, and when the fire-fighters eventually got it under control, I was able to go back and try to sleep again for a couple of hours.

      Someone from the letting agency was due to do an inventory later that morning, but I was so tired by the time he arrived that I left him to it. Cara was away for a couple of days, so she’d given me a key to let myself in to her flat, and although I had been planning to go there first to drop off my bag, being at work suddenly seemed like a much better option than sitting there on my own.

      I worked at that time for a company that owned several art galleries, and when I emailed my boss to tell her what had happened and that I was going to be a bit late arriving at the office, she answered immediately, asking if I was all right and telling me to take the day off. I don’t think what had happened had really sunk in by that time. The adrenaline was still pumping around my body and although I was incredibly tired and shocked I wasn’t yet feeling particularly distressed, and my boss seemed to understand when I said I wanted to keep busy. So I did go in to work, and when I got there I was sitting at my desk talking to some of my colleagues about what had happened when Joe came over.

      Joe held a senior position as head of a department at the company I worked for, and although I knew vaguely who he was I hadn’t ever spoken to him before. ‘I heard about your experience this morning,’ he said. ‘And I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ He seemed genuinely concerned, so I assured him that I was fine, apart from being tired and finding it a bit difficult to process what I’d seen – the overturned cars, smashed windows, looted shops and people running riot through the streets. ‘I still think you need to go home,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a shock and when it catches up with you, home is the best place for you to be.’

      He was right about the shock catching up with me. The adrenaline was already starting to subside and, as it did so, I was overcome by an almost paralysing weariness. So Joe got me a taxi, which the company paid for, and half an hour later I let myself in to Cara’s flat, with barely minutes to spare before exhaustion finally kicked in.

      I sent Joe an email before I fell into bed, thanking him for the taxi and telling him he’d been right about home being the best place, which he answered immediately, saying, ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just have a good rest. Joe X.’

      I don’t sign off emails or texts with a kiss, except to family and close friends. But I know a lot of people do. So it probably wouldn’t have seemed particularly odd that Joe had done so if it hadn’t been for our relative positions at work and for the fact that we’d only spoken to each other for the first time that morning – although I was too weary to wonder about it by then.

      I had just finished reading Joe’s email when Cara’s mum phoned to check that I’d been able to get into the flat and that everything was okay. It was while I was talking to her that the impact of the whole traumatic experience finally hit me and I had to end the call because I couldn’t stop sobbing. Then I went to bed and slept without waking until the following morning.

      Joe made a point of coming to see me the next day, to ask if I was feeling better and if I’d managed to sleep. He sat on the edge of my desk in the large open-plan office for about half an hour, talking about what had happened and studying the diagram he asked me to draw to show exactly where the flat was in relation to where the rioting had kicked off in the street below.

      Part of my job involved setting up exhibitions of paintings and sculpture at various galleries around the country, and although I hadn’t had any direct contact with Joe before then, he was ultimately responsible for my team. So there was nothing

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