40.

The quarter of an hour it took me to fight my way through that crowd felt like forever. Gnawing worry about my parents knotted into panic, not for myself, but for Amelia. The heat and the yelling and the smell of sweat and fumes swelled with the protestors, a moving mesh of limbs and backs and chests. What had I been thinking, leading her into such danger? Despite the kind hands that had stopped me from hitting the ground, the crowd felt unpredictable to the point of menacing, a pent-up force about to blow. She was pretty much the only girl there, and it was all my fault. I’m not religious but I found myself murmuring, ‘Keep her safe, keep her safe …’ in time with the crowd’s chanting, and it felt like a kind of prayer.

When I reached the far side of the square I saw that the protestors were hemmed in by a wall of riot police. Their shields were braced low and their truncheons were either folded across their chests or down at their sides for the most part. Every now and then though, if one of the demonstrators got too close, a policemen might casually poke him back with the end of his baton, or even lash out with it properly. I saw a guy take one of these blows to the side of his head, and another nearer to me already had blood pouring from his mouth.

As the only white boy in the crowd, I obviously stood out. I could think of nothing better to do than to try and use that to my advantage. I’m tall for fourteen, but I crouched as I reached the edge of the crowd, and I did my best to look young and petrified – it wasn’t hard – in the hope one of the officers would take pity on me and let me pass.

My pathetic plan worked, but not how I’d expected it might. A protestor, not a policeman, helped me escape. He grabbed the scruff of my T-shirt and thrust me towards the shield wall, yelling, ‘Ce garçon n’a pas de place ici!’

I got the gist of that, and nodding, wide-eyed, I pushed forward. At first it seemed the policemen either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. But then a crack between two of the shields widened just enough for me – with the help of a kick up the backside – to stagger through.

Once behind the police line I ran up and down it searching for Amelia in vain. I tried calling her number but she didn’t pick up. Huddles of reinforcement police were clumped along this side of the human barrier, waiting to take their turn in it. I asked one group if they’d seen a white girl my age come through, but a combination of my terrible French and the noise of the crowd drowning meant they just stared at me blankly. Should I wait and hope Amelia would be spat through a gap soon, or race back to the hotel to raise the alarm? Shaking all over and feeling like I was about to throw up, I decided on the latter, turned and ran.