Chloe was back on the streets, running for her life. There was chaos all around her. Buildings and cars were on fire, shops were being looted, angry men in masks and hoods were throwing projectiles at each other.
She could see a mass of emergency vehicles up ahead, their lights strobing in the gloom. And she could hear the loud growl of a helicopter as it circled overhead.
Just as before she had no idea where she was going, but she told herself that she had to keep moving. She couldn’t believe that all of London had been taken over by the rioters. That surely wasn’t possible. There were simply too many streets and too many buildings. So if she ploughed on she was bound to reach a safe place eventually.
The trouble was she felt so weak and tired. Her legs were aching and every breath she took filled her lungs with more smoke and dust from the fires.
She ran past a man who was lying in the road with half his face missing. Then she watched a woman jump from a window above a blazing shop and impale herself on spiked railings.
Rather than stop to look, Chloe swallowed down her terror and picked up her desperate pace. But just as she was approaching the roadblock of emergency vehicles, a bottle landed on the ground in front of her.
Flames shot up as the glass shattered and Chloe was going too fast to stop herself running into them.
She came to a juddering halt and stood there as the fire grabbed hold of her dungarees and climbed swiftly up both legs. She didn’t move even though the pain was unbearable.
All she could do was let out a loud, high-pitched scream that drowned out all the other sounds around her.
*
It was the scream that woke Chloe up from the nightmare. Her eyes snapped open and it felt like a bolt of electricity was surging through her veins.
Several seconds passed before she realised what was happening and where she was. It took a few more seconds to get her breathing under control and force herself into a sitting position on the sofa.
She could see the night had ended because the sun was shining through the balcony window. The last thing she remembered was sitting there watching the television and thinking about her mother after Wesley had fallen asleep in the armchair. The telly was still on, but Wesley was no longer in the room.
She wondered where he was and if he had heard her screaming. Perhaps he was in the kitchen making tea or in the bathroom having a shower.
She needed a good wash herself. Her hands, face and clothes were still stained with grime and she smelled awful. And her head, knees and elbows were still sore.
She flinched suddenly as the last part of the nightmare replayed itself in her head. It made her think of Ryan and how he had burned to death in the gift shop. It was so sad, so tragic. She would never forget it as long as she lived. Just as she would never forget how she had watched her adoptive mother plunge to her death from the roof of the warehouse.
Death and destruction continued to dominate the TV news programmes. It seemed to Chloe as though her nightmare was being projected onto the screen. A female voice spoke over video footage of burning buildings and ugly confrontations between mobs of young people and the police.
‘It was another night of mayhem across London,’ the woman was saying. ‘The confirmed death toll has now risen to seven. The Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency and more soldiers are being drafted into the capital. Elsewhere the violence has become more intense, with major outbreaks in five other cities and several coastal resort towns.’
The newsreader then mentioned the areas of London that had been worst hit, including Vauxhall where no fewer than thirty buildings had been set on fire and scores of shops had been ransacked.
‘Police are now convinced that missing schoolboy Jacob Rossi was among those who have died in the riots,’ she said, and the photo of Jacob that Chloe had already seen was shown again. ‘Further details relating to his death were revealed this morning by the detective leading the investigation.’
This time instead of showing a photo of her mother they cut to her speaking to reporters outside Jacob Rossi’s home.
Chloe stared, mouth agape, and her mum’s words made her go cold.
‘His death is believed to have been due to smoke inhalation. Jacob was trapped in the cellar of the building when it was set on fire and he was unable to escape because he was chained to a wall.’
Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes in response not only to hearing her mum’s voice, but also to what had happened to that poor boy. Why would someone do that to him? How could anyone be that evil?
She refused to allow herself to conjure up an image of Jacob Rossi in that cellar. Instead, she focused on the fact that her mum was OK. It was a relief to know that she had come to no harm. She was out there doing her job and probably still didn’t know what had happened to Tom.
It was enough to force Chloe to her feet. She went looking for Wesley so that he could take her to Wandsworth police station.
But to her dismay she discovered that he wasn’t there in the flat. Not in the kitchen, the bathroom or the bedrooms. And he wasn’t on the balcony either.
A twist of panic wrenched through her gut. She was alone again, and it sent her sprits crashing to the floor. She didn’t understand why Wesley had left her in the flat. Had he gone back out onto the streets to join the riots? Or had he …
The sudden chime of the doorbell broke her chain of thought and made her jump. She froze, unsure what to do. When she did nothing it rang again and this time she rushed into the hall, thinking it must be Wesley who’d gone out and forgotten to take his key with him.
But it wasn’t Wesley who was standing there when she opened the door. It was a man and a woman, and they were both clearly shocked to see her.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the woman said. ‘Where’s Ryan? Where’s our son?’