I needed drugs. TPR told me that we could buy them over the counter at the supermarket. I wasn’t too sure of this, but felt it was worth a try, so I followed him out of the door and along the road to Tesco on Broughton Road.

Just outside the shop entrance we became involved in a brief conversation with some people we’d seen around our neighbourhood. The five children in the group looked very bored. Like them I wasn’t interested in hanging around listening to idle chit chat. I reminded TPR that I needed drugs, and dragged him into the shop.

Tesco’s layout had been changed since my last visit. The pharmacy counter was now situated amongst the newspaper and magazine stands. We walked up to the assistant on duty and made our request.

“For that you will have to provide a sample on a stick” she instructed me. “Oh, and there is a £20 charge”.

I was about to say that perhaps I didn’t need drugs that much when one of the women that we had spoken to earlier rushed into the shop screaming that there had been a fatality in the car park. One of the bored children in her party had run into the path of a car and been killed instantly. Suddenly my quest for drugs was completely irrelevant.