Friday 9 June 1995, 11.35pm
107 Hampton Road, Redland, Bristol

Alison awoke with a jump at the sound of the sirens. She could only have been in bed a few minutes and had been starting to fall into the first stages of deep sleep. Adrenaline swam through her body at first but soon dissipated, giving way to a sensation of relaxed emptiness. It was very like the feeling she often got after crying, drained but relieved after the release of emotion.
She lay in bed and watched the blue lights dance to their own peculiar rhythm on the high white ceiling. Alison had lived in this house for two years and it had felt strangely cosy. Now though it looked decidedly sparse, with most of its usual contents gone. Her father had come down earlier in the week to take her stuff back home to the Midlands, all neatly packed in cardboard boxes. All that was left was the furniture, thankfully not hers, and a suitcase which lay open on the floor, three-quarters full of clothes and other odds and ends. Alison closed her eyes slowly; she felt sick. She forced herself to retrace the events of the evening in her mind.
It was all Darren's fault; he was never usually late and Alison had certainly expected him on time, tonight of all nights. Early tomorrow morning she was off to the south of France for her vacation job, teaching English at a summer camp. He had said he would come over at eight: blow the lads out for one night, her last night at University. Of course, as it had turned out, she had made the mistake of actually looking forward to it. By 10.20 there was still no sign of him.
She had gone to the window to try to relax, opening the sash fully to let the summer night air cool her head. The street below her was empty, as it often was at this time; Friday night in the student area of a university town is not the time to find casual walkers. Most people would be well ensconced in a pub or the Union by now; the rest either off somewhere for the weekend or, who knows, maybe even studying. There was no studying to be done tonight though; the exams were over and everyone was getting on with the serious business of enjoying themselves. Very soon though, Alison had a much better idea. She walked out of her room and into the bathroom next door. It was tidy and clean for some reason, more so than it had been all the time she had lived there. Cleanliness is not next to godliness in a house of six students - more like next to impossible, Alison had thought, as she opened the small white door set into the bathroom wall. The door led into a cupboard which contained nothing but a rigid metal ladder, bolted to the floor. Alison climbed up, pushed the trapdoor and clambered onto the roof.
Alison's house, or rather her landlord's, was a tall Victorian affair. Of course it was all flats now: three students on the ground floor, Alison's lot on the top two floors, and a long-suffering married couple in the basement. In an effort to retain a modicum of suburban dignity in this bohemian location, this poor pair referred to their home as the 'garden flat'; it was the kind of snub to reality of which only landlords and estate agents are usually capable.
Alison walked to one edge of the large, flat roof, took a deep breath and gazed out across the Bristol skyline. The house was nearly halfway up a fairly big hill. She could see the lights of Clifton and the City fall away to one side and, across the road, Redland stretching out to the other. Alison had always considered the roof to be the finest feature of the flat. Barbecues, parties, god knows what else; it had all gone on up here. The thing was though, you could have a party anywhere - when the roof really came into its own was when she wanted to get away; to ponder, to be alone. Anyone who has lived with five other people for any length of time knows that you are rarely alone, a great thing a lot of the time, but not always. Alison had often found she needed her quiet moments. When she was a kid it had been her bike; she would go out for hours, riding nowhere and thinking; now it was this roof, and she was going to miss it.
On the other side of the road, a few hundred yards or so further up the hill, Alison's eyes stopped on another house. It was identical to hers and a familiar place too, both inside and out. This was the boys' house; and one of the boys, holed up on the top two floors with five others in what seemed to her to be numerous grades of unbearable squalor, was Darren.
What had drawn her gaze to this house tonight was the impression of movement on the roof. Alison strained to see clearly who or what was up there. It was definitely someone; but beyond the swaying trees and against the backdrop of the newly-dark sky and yellow sodium lamps, she failed to recognise the mystery figure. It had better not be Darren up there, Alison remembered thinking, or he could forget any ideas of getting anything more than a perfunctory peck on the cheek by way of a loving farewell.
She got up and turned to go back to the trapdoor, back to wondering where Darren was. Or trying to relax and not wonder where he was. Then a thought occurred: if she went right to the far edge of the roof, she could avoid the trees and get a better view. It was silly and risky - the surface of the roof was different over there and more slippery. But her curiosity had been strongly aroused now and she knew she would not be able to go back into the house without at least trying to satisfy it.
She crept gingerly to the other side of the roof, first carefully shutting the trapdoor then keeping low to stay close to the apparent comfort of the roofing. Eventually arriving at her destination, she looked up to appraise any improvement in her view. There were no trees blocking her vision now and the light was better here too. Alison stood up.
She tried to scream but could not; not as she saw Mikey come tumbling suddenly off the roof, not as his body fell flailing to the ground, not even when it landed heavily on the yellow garden path below.
Her very first thought on seeing him hit the ground had not been for him but for Katie. She and the other girls were probably over there right now, investigating the cause of the commotion. Soon they would all know; then the long night would really begin. Katie was the highly strung type and Alison could only speculate as to how she would take her boyfriend's death.
Death. Alison opened her eyes as she realised that this was the first time the word had entered her mind. He was dead, wasn't he? Surely he was, to have fallen so far. What if he was not? Well, too late; she had long ago missed any opportunity she might have had to do anything for him. What sort of unfeeling monster was she, to have retired to her bed like a sickly great aunt rather than report what she had seen? Yet she knew the answer to that one before she even asked herself the question. The whole scenario was already crushing her and she felt her own breathing quicken. She tried to calm herself. No, she had decided - the ambulance was here now, and the others could sort the rest of it out. What she had experienced this evening would stay with her a long time, forever in fact, and she saw no need to talk about it tonight. And tomorrow she would be away from here.
And with that thought alone to comfort her, Alison turned on to her side, closed her eyes again and let a shallow, unquiet sleep enfold her.