Sipping on my Magnum cider, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.
Looking at the screen, I saw it was my friend Clare* calling.
‘Hey, what you up to?’ she asked.
‘Not much,’ I replied.
With my daughter Poppy, then three, at her dad’s for the weekend back in August 2020, I was just making the most of chilling out in the summer sun with my mate Sophie*.
‘Fancy coming to a party?’ Clare asked.
‘Yeah, why not?!’ I smiled – we’d not long come out of lockdown, it would be nice to let my hair down.
So an hour later, Clare came to pick me and Sophie up, and drove us to her mate’s house in Penarth, just outside of Cardiff.
The party was being thrown by two lads, Tom* and Simon*, who were friends of Clare – and as we pulled up in the
