When Imogen found me the night before Take Back the Parks I was sitting at her kitchen table with a glass of milk staring at the balcony doors, no idea that she’d even arrived home, my fingernails bitten down to stubs. I’d actually turned my phone off for an hour and was playing a sort of mental game with myself, battling back the desire to turn it on again, when she walked into the room. I knew when I turned it on, it would explode with messages from Eden, Hooky, Captain James, some journalists I’d known over the years. There were maps spread all over the floor of the kitchen, all over the bench tops, some stuck to the fridge, all representing the structure of security for the event in different colours and patterns. Together, Eden and I had tracked down as many CCTV cameras on each of the run routes as possible. We’d directed a team to work through the registered runners, looking for participants with violent pasts, and we’d composed watch lists of their likenesses for the foot patrol teams.
