MY NEIGHBOUR TO BURN ME ALIVE

Faced with an inferno, Laura Wiggins, 53, only had only one option

- MOIRA HOLDEN, FIONA LOCKE.

Gazing down over the rooftops and trees from the window of my new maisonette, I felt so content. ‘I’m going to like it here,’ I said to my daughter, Emily, then 26. It was June 2015, I was single and had just moved into a new home and was looking forward to a fresh start.

Just eight months earlier I’d been rushed to hospital in agony with a perforated bowel. I’d emerged from a coma to find out I’d had sepsis and peritonitis and my four children had been told to prepare for the worst.

Yet I’d clung on to life and had been fitted with a stoma in my tummy. Now I had recovered, and moving into a new home had given me something exciting to focus on.

The neighbours in my block were friendly and over the next five years I got to know a lot of them well, often exchanging pleasantries when we bumped into each other in the communal hall.

But one morning, when I walked through the entrance door I held it open for the person behind me. It was a resident I’d often seen sitting outside in his van, who’d not lived in the block for long.

As he walked through the door he completely ignored me – no acknowledgement, no thanks, just a blank face.

Two weeks before Christmas, in 2021, a neighbour told me the man was going to be evicted because of antisocial behaviour.

He’d been playing loud music at all hours, and although I hadn’t heard him because my flat was on the top floor, I was glad he was going.