Ollie won his bet sooner than he expected. As the main body of kids were crossing Berkeley Square Achilleus and Big Mick, who had been scouting ahead, came running back, out of breath.

‘There’s grown-ups. Up ahead,’ Achilleus panted.

‘Can we go round them?’ Maxie asked.

‘They’re attacking some kids,’ said Mick. ‘It don’t look good.’

‘How many of them?’ said Blue.

‘About fifteen or twenty.’

‘Can we take them?’

‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus. ‘We can take them.’

‘OK,’ said Maxie. ‘I’ll stay here with my squad. We’ll guard the little kids and the non-fighters. Blue, you take everyone else down. Once it’s safe send someone back for us.’

‘You got it.’

In less than a minute Maxie had the little kids safely in the centre of the square and Blue was hurrying off with Jester and the fighters. They turned a corner into a short straight street that ran down towards Green Park.

‘They’re just up ahead,’ Achilleus yelled, and Blue slowed down.

‘Lewis, take the left flank,’ he shouted. ‘Ollie and Sophie, keep your lot on the right. Fire as soon as you can. The rest of us, wait for the missiles then we go in hard and fast.’

The street opened out on to the top of Piccadilly. Ahead was a wide four-lane highway, with the trees of Green Park on the far side. To the left was Green Park tube station and the Ritz Hotel.

A bloody battle was taking place in the middle of the road between five kids and a much larger group of grownups. These were a mean-looking bunch, very different from the ones in Selfridges. They were half naked, lean and battle-hardened. Twelve fathers with no shirts and five mothers in vests. They all looked like they’d been regulars at the gym before the disaster, and they’d somehow kept fit since. Fit but not healthy. They were studded with boils and sores and festering, weeping wounds. They were massacring the kids – three of whom were already down, one torn almost in half. Four grown-ups were ripping into another who must surely be already dead. The two kids left standing were a boy and a girl. The girl’s face was covered in blood, but she was supporting the boy, who was on his last legs and clutching a sword. A ring of grown-ups was circling them, ready to finish them off.

So far they hadn’t noticed the Holloway kids’ arrival.

‘Leave the ones in the circle,’ said Ollie, fitting a shot to his sling. ‘We might hit the kids. Take the others out first.’

As he spoke, the grown-ups realized that they had company and they turned almost as one, fresh blood-lust lighting up their faces, and charged across the road.

If they thought they were going to have an easy time of it, they were sadly mistaken. The battle was over almost before it began.

Ollie’s team let loose a deadly volley. Six grown-ups went down straight away. Now Blue and Achilleus led the central group forward as Ollie’s team fell back. The surviving grown-ups carried on, too stupid to pull out of their assault. They were met by the fighters who punched into them, weapons held high. Most grown-ups fell to the tarmac, but three escaped and ran off to the sides. Lewis’s team took down two. Ollie and Sophie got the other one. An arrow thudded into his back at the exact same moment as a slingshot got him in the head.

Achilleus and Mick finished off the wounded.

In a few seconds every one of the grown-ups lay dead on the floor.

Jester whistled. ‘That was well done,’ he said. ‘Very well done.’

Ollie turned to Sophie.

‘You owe me some carrots,’ he said, but there was no joy in it. The sight of the dead kids was too upsetting.

Blue called Lewis’s team over. ‘Go back for Maeve,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’ll need her. Tell them it’s all clear, but hold the others back out of the way until we’ve got rid of the bodies. I don’t want the small ones to see this.’

While Achilleus and Mick organized the removal of the dead grown-ups, dragging them across the road and dumping them down the steps to the tube, Blue checked the kids.

The three lying down were well dead. Mutilated. Almost unrecognizable as human beings.

‘Better get these out of the way as well,’ said Blue. ‘No time for any fancy funerals.’

The girl was sitting on the ground now, cradling the boy in her lap. She was staring into the distance, her eyes empty. Blue spoke to her but she didn’t respond. Her face was slashed, a flap of skin hanging down from her forehead.

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Blue. ‘You’re safe now.’

Again she didn’t respond.

Jester’s shadow fell across Blue.

Blue squinted up at him.

‘I thought you said there were no grown-ups round here,’ he said.

Jester shrugged. ‘This isn’t usual,’ he said.

‘If you’ve been lying to us…’ said Blue.

‘This isn’t usual,’ Jester repeated and bent to pick up the sword that the boy had dropped.

Maeve arrived, her medical kit already out. She knelt down and checked the girl over.

‘I’ll need to disinfect that and put a bandage on,’ she said, unscrewing a glass bottle. ‘What about the boy?’

Blue looked at the boy. He was lying very still. He tried his pulse. Shook his head. Gently he prised the girl’s fingers apart where they were gripping her friend’s jacket and moved the body away.

Ollie and Sophie had broken into a nearby shop and quickly built a makeshift stretcher out of some clothes rails and a curtain. They came over and settled the wounded girl on to it. When the rest of the group finally emerged on to the main road there was little sign that any fight had ever taken place here. It was quiet and peaceful, apart from the flies that were already gathering by the tube station steps.

Maxie led the small kids across the road and into Green Park. The sunlight was dancing in the trees, birds were singing, but everyone was remembering the attack in Regent’s Park, and looking nervously around, so that it was a shock when they realized they’d come to the edge of the park and they glanced up to see Canada Gate and there, beyond it, the great ugly bulk of Buckingham Palace.

36

They approached the building slowly, hardly able to believe that they’d arrived, let alone that they might spend their lives here. It was one of the most famous buildings in the world and yet they were seeing it properly for the first time. Taking it in as a place to live rather than just as another of London’s many tourist attractions. In front of it was a massive expanse of pink-coloured roundabout, on an island in the centre of which sat the white marble block of the Victoria Memorial, with Queen Victoria herself sitting on her throne looking off down the Mall. The still-gleaming gold statue of winged Victory stood over her.

Separating the palace from the public were tall black iron railings topped with gold spikes and behind the railings was the parade ground where the famous Changing of the Guard used to take place. And then there was the building itself. This was no fairy-tale palace. It was a solid, grey lump. Even though it was a good five storeys high, its immense width made it look quite low and unimposing. The front was made up of three huge rectangular blocks linked by long sweeps of flat-fronted wall. Rows of neatly ordered windows ran from side to side with dull mathematical precision. The central block had an entrance at the base through an archway, above which sat the famous balcony where the Royal Family used to appear to cheering crowds on special occasions. Four pillars ran up from the balcony to the top of the building, supporting a wide triangle that could have come from a Greek temple.

Dead centre of the roof was a flagpole, from which a ragged union flag hung limply against the windless sky.