Her friend, Marion, had told him that his mum suffered from depression.

He wasn’t sure it really helped giving names to things. His mum was just his mum. And he was just himself. Callum.

The piano intro ran round and round and then the blonde one started to sing. He could never remember if it was Agnetha or Frida. His mum had the videos. Callum could picture them clearly. Thinking about them now made him smile. He turned the volume on full and sat back in his chair as they sang about the winner getting everything and the loser feeling small.

He pictured that bit in the film Mamma Mia when the mother – what was her name? The actress? Something weird. She sang the song by the sea.

Greece looked nice.

Callum had never been abroad. Not with his mum being how she was.

Meryl Streep. That was it. Definitely a weird name.

He picked up his Coke from the floor and popped the top. His last can. He’d been saving it for a special day. Well, there would be no more special days after this.

The Coke was warm but it didn’t matter. If it’d been winter he could have left the can outside, but otherwise there was no way of keeping things cold. He took a sip. The sugar hit him instantly. He gave a satisfied smack of his lips and went ‘Aaaaaaah’, just like they did in the adverts.

Next he unwrapped his chocolate bar. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. It was a little white and hard, but that was all right. He took a bite. Oh, that taste. He closed his eyes to better appreciate it. This was heaven.

Abba sang about the gods. Not caring. Everything being ruled by chance, a throw of the dice.

There came another crash from outside. The crack of something big breaking. A window maybe?

He hadn’t gone away – the father in the cross of St George vest. He and his little gang had stayed. And they’d been busy out there. Steadily smashing their way in. They were very nearly through. If not tonight, then tomorrow. He’d always known it, really, in the back of his mind, that sooner or later the grown-ups would come for him. He just hadn’t thought it would be this soon.

The fat father and his cronies were different. They were clever. Callum had hurled things down on them, bombed them, but he’d missed the ringleaders every time. He’d taken out a couple of the normal grown-ups The stupid ones. That was all. And the others – they wouldn’t give up. They were working away at the defences.

He remembered seeing a wildlife documentary, probably a David Attenborough one, about a pack of wild dogs. They trapped some animal in its lair. A badger or a lizard or something. And they dug it out. Took them ages. More than a day. They just carried on digging and digging, until they found it.

And then they ate it.

A huge bang followed by a thud. Something had fallen over.

He could hear them coming in now. They’d made it into the mall. There was only the shutter now between him and them. He supposed he could run, but where would he go? It was too long since he’d been outside. That scared him worse than the grown-ups.

Another track came on. Another of his mum’s favourites when she was feeling blue, as she called it. ‘I Have a Dream’. They’d sung this one together a million times. On the singalong version. With the words on the screen. It was only now, though, that Callum really paid attention to what the words meant. No wonder his mum liked it. It was all about believing in your fantasies to help you forget reality.

It would be over quickly at least when they got inside. For now he would enjoy the chocolate and the Coke and the music. He wished he wasn’t alone. He wished he had someone to share his last moments with. He’d been slowly dying of loneliness since his friends had left.

He’d got what he’d wished for, but, like in the fairy tales, he’d discovered that what he wished for wasn’t what he really wanted.

He leant over and plugged in his headphones, turned the volume up so that he wouldn’t hear the grown-ups scrabbling at the shutters. He slipped the headphones over his ears. Abba were still singing away. They reckoned if you had a song to sing you could cope with anything.

Yeah, right…

He stuffed half the chocolate bar into his mouth. The taste of it was overwhelming. It seemed to fill his whole body. He sighed with delight. When he’d licked all the chocolate from his teeth he took a swig of Coke to wash it down.

He’d killed his mum in the end. Smothered her with a pillow while she was asleep. Not that she was really his mum any more by that time.

There was an almighty crash and a rush of cooler air from outside. He could sense movement.

They’d broken a window.

He tried to keep his eyes clamped shut, to lose himself in the music. But he couldn’t bear it. He had to look. He had to.

He opened his eyes. For half a second. Less. Saw grownups running towards him. The bald man with the huge lolling head at the front. He was grinning, his arms raised, clutching his club.

Callum closed his eyes.

He sent a silent hello out to his mum and they were upon him.

59

Achilleus had been patched up, but he still felt like crap. His muscles were stiff and bruised, the whole of the left-hand side of his head throbbed, the cuts across his chest where John’s blades had raked him stung like a bastard. He was covered with a patchwork of tapes and bandages and had been liberally painted with disinfectant. He prayed that the wounds were clean. He saw what had happened to Arran after he’d been bitten. What were the chances that a filthy animal like John would keep his weapons clean?

The one thing that gave Achilleus hope was that after his mum died, his dad had been surprisingly good at looking after him. He’d learnt to cook, he’d got involved with Achilleus’ school work, he’d made sure he always had clean clothes, and he’d taken him regularly to the doctor’s for his injections. He’d been obsessive about it. His dad had moved to England from Cyprus when he was twelve. He still had stories about the little village he’d come from. Achilleus was sure he exaggerated the backward nature of the place. But his dad loved the British health system. And he had horror stories to tell about all the diseases that had been stamped out by vaccinations.

So Achilleus was pretty sure he was up to date with tetanus. The kids here were pretty organized. They had a well-stocked first-aid centre, but they weren’t up to giving injections for things like tetanus.

Rose had given him some antibiotics, though, and had done her best with his ear. He wondered how it would come out. He’d never been particularly vain about his appearance. He knew he wasn’t pin-up material. But he still didn’t want to look like a monster. True – a little scarring would increase his status. Looking hard was halfway to winning a fight. Right now, though, he didn’t so much look hard as a mess. His head was wrapped up like a mummy.

Could have been worse. Much worse.

He’d been lucky with John. The guy was thick. Couldn’t see when he was being suckered, but if Achilleus’ trick hadn’t worked that would have been the end of it. He’d have been wide open to John’s counter-attack.

No problem. He’d won. That was all that mattered.

He’d moved to the Music Room at the back of the palace and was sitting looking at the rain as it ran down the windows. He was waiting for his dinner. He was hungry again. Probably from losing so much blood.

He was settled in a big fancy armchair wearing tracksuit trousers and a dressing-gown. It hurt too much to put a shirt on over the bandages. Every now and then a palace kid would come through and compliment him. Want to shake his hand, hoping for some of his star status to rub off on them.