‘Why not?’ Courtney asked.

‘There’s sickos down there.’

‘For real?’ said Courtney, eyes widening in fear.

‘For real.’ Brooke laughed and punched her playfully in the arm.

‘Ain’t nothing to get scared about, girl. Is just, when we got here, there was some sickos still in the museum. Staff, I guess. We chased them off, killed a load. Some went down into the basement. Is like a maze down there. All these rooms and corridors and secret hiding-places. This place is just too big to be able to control the whole thing. Goes on forever. We’ve locked all the doors we can to keep the sickos out, but you can hear them down there sometimes, in the sealed-off bits, moving around. Others get in from outside and they nest in the dark. They can’t never get up here, though, not any more. We fixed all that. Come on. I’ll show you where we all sleep.’

At the end of the primates gallery there was a doorway leading to a long room off to the side.

‘This is the minerals gallery,’ said Brooke quietly. ‘It’s big and has lots of light and can easily be secured. They used to keep lots of valuable rocks in here, you know, like crystals and meteors and diamonds and things, so there’s heavy gates this end, and a sort of vault at the other end. If we were ever attacked, we could easily fortify ourselves in here.’

DogNut looked. There were heavy iron gates and grilles all round the doorway. The room itself looked like something out of a medieval castle. It was illuminated only by the odd tea light burning in a little dish here and there, and stretched away into the gloom, the length of a football pitch. There were arched windows down both sides, and two rows of square columns holding up the ornate ceiling. Old glass and wood display cabinets were ranged among the pillars and the kids had adapted the spaces between them into little sleeping areas, personalizing them and decorating them with screens and awnings and bits of furniture.

‘I’ll show you properly in the morning,’ Brooke whispered. ‘Most of the kids have already gone to bed. We usually go to sleep as soon as it gets dark. I was waiting for you to arrive. Come on, though, we’ll get you something to eat.’

She led them through the gallery. As they passed each cubicle space, they saw that not all the occupants were asleep. Some kids sat murmuring with friends, and they looked round curiously at the new arrivals as they went past.

A door at the end led to a short stairway that took them down to the gallery below, from where another staircase climbed to the old staff canteen. It was like being in a tunnel up here, the ceiling arched over in a semicircle with large curved windows set into the bottom. There were modern tables and chairs and it was well lit with oil lamps, similar to the one that Brooke carried.

There were three kids waiting for them.

‘We kept you some grub just in case you turned up,’ Brooke explained, and they sat down to a simple meal of boiled eggs, rice and cabbage.

The kids wolfed the food down and Brooke watched them with amusement.

‘So tell me,’ said Courtney when they’d finished. ‘Why you wearing such weird shit, girl?’

Brooke looked down at her old-fashioned clothes and laughed. ‘You remember Kwanele? That African kid who was always really well dressed? Even when we was escaping from the sickos?’

‘Wheeled that little posh suitcase around the whole time?’ Courtney asked. ‘Yeah, I remember him. Don’t tell me he made that dress!’

‘No way,’ Brooke shrieked. ‘But there’s this other museum just over the road. Is called the Victoria and Albert. We broke in there cos we saw from the maps there’s this big courtyard in the middle. We built all these planters in there, is a well safe place to grow food, but you should see what’s in the museum itself.’

‘What?’ asked DogNut, intrigued.

‘Well … Is mostly art and stuff, you know, like statues and paintings, but they got, like, furniture, plates and jewellery and things, even fashion. All clothes from history and, like, movie-star dresses, you know, hundreds and hundreds of them. It’s wicked. We get all our stuff from there that we need to make this place like home. Home for a king, that is. Honestly it’s like a palace in there. You got to see it. And Kwanele, he’s in charge of clothing and that. Making the stuff fit. We dress up and we’re princesses.’ Brooke stood and did a little twirl in her dress, then stopped in a fit of giggles.

‘You should get yourself something, Courtney,’ she said. ‘We should glam you up a bit.’

‘You saying I ain’t well dressed?’

‘No.’

‘You saying I need to be more glam, though?’

‘Yes.’ Now Brooke put on a simpering, lisping little girl’s voice. ‘You could be a lovely princess! Princess Courtney!’

‘Courtney?’ DogNut scoffed. ‘Courtney ain’t no princess.’

‘You what?’ Courtney turned on DogNut with an angry scowl.

‘You’re a queen,’ he said hurriedly. ‘A warrior queen.’

‘Maybe we can find you a crown in the Victoria and Albert,’ said Brooke, and Courtney laughed.

‘So, you gonna tell us then,’ she said. ‘What the hell you all doing here? And why you pissed David off so much?’

Brooke smiled at her friends. ‘I’m telling you, is a long story …’

24

‘Going back to that night. I can close my eyes and watch it like a DVD, remember everything that happened, as clear as if it was, like, you know, happening right now. The rest of the time I can switch off, put the DVD back in its box and stick it away somewhere and not think about it no more. But I close my eyes now and I’m there, back on the bridge, the lorry slowly moving across, and Justin driving. Jesus, I ain’t never seen a more worried-looking nerd. He was sweatier than a fat man eating chillies in a sauna. If I hadn’t of been so scared I would’ve been laughing, but behind us half of London was blazing, and we was trying not to run over any of the kids who was squashed on to the bridge, all panicking, crazy with fear. It was hard; there was broken-down buses, broken-down cars blocking the way, people hollering. We didn’t wanna get out and look, was way too dangerous, but we could hear screaming and then this, like, fresh wave of panic seemed to pass through the kids on the bridge. We couldn’t exactly see what was going on behind, but when I’ve looked in the mirror there was smoke and fire and a mash of, like, scared faces. So we knew. We knew the sickos was attacking the kids who couldn’t get on to the bridge. We just kept on driving, slowly, slowly, slowly. We was getting across, but that David. What a freak! He and his boys in their red jackets and with their guns they’d got from your museum. Like little soldiers they was. I know we had a deal – he was supposed to protect the lorry and we was supposed to share some of our food with him once we was safe. I know we had a deal … But when I seen what he was really like I didn’t want nothing more to do with him, man.’

Brooke stopped talking and took a deep breath. DogNut looked at her, sitting in the candlelight, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What did David do?’

‘There were these kids in the middle of the road,’ Brooke went on. ‘They’d got into an argument, started fighting, an’ we couldn’t get past them. David was telling them to get out of the way, all bossy, like, and they was ignoring him, or just laughing at him. And you know what he did? I’ll never forget it. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe anyone could do that. Not to another kid. But I saw it with my own eyes. He’s pointed his rifle at one of the boys and shot him down, right through the chest. I don’t know if he killed him, but, even if he didn’t, how could a kid survive that? A bullet in him. With no doctors, no medicine or hospitals. I don’t like to think about it. Don’t like to think that it was our fault. I was shamed that David was with us. The worst thing of it was, though, that I was, like, secretly, sneakily, glad he’d done it. I know it’s cold to say it, but to be honest I was glad that he’d cleared the way. The kids was moving aside finally. The road was empty. I’ve turned to Justin and I’ve told him to keep going, not wait, not stop, not worry about anyone else, just drive. I’ve told him we had to get as far away from David and his boys as we could. I’ve screamed at him to put his foot down and just keep going. Outta there. And quicker now, bit by bit, we’ve managed to get off the bridge. We was way excited, and still scared and worried that we didn’t know where Ed and the others were. And the thing was …’ Brooke paused for a moment and turned to Courtney. ‘I didn’t know that you and Aleisha had got off, to go and help Ed. If I’d of known, I’d of waited, but we didn’t know, did we? We was confused, but most of all we were just glad that we’d got over and got away from the fire and the sickos, and all I could think about was driving on and leaving David and his mates for dust.’