“Ah,” said Beautiful Ruby wisely, “but that isn’t in the Building. That’s the garage. You can see out through the struts, so it doesn’t count as being in the Building.”

“You need to show us the secret room where they keep the bodies after you’re taken to the Building and shot, or you can’t be our friend anymore,” said another child, Born in the Morning, who was the group’s negotiator.

“I can’t,” said Nona, in agonies. “I only know the cupboard in my place where the hot water cylinder is.”

The children got together and agreed that this was complete shit, not good enough, and not up to expectations. But when they petitioned Hot Sauce, Hot Sauce simply said: “She talks to the Angel. She gets to look after Noodle.”

The Angel was what they called the nondescript, washed-out, dusty-haired personage who came to teach the Hour of Science. Why they called her the Angel was unclear, but Hot Sauce idolised her: she was widely liked by all the children, because she was calm and even-handed and the same day in and day out, but for Hot Sauce and therefore the others it was more like an obsession. Nona got to look after the science teacher’s dog and knew its name and could report on how its fur felt (nice) and how its breath was (awful). She received such pearls from the science teacher’s lips as: “Was Noodle a good boy for you today? Thank you, Nona,” which made her an elevated personage.

Facts about the Angel were in short supply. Where the science teacher lived was a mystery, and Nona’s hours were such that there was no way she could follow the science teacher home to see where home was or what she did there. Camilla came and picked Nona up every day after lunch, when school shut down in the afternoon heat, and the Hour of Science happened before lunchtime.

So all in all, Nona’s worth to the children was universally agreed to be minimal. She ranked very low among them, definitely below Honesty and Beautiful Ruby and only fractionally higher than Born in the Morning. The only person Born in the Morning outranked was the seven-year-old, who was just Kevin.

Those were really all their names—even Kevin—but nobody ever told Nona why Hot Sauce was called Hot Sauce. Hot Sauce had no parents, so she couldn’t ask them. The other kids had thirteen people at home between them, but the numbers were skewed by Born in the Morning, who was saddled with five fathers: Eldest Father, Second-Eldest Father, Brother Father, Younger Brother Father, and New Father. More importantly to Nona, Beautiful Ruby had a new baby at home, and sometimes Ruby’s mother brought the baby to the school foyer and she could look at the baby’s fingernails, which were small.

Nona explained all this to Camilla and to Pyrrha and sometimes to Palamedes over dinners, usually in the hope that she could talk so much nobody would notice she wasn’t using her mouth to eat. They all agreed that whatever made Nona happy at school made Nona happy at school, but the bottom line remained that she shouldn’t buy anybody drugs.