He continued and found a spot where he could see into the kitchen without being seen. The room was packed. One group of kids was sweating away at the stoves, another clattering dishes at the sinks, immersed in clouds of steam and smoke. Yet more kids were crowded around a scrubbed wooden table. There looked to be about twenty of them, some in uniform, some still grubby from working in the garden. They weren’t eating anything like what was being served upstairs. They had bowls of some kind of thin stew or soup. As Ollie watched, a boy stood up and shouted over to the cooks.

“Hey! Is there any bread to go with this?”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” one of the cooks shouted back. “They’re scarfing next month’s supply upstairs.”

“They’re scarfing everything upstairs. We’ll starve.”

“We’ll make do.”

Ollie had seen enough. He slipped away. So David was lying to them, pretending they had more food than they really did. What was he up to? Showing off, probably. For now they would have to sit tight and see what happened. Ollie knew that he ought to be angry, but he was actually quite impressed. David was a clever boy, devious. He knew a bit of psychology. He understood about politics. About spin. He had achieved a hell of a lot here, obviously not quite as much as he was pretending, but it was still remarkable. Ollie would need to be very careful—they all would—but David was a good person to be on the right side of.

Ella was eating her dinner slowly and quietly. Godzilla was under the table chewing on a piece of leather. Occasionally she would feel him bump reassuringly against her leg. She was thinking about Sam. He’d have liked it here. He’d have liked playing in the garden and running around the palace, looking at all the nice things. She’d seen a painting of a man in armor. Sam would have really liked that. He liked knights. He always loved dressing up in his play armor. She’d tried to play with him, as a princess, but he didn’t like princesses. He only wanted other knights to fight with. She wasn’t very good at fighting and always ended up getting hurt and crying.

Was he really in heaven like Whitney had said? Ella didn’t exactly know what heaven was. She’d always imagined it looked a bit like this. A nice clean palace with pictures and a garden to play in and a nice man looking after you. And nice food.

She’d never liked vegetables before, but now they tasted lovely. So many things had changed. Too many. She’d always thought Sam would be there to look after her, even though he was only small. She was nearly as big as him.

Now he was gone.

She said a silent prayer. Sent it up to heaven.