“Yeah. She’s looking after Blue.”

“Good job in the fight, by the way,” said Ben, trying to stop the situation from getting heavy. Achilleus merely shrugged.

“You look like you should be in the sick bay,” Ben went on. “I heard your ear got messed up.”

“That loser nearly cut it off.”

“So when’s Blue coming out?”

“Do I look like a doctor?” said Achilleus.

“No,” said Bernie. “You look like a patient.”

“I ain’t neither, darling. I’m a fighter, and right now that’s the most important type of person around. You got it?”

“If you say so, big man,” said Bernie with a slight mocking sneer. Ben flashed her a warning look. Bernie was one of those girls who didn’t watch what they said to people, which meant that the boys with her quite often got beaten up.

Luckily, Achilleus only grinned.

“If you two losers hadn’t made life bearable back at Waitrose I’d have given you both a good slap a long time ago.”

“Yes, well, I think you’ll find that you need losers to make the world go ’round,” said Bernie.

“You said it.”

“So you concede that we might be of some small use as well as a big tough fighting man like you?”

“Small is right,” said Achilleus. “Now just make sure you’re in the ballroom by eleven. We’re going to be checking everyone. Got it?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” said Bernie, standing up and saluting, and Achilleus laughed before sweeping out with his caddy and leaving them to their cold potatoes.

61

Maxie lay on her bed and stared up at the patterns of light that the candles were making on the ceiling of the sick bay. She felt flat. Physically flat, like a sheet of paper, with no room inside for any emotions. She’d exhausted herself worrying about David and how Ollie and Achilleus had betrayed her. She’d gone through anger, shame, fear . . . She’d felt stupid and abused and mocked. There was nothing left to feel anymore except the oddly comforting ache in her side. She’d even gone beyond tiredness. Resigned herself to whatever lay in store for her.

A blank sheet of paper.

“I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired,” she said.

“I know how that feels,” said Blue, who was also lying on his bed staring at the ceiling.

“I think some pharaoh had that carved on his tomb,” Maxie added.

“Yeah? Times don’t change much, do they?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Maxie. “I can’t think of any other time in history when most of the population of the world was wiped out by some unknown illness.”

“What about the Black Death?” said Blue. “The plague. I think about half the people in Europe died during that one. We still made it through, though. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.”

“You’re optimistic, aren’t you?”