Earlier, when Maxie had touched his neck, he’d felt a little jolt. It was so long since he’d been touched like that. It was kind and soft and gentle. Maybe he’d blushed. He hoped she hadn’t noticed anything.

He tried to imagine what it would have been like if he’d met her before. Putting on his best clothes, going on a date, maybe to see a film or a band.

He imagined kissing her.

Don’t go there, Arran, you’ll only make yourself sad.

The noise died down and Whitney took charge. “Let’s hear what the scarecrow’s got to say,” she said, turning her hard stare on the patchwork boy.

“Thank you,” he said.

“So, for all your clever talk, you don’t know what caused it, then?” Whitney asked. “The sickness.”

Patchwork shook his head. “No one knows. How could we? We’re just kids. Adults used to tell us things, in newspapers, on TV, at school. But now there’s no adults left to tell us anything. And you can look at that as a good thing or a bad thing.”

“It’s a disaster,” said Maxie.

“Is it? This is our world now.”

“It’s a crap world,” said Callum, and a few of the kids laughed.

“Not where I’ve come from,” said Patchwork.

“So where have you come from?” said Ollie.

“Buckingham Palace.”

There was a snort of laughter followed by a chorus of jeering and mocking from the assembled kids. Patchwork just smiled.

“It’s true,” he said. “Why not? The Queen’s dead, all the people that looked after her, all the guards in their bearskin hats, the police, the tourists . . . No more adults telling us what to do. There’s just us kids. And we can do what we like.”

You really trying to tell us you live in Buckingham Palace?” said Whitney, her deep brown eyes softening into a smile.

“Yeah. It’s cool. It’s got a lake and a garden with a big wall around it with spikes on the top. It’s safe. We grow food in the garden, we drink water from the lake, we sleep in the Queen’s beds. Nobody can get in and there’s enough of us to keep the place secure. We got our own guards now. We’re making a fresh start.”

“So what are you doing here, then?” said Ollie.

“We figured there must be other kids like us out there,” said Patchwork. “Kids who survived. And the more of us we can get together, the better it’ll be. It’ll be safer. We can grow more food and work together to gradually rebuild the city. We can start to make London new again. Next to the palace is St. James’s Park; there’s enough space there to plant fields, if we’ve only got enough people. So I was sent to find other kids, tell them about what we’re doing, and bring them back.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got news for you,” said Callum. “We ain’t going. Why would we ever leave this place? We don’t need your Buckingham Palace, thank you very much. We got Waitrose.”