The boy didn’t say anything. Just kept on moving, pushing past Maxie, who now saw what had spooked him.

Three big fathers wearing nothing but filthy underpants. They were fatter than the others, their skin studded all over with lumps and yellow-crusted spots, bulging where they shouldn’t be bulging. One was missing both his ears; the other two had tongues so swollen they squeezed out of their mouths.

They were going too fast to stop and, as Maxie clumsily thrust her spear at the one in front, all three of them careened into her, knocking her painfully against the dinosaur skeleton.

She gasped and went down under the weight of them. Luckily Big Mick had seen what was happening and came at the fathers from the side, jabbing at them with short, hard movements, being careful not to hit Maxie, who was somewhere in the tangle of bodies that was writhing on the floor.

One father got up and reached out for a museum girl who was cowering by a glass cabinet, too startled to defend herself. Big Mick’s focus was shifted from trying to rescue Maxie, and he aimed his spear at the father’s kidneys, plunging it into the soft flesh of his lower back.

Maxie was struggling to get up. She was covered in bodily fluids from the three fathers and the dead mother with the candyfloss hair and trying not to think about it. She’d been sick as well, so some of the filth was from her own stomach. She was furious. Furious with herself for having been caught so easily, and furious with the grown-ups for catching her. She’d dropped her spear, and the museum boy who’d been holding the torch was nowhere to be seen. In the dark Maxie didn’t have a clue where her weapon might be. So she lashed out with her fists, battering at the fathers.

For a couple of minutes she was in the centre of a vicious hand-to-hand fight in the dark. Punching soft, stinking flesh, gouging with her fingernails, kicking, elbowing, butting, shouting her lungs out, her nostrils filled with the rancid stink of them. Sweating from the heat they were giving off, their skin slippery and greasy. And then there was a shout. A light shining in her face …

More kids were arriving. It was the rest of her team. Between them, they managed to deal with the fathers and it was quickly over. The kids stood in a circle, panting and heaving. The museum boy had disappeared. The girl was hurt, but not too badly.

Maxie was still furious, though.

‘Where you all been?’ she snapped at her crew, even though it wasn’t their fault the local kids had run away.

‘We was chasing a big pack of them,’ said one of Mick’s boys. ‘They moved into another bit of the museum. We was after them when we heard you shouting.’