Chapter 49

‘It would explain what happened the other night.’ Maxie was coming down the stairs past the statue of Darwin with Brooke and Maeve. ‘But what about Samira?’

‘What if Paul never ran off?’ said Brooke. ‘What if he was still around …?’

She left the sentence hanging as they thought about what that would mean.

‘What was he like?’ Maxie asked when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

‘Just, like, normal really,’ said Brooke. ‘Never really stood out, until that day he went off on one. Never seen him like that before.’

‘I’ve seen plenty of kids crack up,’ said Maxie. ‘And I guess if his sister died …’

They stopped by the diplodocus. They’d finished the last of the interviews and Maxie was keen to catch what was left of the daylight outside. It could get really gloomy in the museum with no lights on.

‘What do we do now?’ Maeve asked.

‘I guess that’s down to Justin,’ said Brooke. ‘He’s in charge. Only we’ve never had anything like this before.’

‘I was gonna say we should search the place,’ said Maxie. ‘See where he might be hiding. But that would take ages, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yeah. It’s bare massive,’ said Brooke. ‘Took you long enough just to clear out the lower level. Up here … It goes on forever. I never even been in half the rooms. If he was hiding, and he knew we was looking for him, he could easily just move about, and change up his hiding places.’

‘It’s all whack,’ said Maxie.

‘True that.’

Maxie saw that Ella had come over to join them. She hadn’t noticed her arrive. She just appeared out of the shadows and stood there in silence, her eyes shining.

‘You all right, babe?’ Maxie asked. Ella shrugged. It was obvious she wanted to say something, but was holding back.

‘What’s up?’

‘You’re looking for a boy, aren’t you?’

So far nothing had been said to the kids. Justin didn’t want to make any kind of official announcement until he was sure of what was happening. He didn’t want to panic anyone, but they’d obviously been talking among themselves.

‘We don’t know yet,’ said Maxie.

‘You think a boy did something to Samira?’

‘As I say, Ella, we’re not sure.’

‘It wasn’t a boy.’ Ella shook her head.

‘What do you mean?’ Ella had Maxie’s attention now.

‘We’ve seen him,’ said Ella. ‘In the dark. At night. We’ve seen the monster.’

Maxie was going to say that there were no such things as monsters when she stopped herself. That might have been true before, but now? The disease had created a whole world of monsters.