‘Yeah. So the thing is … I know about Arran. You were kind of in love with him, I think, weren’t you?’

Maxie was embarrassed, felt her face flushing. She’d never really talked about any of this with anyone. Not even Maeve.

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

‘I lost some good friends along the way as well,’ said Brooke quietly, staring off into infinity. ‘And more when you rescued me.’

‘At Green Park?’ said Maxie. ‘Those other kids with you? The ones who’d been …’

‘Yeah. There was a sweet, crazy guy called DogNut and a girl called Courtney. My two bests. DogNut wanted to be more than that. I knew he wanted to, like, link up and that. Who knows? Maybe with enough time he’d have got what he wanted. He used to make me laugh. I try not to think about all that, though. Is bare harsh. What we had, what we lost, what might have been. You got to harden yourself. Make, like, a shell around you. But not everyone can do it. If they got nothing to hang on to some of them screw up. They’re not in the game no more.’

‘Like Paul?’ said Maxie.

‘Yeah, like Paul.’

Brooke spotted something and her mood changed. She smiled. A girl with a secret. ‘Listen, Maxie,’ she said. ‘I figured you might need some stuff.’

‘Stuff?’

‘Clothes and that. I seen that minuscule backpack you tipped up with. You can’t have been able to fit too much gear into it.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You need more clothes, girl.’

Maxie looked at Brooke, who was wearing a floor-length grey dress that looked like something out of a history book. If more clothes meant dressing up like her she wasn’t interested. She’d never been that bothered about clothes. Never been confident enough to carry off anything too funky. Was happy in jeans and T-shirts. Loved the new leather jacket she’d picked up in Selfridges on the way down here.

‘You can’t be busting the same look twenty-four seven, girl,’ said Brooke. ‘You need to rest them garmz, let the stink out.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Maxie. ‘I can pick some more stuff up when we got more time.’

‘We got time now,’ said Brooke, and then Maxie spotted a group of kids approaching. Lewis was among them and at their head was a tall, elegant guy wearing brightly coloured robes that made him look like some kind of African prince. She tried to remember his name from the interviews that morning. Luckily Brooke reminded her.

‘Kwanele’s gonna take us shopping,’ she said. ‘I arranged it all earlier.’

‘I don’t want to go shopping,’ Maxie protested.

‘This ain’t any old shopping, girl. We gonna take you to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It’s nang!’

Chapter 50

50