‘Now that is what I call beautiful,’ he said, and turned to Kwanele. ‘These the robes you meant?’

‘What? No. The robes are much nicer. You know, like silk kimonos, and …’

‘Not in my world,’ said Lewis and he smashed the glass with the hilt of his sword and hauled one of the samurai suits out.

‘This is bare cool,’ he said, beaming like a little kid at Christmas. ‘This is treasure, dude.’

‘Come on,’ said Kwanele with a sigh. ‘Let’s go up and look at the jewellery.’

As they walked on, Brooke put an arm round Maxie.

‘You happy now?’

‘Happier,’ said Maxie. ‘I’m never really happy. Don’t remember the last time I was. There’s always a tense feeling in the bottom of my stomach.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Brooke. ‘We need to have a laugh. Scare them tense snakes out of your bottom. I miss South Park too, but we can still make jokes of our own, can’t we? We can show them sickos we ain’t scared of them, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK then,’ said Brooke. ‘Why did the sicko cross the road?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Maxie. ‘Why did the sicko cross the road?’

‘Braaaiiins!’ said Brooke.

Maxie laughed and Brooke pressed on.

‘How many sickos does it take to change a light bulb?’

‘Braaaiiins!’ said Maxie.

‘Oh, you’ve heard it!’

‘What’s the difference between a sicko and a washing machine?’

‘BRAAAAINSSSS!’

Now Lewis joined in. ‘A sicko walks into a bar,’ he said. ‘WHAM! And then I hit him with the bar again, an iron bar, and knock him flat, then I hit him again, and again and again until his brains are, like, smashed all over the pavement. And then I slice him up with my new katana!’

‘Yeah, Lewis,’ said Brooke. ‘Funny joke. Way to lighten the mood, bruv.’

Chapter 56

56

Blue watched, stunned, as Seamus gurgled in fright and pain then fell away, hitting the shelves and crumpling to the ground, dead as you can get.

Everyone froze. Shocked. Except for Blue, who turned on Ollie.

‘What the hell you doing, you idiot?’

‘What’s it look like?’

‘It looks like you just killed that guy for no reason.’

‘I killed him because he’s a grown-up. Isn’t that a good enough reason?’

‘No. He was helping us.’

‘Since when did grown-ups help kids?’ Ollie stalked over to where the other three fathers were crouching by the shelves, weapons ready. The weird spiderlike creature and the matchstick girl had disappeared. In the distance Blue could hear old jazz music, scratchy and echoing.

‘Don’t attack them three!’ he yelled, and pulled Ollie back.