‘I’m not sure I like this place,’ said Monkey-Boy, who’d earned his name because of his love of climbing. ‘I preferred Buckingham Palace. I liked it there. It was where the queen lived. I liked that. This place is scary.’

‘It’ll be better in the morning,’ said Ella, who didn’t want any dark thoughts to creep in. Blu-Tack Bill didn’t say anything. He never spoke, just listened, his fingers working away at the lump of Blu-tack he always carried with him.

‘I don’t like it. It’s full of grown-ups,’ Monkey-Boy complained.

‘There were grown-ups at the palace,’ said Ella. ‘I saw them. Kings and queens. When we were leaving.’

‘We should have stayed there.’

‘If Maxie and Blue thought it was better to come here, then it’s better,’ said Ella. ‘They know the best thing to do. They got us across London, didn’t they?’

‘There was nice food at the palace,’ said Monkey-Boy.

‘There’ll be nice food here.’

‘How d’you know?’

Blu-Tack Bill thought about food. He was hungry, but found it hard to eat and was getting very skinny. Before his mum and dad had died from the disease he’d always eaten the same meals every day. Sugar Puffs and toast with no butter for breakfast. A ham sandwich made with sliced white bread for lunch, and chicken in breadcrumbs with chips and beans for dinner. His mouth watered now that he thought about it. The past seemed an amazing place full of wonderful things. Food like that was only a memory now.

He looked to see what his hands had moulded. A dinosaur. Maybe it was meant to be a turkey dinosaur. They’d sometimes given him them to eat at school. They weren’t too bad. He liked dinosaurs. This museum had been one of his favourite places to visit before the disaster. He never got bored of looking at the dinosaur fossils. They didn’t change. They were always the same. You could see how they were made. He knew exactly how many bones were in each fossil. The stuffed animals he liked too. They never moved. You could look in their eyes and they didn’t look back. Not like in the zoo where the animals were jumping and running all over the place, and they confused him and he didn’t know what they were thinking in their weird animal brains. He wasn’t like Monkey-Boy; he was happy to be here, looking forward to the morning, when he could properly explore. In fact, if you’d asked him before if he could choose anywhere to live in the whole world, he would have said here.

‘Did you hear that?’ Monkey-Boy looked up at the ceiling.

‘What?’ said Ella.

‘I heard a scratching noise.’

Bill listened now, and he and Ella heard it at the same time, a rhythmical scraping sound.

‘I don’t like this place,’ said Ella.