Ella looked at the grey bulk on the mattress. She could just make out the steady rise and fall of a sleeping body, but nothing more. Go to sleep. If there was anything wrong one of the bigger kids would have woken. She curled up a little and closed her eyes. Felt sleep creeping up on her. Went over the events of the day. Leaving the museum in the morning. Saying her goodbyes to her friends. All the crying. Even her new friends had cried, Wiki and Jibber-jabber. Soppy boys. Then the car journey, watching the buildings go by, and then the trees and the fields. The countryside. Finding the hotel on the little island. Smashing a window to get in. Exploring. How happy they’d been to find that nobody had been in here for months. No sign of any grown-ups. They’d even found some boxes stuffed with food hidden in the cellar. They’d taken this as a good sign and decided to definitely camp here for the night. All in the same bedroom. A suite Maeve had called it.

As they’d settled down to sleep, Maeve had said that she couldn’t really believe it. ‘I can’t take it in,’ she’d said. ‘This morning we were stuck in the museum, and now look at us.’

‘We shouldn’t relax too much,’ Robbie had said, trying to impress Maeve by sounding all adult and sensible. Honestly, he was so obvious. ‘We should take it in turns to stand guard, just in case.’

That had made Ella feel very safe. Knowing that someone would be watching over her. She couldn’t even remember going to sleep. It had happened so fast. She must have been tireder than she’d realized.

She would have slept all night until the sun came up if something hadn’t woken her …

A smell …

A smell had woken her …

She could smell it now. Something thick and earthy and rotten. Something familiar. A smell that had haunted her nightmares for months.

Where was it coming from?

If there was any danger one of the bigger kids would have woken up …

Her stomach fluttered. They were supposed to be on guard. Robbie and Maeve. Keeping watch. But she’d seen Robbie asleep on the floor and Maeve was on the bed next to her.

Ella was wide awake now, her heart racing and her head buzzing.

‘Maeve?’ she whispered. ‘I’m scared.’

The body next to her didn’t stir.

‘Maeve, please,’ she said, louder this time, her fingers fiddling with her necklace. ‘I can smell something.’

She could feel panic rising in her chest. She knew that smell too well. It was the smell of grown-ups. Grown-ups who no longer washed, or changed their clothes, or used the toilet properly, grown-ups whose bodies were a mess of sores and boils, leaking pus and blood and spit and worse.

But where was the smell coming from?

It seemed close.