‘Maybe he will,’ said Zohra, and she looked at her brother. ‘I’d come back. If sickos took me. I’d escape and I’d find you again, Froggie.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Froggie. ‘I wouldn’t bother. I’d stay with the sickos and have parties. You never let me do anything.’

Zohra gave Froggie a mock punch and he laughed.

‘I wonder,’ said Ella, watching a fat tear plop on to her plate. ‘If he was out there, still alive, what he’d be doing right now. Would he be happy? Would he be sad? Would he be hungry? Would he be scared?’

She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up into Zohra’s eyes.

‘And sometimes I think he’s better off dead, because then he can’t be cold or hungry or scared or lonely any more.’

Chapter 16

16

‘So we both gonna go on this bloody expedition? It’s gonna be hairy out there. More fighting before it’s done.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Maxie. ‘Do you think we can trust Justin? Maybe we should put someone else in charge of the expedition and both stay here.’

Blue grunted. He was straining to shift an ancient wooden cabinet.

‘I wish I’d never agreed to it. I wish I’d never agreed to none of this.’

‘As far as I can remember,’ said Maxie, ‘this was your great idea.’

They’d been working down in the lower level for two days now, moving from room to room, corridor to corridor, clearing out the grown-ups. It didn’t seem so much of a maze now that they’d learnt their way around, but it was still dark and confusing enough to lose your bearings if you didn’t concentrate.

And nobody wanted to get lost.

They’d eventually got their heads round the basic layout of two long, wide corridors that ran from one end to the other, linked in the middle by one main cross corridor. At the T-junction nearest the front of the museum was their chief navigation point – a sign on a pillar reading GIRAFFE CORNER. There was a huge lifting platform here beneath a trap door. Boggle had explained that it had been where a herd of stuffed giraffes had once been kept.

If they ever got disoriented they only had to find Giraffe Corner and they could get their bearings.

The three big main corridors had cables, lighting and ducts running along the ceiling, and various cabinets, boxes and rubbish piled along the walls. Every now and then smaller passages broke off to either side and everywhere there were doors. Doors to countless rooms. More rooms than they could ever have imagined. Any that were locked they ignored, but if they were open they had to be investigated. The only windows down here were in the extreme outer walls. For the most part it was dark and airless.