‘No way,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Not here. There is nothing here anyway. We burned the church down. We set it on fire to destroy the bodies of the fallen.’

‘Suit yourself. We go on.’

‘We go on.’ Ed stared out of his window, trying to see through the trees, feeling ghoulishly curious.

‘Three churches,’ said Trey.

‘What’s that?’ Ed asked.

‘Rule of three,’ said Trey. ‘There will be three churches. Everything comes in threes. Way of the world.’

‘Don’t start on that,’ said Trio. ‘We don’t want to hear your stupid theories about …’

‘You said something before,’ Brooke butted in from the back of the car. ‘When Ed first arrived at the museum. I heard you. You said something about three scarred faces. I didn’t understand at the time …’

‘Yeah,’ said Trey. ‘I remember that. I remember thinking there’s Brooke, and now there’s Ed, and there’ll be a third. Can’t wait to see what that looks like.’

Ed was about to protest, more for Brooke’s sake than his own, that he hadn’t chosen to look this way, that it wasn’t remotely fun, that he wasn’t part of a fairground freak show, when it struck him that if anyone in the car looked like a freak it was Trinity. He guessed that gave them the right to comment on how other people looked.

‘Yeah,’ said Macca and he giggled. ‘But I doubt you’ll find anyone more messed-up-looking than Miss Brookie Zipface.’

Brooke gasped.

The car fell quiet.

Macca realized he’d gone too far.

That was wrong. No two ways about it. Macca didn’t have the right to say anything about Brooke’s disfigurement. After a few moments’ stunned silence everyone started shouting Macca down until he made a sort of half-sarcastic apology, laughing as if to show he wasn’t that bothered.

Nobody said anything for a while after that. They left the church behind and passed Heathrow Airport, heading further west, and now they came to a small cluster of sentinels standing in the last Heathrow turn-off. In a clump, still as statues.

‘Hey, look, Brooke,’ said Macca. ‘Your family’s come out to wish you luck.’

Ed swore inwardly. Macca just wasn’t going to give up.

‘Macca?’ said Brooke. ‘Can we call a truce, yeah? It’s getting to me a bit. You’ve been quite hurtful as it goes. Please. Just lay off me, yeah? I can’t take any more of it.’

‘You surrender to my greater wit and general awesomeness then, yeah?’ said Macca triumphantly. ‘I knew you were weak. A weak girl.’

‘Seriously, yeah?’ said Brooke. ‘I’m quite scared actually.’

‘I knew it.’

‘And the thing is, to tell you the truth, Macca, I quite like you really. I quite fancy you.’

‘I knew it!’