DogNut spotted the equipment that had been rescued from the boat piled up a few metres away.
‘We better get our gear,’ he said, and made a move towards the pile. Nicola put up her hand, halting him.
‘In a minute.’
Now it was DogNut’s turn to raise his eyebrows.
‘You got a problem?’ he said, keeping it polite for now.
‘You tell me.’
‘I ain’t got a problem.’
Nicola turned to the watching kids.
‘Get back to work,’ she said, and the kids drifted away in ones and twos. Only the ones who were armed stayed with Nicola. They didn’t look very welcoming.
Nicola turned back to DogNut. ‘We need to talk.’
6
‘Do I look like a sicko?’ DogNut threw up his arms in protest. ‘Do I look like a grown-up? A zombie? Whatever you might call them. Do I?’
‘No.’ Nicola held DogNut’s gaze.
‘Well then.’
They were in the middle of the park, DogNut and the other kids from the boat crew surrounded by the boys with clubs. Other boys and girls were busy working at the rows of vegetables: digging, weeding, checking for pests. A few more patrolled the perimeter along the road. They weren’t as well-armed as the guards back at the Tower, and carried an odd assortment of spears, knives and clubs. DogNut was trying to stay cool, and the rest of his crew were angry rather than scared, except for Olivia who was holding on to Finn’s good arm.
DogNut reckoned they might be able to rush the guards, overpower them and get to their weapons. He and Courtney and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly were all tough fighters. But for now he was holding back, waiting to see what was going to unfold here.
‘We have to be very careful,’ Nicola explained. ‘We don’t know who you are –’
‘But –’ DogNut tried to interrupt, but Nicola cut him off.
‘We’re always under attack from other children.’
‘You’re joking me.’
‘I’m deadly serious.’ And she looked it. ‘We don’t know anything about you.’
‘Do we look like an invading army?’ DogNut laughed. ‘There’s only eight of us.’
‘True. But most of the attacks on us are sneak attacks, by small groups. There’s a bunch of kids have set up camp in St James’s Park. They’re not very nice. They’re always sending raiding parties down here, trying to steal from us.’
‘Well, we ain’t from St James’s Park.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Look,’ said DogNut, ‘you being bare rude here, sister. You need to jam your hype and tell your boydem to stand down. They making me uncomfortable. Then we all just shake hands, sit down somewhere cosy like and have a nice civilized chat. What do you say to that?’
Nicola thought about it for a moment then relaxed.
‘OK,’ she said, nodding to some benches at the edge of the park. ‘Over there.’
Once they were seated DogNut explained who they were and where they were from. Nicola seemed satisfied, but still a little wary.
‘So you’re looking for friends,’ she said when DogNut had finished.
‘You got it.’
‘They came over the bridge well near to here, in the fire,’ said Courtney. ‘That’s why we come up this way. We mainly looking for a girl called Brooke. Blonde hair and a big mouth on her.’
Nicola looked around at the five boys who were still with her. ‘Don’t think we have anyone called Brooke here, do we?’ Her friends shook their heads.
‘When she come over the bridge she was in a big Tesco lorry,’ said DogNut. ‘With a load of other kids.’
‘I remember the lorry,’ said a tall boy with a wispy growth on his top lip that wasn’t quite a moustache. He was missing his front teeth and wore his hair in a ponytail. ‘I came over Lambeth Bridge at the same time.’
‘What happened to it?’ DogNut asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘It didn’t stop. Far as I remember, it just kept on going.’
‘And none of you know where it went? What happened to the kids on board?’
‘What about Paul?’ Olivia chipped in. ‘My brother? Paul Channing? He wasn’t on the lorry. He might have come here? We’re not only looking for Brooke.’
Suddenly the boat crew were all talking at once. Asking after friends, relatives.
Nicola held out her hands and had to almost shout to be heard.
‘OK, listen,’ she said. ‘We’ll call a session of parliament.’
‘You’ll do what?’ said DogNut, taken aback.
‘Parliament,’ said Nicola matter-of-factly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
DogNut didn’t know whether to laugh, but chose not to. Nicola had such a serious expression on her face.
‘That’s how we run things here,’ she said. ‘We vote on everything. If we call a session, everyone has to attend and we can ask if anyone knows anything about your friends.’
‘You vote on everything?’ said DogNut.
‘Yes.’
‘So they voted you in charge then?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘I won the vote. They made me prime minister.’
Now DogNut couldn’t stop himself from laughing. It sounded too much like a game, or a school project. But Nicola looked more serious than ever and DogNut’s laughter died away.
‘I know it sounds a bit silly,’ she said, and at last she did smile. ‘But we have to start setting up some sort of order in the world. There are lots of children here and they need things to be normal; they need to have some kind of structure in their lives.’
How quickly they’d had to grow up, DogNut thought. It was a simple choice, behave like adults, or die like babies.
‘True dat,’ he said. ‘Just like Jordan Hordern is big man at the Tower. He’s a general, though – he ain’t no prime minister.’
‘Doesn’t matter what we’re called,’ said Nicola. ‘But it made sense, as we were all living here, to set up an old-style government.’
‘So why are you living here then?’
‘It’s safe,’ said the boy with the ponytail. ‘The Houses of Parliament is one of the most secure places in the country.’
‘Guess so,’ said DogNut.
‘It’s too big for us, really,’ Nicola added. ‘But more children arrive all the time.’
‘A lot of us were already here when the fire broke out last year,’ said Ponytail. ‘And then hundreds more kids poured across the bridges. Some of them stopped here.’
‘But not Brooke?’ Courtney asked.
‘Sorry,’ said Ponytail. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘As I say,’ said Nicola, standing up, ‘we’ll call a session. You make up a list of names of the people you’re looking for. There are nearly a hundred of us here – someone might know something.’
7
An hour later and all the kids were assembled on the rows of red leather benches in the House of Lords. It was gloomy and cold, despite the light streaming in through the high stained-glass windows that ran down either side of the hall.
‘Fancy,’ said Courtney as she sat down next to DogNut and looked around at the carved wood panelling that covered the walls, the gold leaf, the chandeliers, the oil paintings.
‘It looks like a film or something,’ said DogNut. ‘At least they ain’t wearing any fancy robes and wigs.’
The boat crew had been given their gear back, but Nicola had insisted she keep hold of their weapons and armour until they were ready to leave.
Nicola was sitting on a golden throne at one end, her ministers on the benches nearby. She called for quiet, explained the purpose of the meeting and then read out the names that DogNut had given her, adding a brief description of the lorry crossing the bridge.