The End

  ‘I always knew that guy was bad news,’ said Ryan. ‘He’s been nothing but trouble for my guys. Never expected him to pull down something like this, though.’

  ‘I need to talk to him,’ said Nicola.

  ‘The only way you could do that,’ said Ryan, ‘is to go up there. He’s camped out in the park with all of John’s crew. Doesn’t want to get too far from St George’s army, I guess.’

  Nicola thought about this. Horrified by the thought of getting so close to that mass of diseased oppoes. But if it was the only way …

  She wasn’t a fighter. Very few of the kids at the Houses of Parliament were. They paid people like Ryan to do that sort of thing for them. She’d told herself that it really wouldn’t make much difference if they joined in the fight. They’d just get in the way. But there was something she could do. She could talk to David. She knew how to do that. Maybe she could talk some sense into him, make him see how crazy he was acting. Stop him from actually fighting against other kids. Helping St George kill children.

  Yes. That would be her contribution. She could go to sleep tonight without feeling a crushing weight of guilt on her chest, knowing that she’d done something. That she’d tried.

  ‘Take me there,’ she said.

  ‘For sure?’ said Ryan. ‘You want me to take you up to David’s camp?’

  Nicola nodded. Stood up. ‘I’ll get my things.’

  Ten minutes later they were tramping along Birdcage Walk towards the palace, John’s deserted squatter camp off to their right in St James’s Park. Nicola felt secure with Ryan’s hunters all around her, their dogs pulling on their short, thick leads. The streets were completely empty. Ryan had explained that all the sickos were clustered in the park now so the walk there shouldn’t be too dangerous. When they arrived, however – that would be a different story.

  ‘How many sickos are there?’ Nicola asked.

  ‘Too many to count,’ said Ryan and Nicola felt a flush of acid in her stomach. Wanted to puke. With each step closer, she fought harder and harder to stop herself from turning and running back home. She had to push herself on, though, for the sake of everyone else.

  ‘Supposed to be a truce,’ said Ryan as they turned north at the palace, heading up towards Green Park. There were lights in some of the palace windows. Candles burning. David had left most of his people here, only taking his personal guard and his best fighters to the battle.

  Ryan looked across the parade ground and spat.

  ‘Don’t know how you make a truce with animals,’ he said. ‘But David seems to have some kind of control over them. Whatever the case, we can’t take you all the way.’

  ‘What?’ Nicola was suddenly made useless by panic. Hardly able to walk. ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s too many of them sickos in there,’ said Ryan. ‘The dogs’ll go nuts. Give us away. And if the sickos got a smell of us, decided to attack, no way we’d get out of there alive.’

  ‘And what about me?’ said Nicola.

  ‘That’s your worry,’ said Ryan. ‘Your decision, girl. You go in there, you’re on your own. But we’ll wait for you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Is a big old hotel on Park Lane – the Dorchester. Is a mess in there, but we use it sometimes to sleep and that. We can defend it if necessary. We’ll wait for you there and when you come back out you can either sleep there with us or we’ll get you home safely. Depends how late it gets.’

  Nicola looked up at the sky. So many stars out tonight.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said. ‘And I want to sleep in my own bed.’

  They approached the Dorchester from the tangle of streets at its rear, so that they didn’t have to go up Park Lane where they would have been too exposed. Ryan led them in through a service area. The hunters all had torches and switched them on once they were inside. The hotel had been ransacked and looted, smashed to pieces like many buildings when everything started to fall apart. Ryan led them up some stairs to the sixth floor where they’d secured a suite of rooms. There was a good view over Hyde Park from here.

  Ryan took Nicola to the window. She could see the moon glinting on the Serpentine, silver and bright like the Thames. Along its north shore was Jordan’s camp, small fires dotted around. She could make out the barricades that Ryan had described and then – a huge dark mass spreading out across the park.

  ‘Is that them?’ she asked.

  ‘What else?’ said Ryan.

  ‘They’re so many.’

  ‘More’n I’ve ever seen in one place. See that fire there?’ Ryan was pointing downwards, closer to the hotel. Nicola looked to where a bright blaze was flickering red and orange and yellow, sparks rising up into the night.

  ‘That’s where David is,’ said Ryan. ‘They built themselves a big bonfire. He’s in there with his guards and most of the kids from the squatter camp … You reckon you can find your way back here all right?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You got a torch?’

  Nicola shook her head, feeling foolish, and Ryan gave her his.

  ‘You want us, we’ll be here.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said Nicola, praying that this was the truth.

  62

  Nicola closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her chest juddering. She couldn’t get enough oxygen inside her. Her lungs didn’t seem to be working properly. Her heart didn’t seem to be working properly. Nothing seemed to be working properly. Her legs wouldn’t move. She was stuck halfway across Park Lane. The only thing that seemed to be working was her bladder. She needed to pee so badly.

  I can do this, she told herself. I can make a difference. Move …

  And, miracle of miracles, she was moving, across the road, heading towards David’s fire like a moth towards a candle, praying she didn’t meet any sickos on the way. Because she knew that if she even saw one sicko in the distance you’d find her tearing back to the Dorchester, screaming like a baby.

  She couldn’t see very much down here at street level. She’d turned her torch off so as not to attract attention and there were trees all around the edge of the park, but she made her way carefully along the railings until she saw a gate up ahead. And people.

  Dear God, make them be children …

  As she got closer, she saw pale faces staring back at her. They were children, though not any of David’s lot from the palace. These must be John’s kids. The ones who lived in filth and squalor over in St James’s Park. They watched her, not saying anything. Eyes dead. Giving her nothing.

  Well, there was one thing Nicola wasn’t fazed by – kids. She could always hold her own with kids. Even grubby, hard-faced ones like these.

  ‘Choowant?’ One of them jerked his chin at her as she drew near.

  ‘I want to talk to David,’ she said.

  ‘We not supposed to let no one in. We not letting no one in,’ said the boy.

  Nicola laughed at him. ‘Do I look like a sicko to you?’ she said. ‘My name’s Nicola, I’m a friend of David’s. I want to talk to him.’

  ‘We not supposed to let no one in,’ the boy repeated, enjoying his power.

  ‘Nah, let her in,’ said another boy. He had thick arms and thick legs and a thick neck. ‘She’s stush. We’ll have a party.’

  Nicola stared him down.

  ‘Let her in,’ said a girl. ‘She ain’t dangerous.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Nicola and the girl ignored her. The boys stepped aside to let her through, the one with the thick neck making a couple of sexual comments that Nicola barely registered.

  This was the part of the park where they used to have concerts. Nicola had been here one time with some friends to see Kasabian. Couldn’t remember much about the gig, just how crowded it had been and how hard it was to see anything.

  David had made himself a safe area here. His own little barricaded settlement, protected by rickety wooden fencing that looked like it wouldn’t stop a primary-school outing, let alone an army of sickos. She guessed it was more
a psychological barrier than a physical one.

  There seemed to be a hierarchy in the camp, with John and his squatters around the outside, then a ring of palace kids and finally, nearer to the fire, in a tight circle, a ring of boys wearing red blazers and holding rifles. David’s personal guard.

  What a creep. Who needed their own personal guard?

  She pushed on through the sprawled kids. Comments from all around her. The boys making sexual remarks, the girls commenting on the way she looked. Several of them made fun of her red hair. Didn’t bother her. She’d heard it all before.

  There was a stink here, partly masked by the smoke from the fire, and looking out past the kids and the fence she could see the huge dark mass of grown-ups beyond. She really wanted to throw up. It seemed insane that she could be this close to so many sickos and they weren’t trying to kill her.

  Not yet anyway.

  She saw David, sitting with Jester and a very pale-skinned boy wearing a black roll-neck jumper. That was Paul. The weird kid from the museum.

  Nicola stopped a while, studying the three of them while they were unaware of her presence. Paul was sitting upright, staring straight into the fire as if reading something in its shifting shapes. Jester was lost in thought, wrapped in his patchwork coat. She knew that each patch was taken from the clothing of a friend of his who’d died. If the sickos won tomorrow he’d have enough to make a hundred coats.

  David himself looked very tired; worried, in a way she’d never seen before. And that gave her hope. If he had doubts about all this she could play him more easily. She noticed that there was a space around the three of them. The other kids not wanting to get too close. She went over and stood in the gap, right in front of David, and he slowly looked up. Not expecting to see her here. It was a few moments before his mind adjusted and he figured out who she was, and then he smiled, which made him look five years younger, like a little boy.

  It was a real smile. Warm. He was genuinely happy to see her. He struggled up on stiff legs. It was damp out here and Nicola could already feel that her back was hot where it was facing the fire, whereas her front was freezing.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Nicola,’ he said, and shook her hand like a boring uncle at a family do rather than a fifteen-year-old boy.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ said Nicola.

  ‘Yuh,’ said David. ‘Of course, yeah.’

  ‘In private,’ said Nicola.

  David smiled even more widely.

  ‘In private, yes … Yes.’

  They walked away towards a cluster of concession stands and found somewhere to sit on a couple of old plastic chairs.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ said David. ‘What d’you want to talk about?’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Nicola.

  ‘You’ve thought about what I said?’ said David, babbling slightly, the words tumbling out. ‘About us being a proper partnership.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that, yes, but …’

  ‘And we can win this thing, you know,’ David interrupted. ‘And then you and I can be the joint rulers of London. Of everywhere actually. And I can do it with you. I mean, you’ll be, like, my queen. We’ll do it together. Rule together I mean. And also …’ He tailed off into silence.

  ‘That’s not what I came to say,’ said Nicola.

  ‘What then?’ said David

  ‘My God,’ said Nicola, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘I mean, David, what are you doing? What is all this? What are you doing here with grown-ups?’

  David looked hurt, and then he tilted his head back and looked down his nose at her.

  ‘I’m winning is what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘Beating snotty Jordan Hordern and his snotty army.’

  ‘But they’re children,’ said Nicola. ‘Like us! They’re not the enemy. It’s the grown-ups we’re supposed to be fighting.’

  ‘I made Jordan an offer,’ said David as if he was being completely rational, saying the most normal and obvious thing in the world. ‘They could easily have surrendered if they wanted. All they had to do was let me be in charge. It was their choice.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Nicola. ‘How can you say such a thing? It was your choice. You chose to side with the wrong army.’

  David stared at her for a long time and then suddenly he lunged, grabbing her with his hands, crushing her against his body and putting one hand behind her head and forcing his mouth on to hers. She kept rigid, her mouth closed, giving nothing. He slobbered over her face for a few seconds, then let go. Looked away. Ashamed. Nicola wiped her mouth.

  ‘You promised me,’ said David.

  ‘I never promised you anything,’ said Nicola.

  ‘You said you’d be my girlfriend,’ said David.

  ‘No. I would never have said that.’

  ‘You implied that you might,’ said David. ‘Were you just leading me on?’

  Nicola laughed slightly hysterically.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ she said. But deep down she knew that she had tried to manipulate him. She had given hints that he might be in with a chance. But only tiny hints, nothing definite.

  ‘If you’ll be my girlfriend,’ said David quietly, still not daring to look at her, ‘I’ll stop this. I’ll take my troops away. I’ll go back to the palace. I’ll stop Paul from communicating with St George. If you’ll only be my girlfriend.’

  ‘Is that what you need?’ said Nicola. ‘An excuse to stop doing this? To save face?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it to go this far,’ he said. ‘I’m not a bad person. Am I?’

  Nicola touched him gently on the shoulder. Could she stop this? With just one word? Say yes to him … Was that all it would take …?

  63

  David looked round eagerly, Nicola’s hand still gently resting on his shoulder, but he could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t offering him anything more than this. She couldn’t disguise it. She couldn’t outright lie to him.

  ‘David,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t work like that. You can’t make me be your girlfriend. I like you. I just don’t like you in that way. I’m sure you can find someone else. There’s plenty of girls at the palace who worship you. Just not me. I could never fake it. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘It’s you I want.’

  ‘Forget it, OK? You’ve got to stop what you’re doing here. You’ve got to because that’s the right thing to do. Not because I tell you to. Not because if you do I’ll kiss you and everything will be like a fairy tale.’

  David suddenly jumped up and pushed Nicola over. She tumbled out of her chair and sprawled on to the damp grass. He stood over her, staring down, his finger pointing, struggling to speak.

  He said nothing. Simply turned and marched back towards the fire. Nicola got up and went after him, pulling at his jacket.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Come back. Let’s talk about this.’

  He walked on. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he said. ‘You’ve made it really clear that you despise me. I’m just a bit of crap on your shoe.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicola. ‘I didn’t say that. I never said anything like that. Don’t be stupid. I said I like you. Just not in that way …’

  David went over to one of his boys, grabbed the rifle from his hands and waved it at Nicola.

  ‘You see this?’ he said. ‘I have this. I have power. I can get what I want.’

  Nicola giggled, not quite believing this, getting more hysterical. David’s guys had got those rifles at the Imperial War Museum and she didn’t even know if they worked, whether they knew how to fire them. She’d always assumed that they were just for show. Now here was David coming over all macho. She knew she shouldn’t laugh. It was only making him worse. But he looked silly waving the gun about. It wasn’t his style, and she hoped that others might join in, make him see how foolish he was being.

  ‘Come on. Is that it?’ she said. ‘You’re going to shoot me if I don’t kiss you?’

  That got
the attention of some of the kids nearby. It was getting interesting now.

  ‘Shut up,’ David hissed.

  ‘Are you going to lunge at me again?’ said Nicola.

  ‘Shut up. I didn’t.’

  ‘He did,’ said Nicola, looking round at all the faces goggling at her. ‘He did. Over there. Just now. He said that if I agreed to be his girlfriend he’d stop fighting the other children.’

  There was some laughter, a low hum of excitement. Nicola had her audience. If David wasn’t going to fix this mess, she was. She could make a difference.

  ‘Listen to me. All of you. Listen to what I’m saying. See sense. Don’t listen to David. I seriously think he’s nuts. Yeah? You’re all on the wrong side. You’ve got to see that. Those are your friends over there. They’re children like you. And David, just because he can’t get a snog, is going to take his gun and go marching around shooting people to show what a big man he is. You don’t have to follow him. Go home.’

  But nobody stood up. Nobody said anything. Nobody shouted out ‘She’s right!’ and came over to stand by her side like they would have done in a Hollywood film. They just stared at her, enjoying the show. This tripped a switch in Nicola. She was an itchy tangle of anger and fear and embarrassment and too many other too complicated emotions to make sense of. She watched herself. Knew that she was only going to make things worse. Knew she should stop. But couldn’t.

  She went over to David and gave him a shove.

  ‘You’re a dick,’ she said. ‘You’re an idiot. I take it all back. I hope you never get a girlfriend. I don’t think you’ve ever had one. Who the hell would ever want to kiss you? You’re revolting. You make my skin crawl.’

  A couple of kids clapped. Nicola was blushing. Knew she had to leave before she said anything else.

  This wasn’t like her. She wanted to say sorry, but was worried that the words would stick in her throat. She turned and walked away and, as she walked, she felt a thump in her back. Thought that David must have punched her, pushed her, because the next thing she knew she was lying on the ground.