‘Wow, your blusher must have been really good—’
‘Out,’ said Crawler.
Gingerly, like a mole, I crawled out of the can, blinking, cautious. As my eyes adjusted, I saw we were in a large shadowy room.
Once I’d struggled free of the can I saw the red letters on its label.
FIDDLER’S TUNA: IT’S GREY AND SMELLS BAD, BUT IT’S CHEAP AND FILLING!
Just as I’d suspected. Tuna. The devil’s own food.
I looked at my body in shock, held up my minuscule fingers to my face with horrified wonder. Would I ever get back to my usual size again?
‘Who are you?’ said a voice next to me.
I wheeled around in surprise.
Next to me, a pale face was peeking out of MILLER MUSHY PEAS: HEAVY ON THE MUSH, LIGHT ON PEAS!
The face gave a friendly nod.
Too taken aback to do anything else, I raised my tiny matchstick fingers in a stunned wave.
The face looked back into its can and said excitedly: ‘Obediah, there’s a girl here!’
‘Well, stop lollygagging and get a move on so I can get out!’ came the muffled reply.
A few minutes later, two young boys had crawled out of the pea can. They stood shivering in faded cotton trousers and threadbare shirts. Both had the same shiny new-conker hair, the same alert, interested way of lifting their chins attentively, as if ready for anything that should come their way. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the stained red patch on the taller boy’s shirt, the obvious lack of limb where his right arm should have been and the vivid bruising on the shorter boy’s forehead and his bashed-in temple, I’d have found it hard to believe they were dead at all.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the boy in the bloody shirt.
‘I’m …’
‘She’s forgotten!’ he guffawed, nudging the other boy with his remaining arm.
‘I haven’t.’
But I had, for a second.
TRYING TO KEEP the uncertainty out of my voice, I said: ‘I’m Frankie. Who are you?’
‘Obediah,’ said the one-armed boy. ‘And this is my baby brother, Theo.’ He indicated the boy with the bruised head, who was staring around the dark room in a sort of trance.
‘From the Camberwell spike.’
‘The what?’
‘Spike,’ said Obediah. He widened his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what a spike is. Ain’t you never met a workhouse boy before?’ He eyed my shredded clothes uncertainly. ‘You don’t look like a toff. What are you, soft in the head?’
‘Have you seen a boy, about our age?’ said Theo eagerly. ‘He gave us much merriment. I have often wondered where he went.’
‘You mean Scanlon,’ I said grimly. ‘He’s over there.’
The boys both fell silent as they caught sight of him, shuffling his feet a few metres away.
While the boys stared at Scanlon in confusion, Crawler occupied himself with inspecting the room around us, tapping walls and flicking switches as excitedly as a kid with a new toy at Christmas.
‘Him?’ said Theo, sounding disappointed as he took in Scanlon. ‘Never! He’s taller, for a start. Our friend was our height. And that person’s face drops like a dead man from the gallows. Our friend was a proper gigglemug.’
‘And yet that sharp nose is certainly his. I feel that is him, but grown like a tree,’ said Obediah.
‘Our friend has greatly changed,’ said Theo.
‘No,’ I said heavily. ‘He hasn’t. He’s been doing the same thing for years.’
Obediah looked at me with interest. ‘Are you from Camberwell, Frankie? You do not seem familiar.’
I stared at him. ‘No, Cliffstones.’
They looked at each other, then back to me. ‘What parish is that?’
‘P-parish?’ I stammered.
Theo muttered to the older boy, ‘Where are her clogs? She is practically barefoot. What spike doesn’t give out clogs?’
Half-remembered facts and bits of lessons ran through my mind. ‘I don’t belong to a spike,’ I explained, ‘if you mean a poorhouse? They don’t exist any more.’
‘Oh,’ said Theo and Obediah together, and a peculiar happiness stole over their features.
We were interrupted by a whining sound, the cry of something very young, nearby. I felt it pluck at my ankles and felt an immediate desire to kick it as far away as possible. I’d only given it a little tap with my one trainer when—
‘You’ll murther the lamb,’ said Theo, giving me a filthy look, as he swooped in and picked up the snotty mess at my feet.
The child could only have been two, at a push. She had a dirty red bow dangling loosely from her curly hair. She threw me a baleful look and then turned her eyes towards Theo.
‘Ma,’ said the toddler. She looked as if she wanted to say something else, and for a second her face crumpled up in anguish, and then her emotions seemed to pass, and she simply stuck her thumb in her mouth and stared at him with vacant, almost unseeing eyes.
‘Ma? Oh, bless you, duck. Where is your mother today? Is she in your can?’ And he reached out and tickled the girl under her chin until she giggled softly.
But it was clear the can was empty.
Obediah, watching this exchange, said to me: ‘Theo’s always been like that. He’d befriend a mouse rather than kill it. He’s only here because he ran in after me and got caught too. Heart like butter.’
I threw him a distracted smile, as the cogs of my brain worked slowly.
‘Boys,’ I said quietly, ‘when were you born?’
Theo stopped tickling the little girl under her chin. ‘I dunno,’ he said simply. ‘No one ever told us that.’
Obediah grinned. ‘What are you, a beak?’
They both fell about laughing as if this was the wittiest joke on Earth. I eyed them uncertainly. It was like talking to a dictionary that kept opening at random words.
‘Erm, well, who was your queen, or king, when you were alive?’
Now they seemed more certain.
‘Queen Victoria, of course,’ said Obediah.
Queen Victoria? That meant they’d been alive
