‘She sounds amazing,’ I say.
But what strikes me as even more amazing is the amount of backstory which wasn’t in the book or the film. It’s as if this universe extends beyond the edges of the canon. I want to discuss it with Alice and Katie, but I’m afraid Ash will think I’m mad.
He pulls himself from his thoughts and starts ladling the stew into bowls. Brown lumps suspended in discoloured water. ‘Yeah, Ma’s amazing all right.’ He hands us each a bowl.
It smells even better up close.
‘Violet,’ Alice hisses, placing the bowl next to her cup. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
My mind reels back to the film, the scenes of the hungry Imps catching and skinning rats, interspersed with clips of Gems stuffing their pretty faces with gourmet food.
‘Is it rat?’ I ask him.
‘Rat?’ Katie says. ‘For real?’
He looks a little confused. ‘What else could it be?’
The thought of eating rat makes my stomach turn, of course it does. I remember this scandal in Shepherd’s Bush a year or so back, when a restaurant was closed down for serving rat instead of chicken. I didn’t eat meat for a week, and when I finally did, Dad and Nate hid this plastic mouse in my turkey sandwich. I screamed at them. I mean, really screamed. And then I didn’t eat meat for another week.
But I look at Ash, the way he cocks his head to the side, watching me watching him. I force a smile. ‘Yeah, course. Thanks.’ I rest the plate on the floor and use my hands to shovel the gloop into my mouth.
Alice and Katie watch me eat in silence, still holding their bowls with suspicious hands.
When I’ve finished, Alice and Katie start to giggle.
‘You’ve just eaten a rat,’ Alice says.
‘An actual rat,’ Katie says.
I start to laugh too. ‘It tasted OK.’
‘It’s the best rat this side of the broken bridge,’ Ash says.
Something clicks in my brain. ‘We need to get to the broken bridge.’
‘You sure about that?’ Ash says. ‘There’s only trouble down by the river.’
I nod. ‘Yeah, Nate will be there.’
Ash looks confused again. ‘I can take you so far, but I’ve got to get to back to the city gates before the buses leave. I’m heading to the Pastures tonight.’
I notice his regulation grey overalls for the first time, taut across his chest.
Alice sits bolt upright. ‘The Pastures?’ She emphasizes the word Pastures like she did the word Hawaii after her big family holiday last year. She returned even blonder, even more sun-kissed, and just a touch smug. She leans in. ‘Of course, you work in the Pastures, don’t you.’
‘Yeah, I’m a Night-Imp, I thought we cleared that up.’
‘What are they like?’ she asks.
I can almost hear a ukulele and the swish of a grass skirt.
‘What, Night-Imps?’ He frowns. ‘Sun-starved, kinda pasty, vitamin D deficient.’
Alice laughs like she can’t hear the sadness behind the sarcasm. ‘No, no. What are the Pastures like?’
‘OK . . . you know . . . readily available food and clean water, all those luxuries.’ He scans her face for a moment, but distrust rather than adoration flickers beneath his features. ‘Why are you so interested?’
Her hands fidget around her mouth and she stifles a nervous laugh. ‘Oh, you know, just trying to make conversation and be a good house guest.’
He glances at her untouched bowl of stew. ‘A good house guest would have eaten the rat.’
This makes me laugh and he turns his gaze to me. ‘You sure you want to go to the bridge?’ he says. ‘It’s just . . . I really can’t come with you, not that far. If I lose my post my family won’t survive.’
I get this burst of sympathy and a lie forms on my lips. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to go all the way, just in the general direction. We’ll be fine. We’ve got friends waiting.’
‘It’s just, I won’t be able to protect you, not this time.’ He lowers his dark lashes, and I notice how long they are, grazing the crown of each cheekbone.
‘And I thought you were our hero,’ Alice says.
He ignores her coquettish look and raises his gaze so it meets mine, the warmth of his smile tempering the ice of his eyes. He then picks up Alice and Katie’s bowls and slops the contents back into the cauldron. ‘Yes, but the Imp-bus waits for no one, not even us heroes.’ He dashes from the room for a moment.
Katie turns to me. ‘How do you know where Nate is?’
‘Saskia and Matthew were taking us to Rebel Headquarters, remember?’ I say.
‘And headquarters are by the broken bridge?’
‘That’s right,’ I say.
‘I don’t remember Ash being that cute,’ Alice interrupts.
‘He most definitely wasn’t,’ I reply.
‘Who’s Ash?’ Katie says, the frustration rising in her voice.
‘Think Jacob from Twilight,’ I reply.
She shrugs. ‘You think I’ve read Twilight? Do you know me at all?’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Alice says. ‘Even my gran’s read Twilight.’
‘OK, think Buttons from Cinderella,’ I say. ‘Ash followed Rose around like a lost puppy.’
Katie’s face lights up. ‘Ooh, like Silvius from As You Like It.’
Alice rolls her eyes. ‘Or Geeky McGeekyson from Attack of the Nerds.’
Ash returns with a pair of tatty leather shoes dangling from his hands, one of which has a hole in the bottom, plugged with some sort of dried straw. He hands them to Alice, who holds them between her thumb and her forefinger like she’s avoiding touching them.
Katie can’t stop grinning. ‘Not quite Jimmy Choos, are they?’
Poor Ash looks thoroughly confused again – he looks really cute with his forehead all creased up. ‘They’re not Jimmy’s, they’re mine.’ He points at Alice’s feet. ‘But they should fit you OK, you’ve got massive man feet for a girl.’
I catch Katie’s eye as we try not to laugh.
‘We’d better get going then, find that little brother of yours.’ Ash grins at me, and that warm, fluttery feeling stretches to every extremity of my body.
I didn’t think it possible, but the city disintegrates even more the deeper we go. Buildings without walls, streets ripped in two, huts built from scraps of metal and polythene. It’s so much worse than in the film. Even worse than how I pictured it from the book. And the stench just grows and grows. I raise my sleeve to my nose, hoping to filter the air, and notice that Katie and Alice do the same.
I peer into the shelters and catch the odd glimpse of movement; mothers feeding their babies, fathers hacking at salvaged bits of wood. It occurs to me that all these Imps have a backstory, a life, which Sally King didn’t write about. Just like Ash. How is this even possible? Did King write about each Imp in detail before she died? Or has this world sprung directly from King’s imagination?
‘So, what’s your story?’ Ash asks me. ‘Why’s your little brother at the broken bridge?’
The words little brother ignite guilt inside me. Already I’ve forgotten why I left him in the tavern, why I failed to prioritize him.
‘Violet?’ The concern in Ash’s voice makes me a little teary.