The rest of the drive passes quietly. We usually listen to music in the car, even if it’s just the radio, but ever since my audition, Mum hasn’t put music on, probably out of pity. And, as much as I hate to admit it, no music’s better than not being able to sing along.

With what can only be four hours of sleep, I barely have the energy to observe our surroundings, but I sink further in my seat when we pass the wide, white columns of the British Museum staring, sombre in the daylight.

I stole a priceless artifact, from my Mum’s work no less! It’s only a matter of time before they realise Marcellus is missing, and then it’s only a matter of time before they figure out it’s me. And then I can really kiss music school goodbye. Although … maybe, it’ll give me a real rockstar image by the time I get out of prison. Isn’t that something to look forward to?

When Mum finally parks the car alongside the skyscrapers and steel bridges of Embankment,

I stay in the car a moment, focusing on deep breathing, rubbing the back of my neck where I can feel sweat starting to gather.

Come on Kira, you can’t get stage fright now!

Then Mum raps her knuckles on my window so hard it makes me jump.

‘Come on,’ she grins, ‘you won’t want to miss me filing paperwork.’

The briny waterfront assaults my nostrils the second I open the door, chased by an earthy taste that sticks to the back of my throat. Before I can second-guess myself, I seize my rucksack, trying not to look too put out by Marcellus’ weight, and skulk after Mum.

The pavement’s patterned with fluorescent orange cones; a breadcrumb trail leading to a hastily erected wooden hut that could give you a splinter just by looking at you. On either side of the hut loom security fences, easily twice my height, their chain links clinking in the mid-morning breeze. The river front beyond is a blur behind blue tarpaulin pinned to the fence.

I swallow thickly. One way in. One way out.

The burly security guard inside the hut glares at Mum’s I.D badge from underneath big bushy eyebrows before sighing and shifting the gate ajar a few inches.

Mum and I slink through, my burgundy jacket nearly snagging on the wire. But I stop short once I’m through, taken aback by the sheer level of carnage.

Nothing remains of the ordered splash of greenery from the pictures I saw last night. Instead, mounds of moist earth are scattered in an incomprehensible pattern, whilst workers in white plastic onesies crawl like insects amongst the peaks and troughs of dirt, a few holding court around a grave-size hole in the centre of the site.

Mum is quickly drawn into conversation with a dark-skinned woman, sweeping a bouncy brown curl from her face and talking animatedly as she brandishes a palm-sized scrap of earth.

This leaves me to take a few strategic steps to the side and unzip my rucksack in a way that I hope looks casual.

‘You okay, Marcellus?’ I whisper, watching him flinch at the sudden exposure to daylight.

‘It’s here, Bennett,’ he replies, eyes wide with excitement, ‘my body. I can feel it.’

‘Well let’s just hope it’s not under there,’ I joke, watching the woman in the white-suit lead my Mum to a trench on the water front.

But Marcellus is too busy being constipated to reply. He scrunches his face up in concentration, attention zeroing in on the Thames.

‘I stopped here …’ he says absently, voice sounding far away, ‘the curse was … my legs became stone … I … I … there. I fell there.’

‘There?’ I point just ahead of us to confirm.

‘There.’

‘Perfect.’

Because it is where the woman in the white-suit is leading my Mum.

Because of course it is. Because I’m freaking cursed, aren’t I?