melanie kendry

Frank and Eris’ dad, Bobs, a weirdly-smart scientist, is convinced the end of the world is coming any minute now. The Limit is the furthest they can go and still get back to the bunker which he’s built in the cellar together with an early warning system called Mustard the Slug hooked up to an organic computer. Bobs is putting the kids through a brutal training regime including picking weird flowers that make you vomit, and catapulting. They’re not allowed friends. Which is fine because they don’t have any. Everyone at school is calling them freaks. Frank and Eris are trying to hide it, but Frank is starting to worry: what if he really is a freak? And the end of the world is giving him nightmares.

First it’s name-calling, then throwing things, then a fight and the Unit. The Unit is where all the weirdos live. After the Unit, Frank is sent to the school counsellor, Miss Fogg, to talk about his issues with his mother, who he insists is literally ‘lost’, though he can’t remember, not even if he thinks very hard. One boy in particular, Toad, is determined to make his life a misery. When Frank punches Toad and gets sent to the Unit, a band of bullied kids befriend him and he discovers Machine Club. For the first time in his life, Frank has friends and he’s happy. He doesn’t want his new friends to know about him and Eris having to do training in case they reject him too. But if it really is the end of the world, doesn’t he have a duty to save them?

Frank’s dad also makes friends with another scientist called Sally, who is also mad about the end of the world. They get on like a house on fire. Except, where Bobs is planning to survive the end, Sally wants to stop it from happening. She’s got some extreme ideas about how you could force people to stop polluting. Frank starts to wonder. What if their dad and Sally are wrong? What if the future isn’t dark and death and frightening? Maybe they’re living like this for nothing. Sally bakes cauliflower scones and courgette cupcakes and wants them to get a composting toilet. None of Eris’ friends are speaking to her because of the smell of their algae packed lunches. Then her ‘friends’ start ganging up on her. Toad smashes up all the things Frank’s friends made at Machine Club and Frank gets the blame. After this, it goes nuclear. But that looks like an algae picnic compared to what happens next...