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The intensity in those last few words surprised Alexander, but he nodded. He put his hand on her arm as she tucked the pen back into her rucksack. ‘What was it, then? That thing last night?’ He’d told Ace about the creature that had come aboard the boat; about how he and John had dived overboard; and about how, when they’d heard the thing splosh back into the water they’d clambered aboard, two miserable, drowned rats, to find that the cabin had been torn apart – and the object that John had brought up gone.

‘I’ve got a horrible feeling that we know it better as Scottie Dog,’ she said. ‘It sounds like the thing that killed Megan.’ She patted her pockets, checking that she had everything. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and see you off.’

‘See me off?’

Ace nodded. ‘Trust me. You go back to the boat and I’ll wait for the Doctor.’

‘But it could be days or weeks before he –’

‘I said trust me. OK?’

‘You really are a nutter, aren’t you?’

‘Probably. Now come on.’

He shrugged, shaking his head.

Ace checked her watch and glanced out at the boat, bobbing away gently in a sea that somehow seemed brighter and gentler than it had when she’d arrived. The sky was clouding over again and she still felt terribly tired. Her knee whinged silently at her.

‘One thing,’ Alexander said, stepping into the dinghy. ‘You never did tell me your name.Your real name.’

She paused. ‘Dorothy – and you tell anyone and you’re dead.’ She grimaced at him. He was sinning.

‘Dorothy? Dorothy as in The Wizard of –’

‘Yes, thank you for reminding me. You can probably guess what my middle name is too, can’t you? Now go on, get lost!’

Ace sat on the beach, feeling the pebbles digging into her backside. From out of the air, struggling to be heard over the wind, came a familiar noise. She turned to see the reassuring shape of the TARDIS as it faded into solidity on a rocky promontory that jutted out into the sea. The air around her thickened with static, as if the TARDIS was drawing the mysterious energies from the ocean floor towards itself. Eye-aching white ropes of lightning danced around its roof for a moment before flickering out.

Ace checked her watch, picked up her rucksack, and headed for home. She paused on the threshold of the TARDIS and looked back at the boat. Was she imagining it, or did it look like there were other figures on the deck? She squinted, shading her eyes against the morning sun. What if the tweedies had accomplices? Could someone else have come through the transmat, other liftmen sent by Sooal? She couldn’t go now; she couldn’t leave John and Alexander to face them alone.

From inside the TARDIS, she heard the Doctor’s impatient, oddly petulant voice, calling her.

‘I can’t go yet,’ she called back.

‘Ace! Come inside. Now.’

She felt herself bristling at his tone and stepped in, trying to keep her weight off her throbbing knee. ‘I can’t go yet,’ she said again.

‘Yes you can,’ he replied sharply.

‘But John and Alexander –’

‘There’s no time,’ the Doctor said sharply, his hands poised on the TARDIS’ controls. His face was concerned, preoccupied.

He glanced over at the doors to the TARDIS’ interior, and she saw that he’d wedged the chair against them, his brown jacket hanging over the back. What was he –

It was as if someone had slapped her face. She felt the whole world – the interior of the TARDIS, the island on which it stood

-rushing away from her, like that trick they do in films with a zoom lens. She looked back at the Doctor as the doors dosed behind her. Before she could tell him to open them again, the TARDIS dematerialised.

‘Quickly, Ace,’ he said. ‘I need to know exactly when it was that we first arrived in Muirbridge.’

‘Why?’ She was still trying to fit together the pieces of everything that was happening around her. She was seeing herself from half a dozen different angles, and couldn’t cobble them together to work out the whole picture. ‘We’ve already been there – you know when we arrived.’

‘ You’ve already been there,’ he said,