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‘Just shut up, just shut up!’ Joyce spoke through gritted teeth, clenching her fists – so hard that, only later, did she see the tiny, bruised crescents on her palms.

‘Don’t you speak to me like that. You were always a nasty girl. If your father could hear what you’re saying, saying that he’s dead –’

‘But he is, Mum. He’s been dead for ten years. He died of cancer, remember? He shouldn’t have died, but he’s gone. He shouldn’t have left me to cope with you, he shouldn’t have been the one that died –’

Joyce froze and the world shuddered to a sickening halt around her as the words left her lips. She’d said the one thing that she promised herself she’d never say. She didn’t believe it; she knew she didn’t mean it. But it was said. All she could do was to stare at the pathetic figure in the bed in front of her, all feeling gone. Her mother just gazed at her. Joyce tried to look away, tears streaming down her face, blurring her mother’s features, turning her into something indistinct, unknowable. She couldn’t bear to look at her, scared of what she’d see in her eyes.

She just wanted to run away, to leave this mad little woman and her mad little world; to get back to science and UNIT and normality and how everything used to be.

But instead, in silence, she sat on the edge of the bed and held her mother as tightly as she could.

Ace’s original impression of Kelsay as an unspoiled, picturesque island was quickly being replaced by an impression of it as a deserted, tiny rock with nowhere to hide. As she’d reached the ridge, she’d looked back to see Megan following her – weaving from side to side as she held her free hand over her face.

Occasionally she loosed off a shot from the pistol in Ace’s direction, but with one eye covered she was dearly having difficulties.

Nevertheless, the crackling fizz of the pistol’s shots, and the grass and soil that spurted up from the ground didn’t do much for Ace’s confidence. Throwing herself down on the grass over the ridge, she looked down the slope where, in the distance, she could see the tweedies’ cottage.

Great, she thought. Four of us on the island and I’ve managed to piss off three of them. Nice one, Ace.

In the other direction, towards the north-east, the ground became more convoluted. If she was to find anywhere to hide, to shake Megan off until she could make it back to the beach and attract the boys’ attention, it would be there. Her chest heaving, she scrambled to her feet and set off. To her relief, it seemed that Megan was making slower progress than she was: she kept glancing back and managed to duck behind a rocky outcrop at the bottom of the slope before Megan came over the ridge. Ace watched her stand and survey the island below her, rotating mechanically and slowly from side to side.

Oh no, Ace thought. Please say she isn’t a killer cyborg.

She watched as Megan slowly started down the slope –

heading in the direction of the cottage. If she told the tweedies that she was hunting Ace down, it wouldn’t be long before the three of them managed to corner her.

So having spent the last ten minutes running away from Megan, Ace realised, ironically, that her best chance was to take on Megan on her own and then deal with the tweedies. She stood up and leaped across a narrow gorge between the rock and a grassy bank a few feet away. Glancing up, she saw that Megan had seen her and was altering her course – as Ace had hoped.

That’s it, she thought, scrambling along the bank towards where it sloped down to another patch of rocks. Come to Ace.

The rocks were rough, but thick with lichen and moss, and slippery as she tried to get a handhold on them. Keeping an eye on her pursuer, she managed to get a foot into a crevice, and clambered on to the top of the largest one: she knew she could move more quickly jumping across the tops of them – assuming she didn’t slip and break her neck – than trying to struggle round them. Unfortunately it also made her an easier target; but judging