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'I'm sorry about your Dad, John,' I said. 'Really, I am. And Dolly, and ... these people, and everyone. But Grandfather can make a difference ... '

John stared at me, hard.

'She's fourteen, Martian,' said Gillian, thumping his arm. 'There are no fourteen-year-old spies!'

'Except in Enid Blyton books,' said Zack.

'You read Enid Blyton?' gasped Gillian.

'To my little sister, before her bed-time.'

'This is all very sweet,' said John, rubbing his arm, nodding at me, 'but you'll notice she hasn't denied anything.'

It was as if a wall had been thrown up between me and the others. A see-through wall, but impenetrable. John's gaze was fixed on me. A glance passed between Zack and Gillian, wheels turning behind their eyes.

'Don't talk as if I wasn't here,' I said. My voice sounded tiny.

'Why are you upsetting Susan?' asked Malcolm. He walked across the bar and took my hand. 'She's my friend.'

The wall was gone.

I was crying again, holding on to Malcolm.

'She knows something,' said John, quietly. 'She does.'

'I know you've had a bad day, John,' said Gillian, conciliatory. 'But you mustn't take it out on Susan.'

'Had a bad day! I saw my father killed! Saving you!'

It was as if he had slapped her. Gillian would never forget what he'd just said.

'Just what I was searching for,' said Zack. Rooting around behind the bar, he'd found a ring of keys. 'Good thing they chained the doors from the inside.'

He began testing keys in the padlock.

'They locked up for a reason,' Gillian warned, still distracted. 'Be careful.'

A key turned. Zack loosed the padlock and unthreaded the chains from the double-doors. He tried keys again, in the door-lock. The third key worked.

John and Gillian and I were a triangle, each fixed on the other two.

Before the Cold, we had been friends.

'John's right,' I said. 'I'm not from here. I'm not a spy or a princess, but I'm not from here.'

Zack pulled the doors open. A wall of white outside was over his head, but there was daylight visible over the top.

'Trust me, John, Gillian. Please.'

Zack battered the snow-wall with the chain. It was like iron.

I felt calm, for the first time in hours. I felt the presence of Grandfather, not in my head but nearby.

'This flaming thing won't budge,' said Zack, kicking the snow.

'Let me,' I said.

I held Malcolm's hand and walked up to the exit. As I neared, the snow melted away, like doors opening.

Zack whistled. John tried to say something but Gillian shushed him.

I didn't know why the ice-mind let me pass. But I had known that it

would. Grandfather wouldn't let the Cold hurt me.

We stepped out onto the street again, in Totter's Lane.

'Is that your Grandfather's place?' Zack asked.

'The junkyard,' I said. 'Yes.'

'What's going on there?'

I looked. The drift was a windbreak, which should have made Totter's Lane less blizzardy than the High Street. But a snowy tornado rose, funnel pointed at Foreman's Yard. Lined along the pavements were Cold Knights, at attention.

'Seems like we've come to the right place,' said Zack. 'Whatever is going on, this is where it's going on from.'

'Be careful,' said John. 'Be careful of her.'

Later –

I led them to the Box.

'I don't think phoning the coppers will do much good, Suze,' said Zack.

Bundled cables ran out of the door, into the Yard.

It was a grotto of living ice, glassy fronds moving like transparent, crackling anemones, white and turquoise and blue.

Grandfather, wrapped in furs like a Tartar chieftain, sat on a shooting stick by a Heath Robinson contraption. It was a composite machine, scavenged parts wired together, built around the skeleton of a fairground pipe organ. He'd cannibalised elements from half a dozen coffin-sized abandoned fridges, those favourite monsters of classroom safety filmstrips. Like all of Grandfather's 'inventions', this machine consisted of bits and pieces held together with pink string and masking tape, with no thought for design. The organ