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I don't see Gillian.

John says Gillian likes Zack now. It's because he has a motorbike. John says he doesn't mind, but he does.

He used to like me, until he found out I had two hearts.

(The Box is better than any bike, even a Norton – but that's not a topic likely to come up.)

It's not that John doesn't like me now, it's that he knows too much about me.

Nobody fancies the Mekon. Not even a Martian.

When it was cold, John said things I wish would vanish into my fog but which stubbornly remain lodged in memory. I understand the shock he was suffering from after his father's death, but that he could think even for a minute that I was responsible for it all makes things awkward between us. It's strange – Gillian came close to murdering me, but I was more hurt when John called me a spy.

Next year, when she's sixteen, Gillian plans on leaving home and getting engaged to Zack. She wants to leave School too and get a job in a shop. Zack might secretly be an Enid Blyton-reading softie, but is still officially a Ton-Up Boy and can take care of himself. The new white lightning- strike in his hair is an intimidating touch. I think he has made Gillian's Dad think twice about belting her.

Gillian couldn't kill me, even to save the world. That means her old man hasn't taught her to be like him. I hope she and Zack can be happy, but I know they'll steer clear of me in the future.

They're growing up and want to pretend some things never happened. I just remind them, every time they look at me, that the universe isn't what you see on telly or read in the papers. To get on, they have to believe that it is, or they'll be as outcast here, where they have to live, as Grandfather was back Home.

John isn't like that. He's full of questions about us, but the answers still aren't all there in my head.

I can't name the planet I come from, if it actually is a planet –it might just be a plane. I don't know my Grandfather's name. And 'Susan Foreman' is an alias, at least the Foreman part –which was written up on the gates of the scrap merchant's yard when the Box arrived.

As for the Box, I can explain the Physics, but not in any way John would understand, even if he goes to Cambridge and wins the Nobel Prize. Which, a little bird tells me, is quite likely.

The most upsetting thing is that John is afraid of me. As if I might shoot death-rays out of my eyes.

I'm not sure that I can't do that. Or won't be able to when I grow up.

'I'm leaving Coal Hill,' said John. 'To live with Mum in Northumberland. After what happened with Dad, I won't have to do R.O.T.C. any more. Do you have parents?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you just grow in bottles, or something? Like in Brave New World?'

'I don't know.'

'It's weird, Susan.'

I shrugged.

'I mean, even for an ... well, for what you are ... you're weird.'

'Unearthly?'

He looked away.

'Will you stay here?' he asked.

'For a while. It's up to Grandfather. And the Box. It's not very well at the moment. What Grandfather did with the Cold Knights wasn't as easy as he might have made it seem. He had to ignore safety procedures.'

'I still don't understand how the Box can be a spaceship.'

'It's not. It travels through time and relative dimensions.'

'In space?'

'Well, yes.'

'So you can go anywhere at any time?'

'Ordinarily. A filament burned out. A replacement isn't going to be easy to find. We're not stranded or anything. But we are limited.'

'And your people will be searching for you now?'

'Grandfather is afraid so.'

I thought once I could picture the Truant Officer's face, but it's fading. I have an image of a smile, smug and nasty and clever. Ghastly Grange's sneer, on the face of a blurred Satan.

'You're criminals?'

'More like political exiles. Though that doesn't mean they wouldn't haul us back and put Grandfather on trial. Especially now. What he did, going to Pluto and all, will have set alarm bells ringing at Home. They'll know. If you interfere with history, it jangles the web. The officer on our case will be