We half stumbled, half jogged for a good fifteen minutes until the house suddenly appeared in the distance around the corner of a high hedge. Ben had urged us to go on without him several times, not wanting his slow pace to ruin our chances of catching up with the others. However Henry assured him that he’d not bothered picking up any tokens so had no chance of winning anyway, and I was equally far too disillusioned with the whole farce to set out across the open snowscape in a gale without the two larger men to prevent me from blowing away.

I’d glanced behind us a few times to see Summer, hobbling in her pointy boots, hair whipping across her face.

‘I think we’d best wait for her,’ I said eventually, as she tripped and fell into a snowdrift. ‘She’s going to end up injured or with hypothermia otherwise.’

‘She’d leave you out here without a moment’s pause,’ Henry replied, his eyebrows raised as if questioning whether I was sure.

‘She’ll wait for us to reach the front door then push us down the stone steps,’ Ben added.

I took a deep, sub-zero breath. ‘I know.’

The second I’d spoken, Henry plodded back to help pull Summer onto her feet. At first she batted him away until he leant closer to speak to her, after which she allowed him to link arms with her as they started battling their way to join us.

As Ben and I reached the front door, Summer pulled Henry to a stop two steps behind. ‘You can let go of my arm now. Look at me. I was well beyond trying to win about three snowdrifts ago.’

Henry gave her a mild smile. ‘I’m not the kind of man to leave a job unfinished.’

It was a sorry clump of bedraggled, ice-cold candidates who stumbled up to the library door. Gasping in response to the blast of warmth in the hallway, residual snow dripping off our coats onto the flagstones, Ben and I knocked on the door at the same time.

‘Flammagenitus!’ We called out, Summer shouting even louder while Henry looked as though we must be delirious.

Melody opened the door, a large grin on her face until she saw the state of us. ‘Ah. It’s still a bit blowy out there, I see.’

‘If you’d asked us,’ I groaned, ‘we could have let you know the storm would be here by noon.’

‘Right, well, huge congratulations for making it back,’ she said, a tinge of concern behind her bright smile. ‘The boys will take your coats, and there’s soup and fresh bread in the dining hall. Are you quite all right, Summer?’

‘Mmmf!’ Summer groaned in frustration as Henry refused to budge, still holding onto her arm so that Ben and I could enter first.