A pale light was coming from behind her, and she twisted her neck to see. She was looking off into the distance: into a distance that had no truck with the actual dimensions of the room she was in. She could still see the ice walls of the canyon she’d been rescued from, rising too far up to see their tops. From her current vantage point, she seemed to be able to see into the translucent ice too. It contained layers of structure, as though a whole translucent city had been frozen within, and she was some ice sculptor savant who could see all the possible shapes the ice might be carved into.

She could make out two of Gym Bro’s friends, too. One of them was lying face down on the canyon floor, and the woman was kneeling. They were frozen; ice had formed a thin layer across their skin and frost rimed their clothes. Their dead faces were a ghastly blue-white. Then they receded, tucked out of sight as though physics had swept them away with a broom to tidy everything up.

Lee decided she could abandon her fingernail-hold on consciousness, and let go.

She woke to the smell of fast food, lying on a tatty sofa while the sun streamed in from an uncurtained window above. It was propped half open, but the familiar heat of the interminable summer was already baking the room.

How very British of me, she considered weakly. I was freezing to death not that long ago, but already it’s too hot.

She sat up and realized she had no idea where she was: a small room crammed with furniture: sofa, desk, unmade single bed and a wardrobe. This was large, old and ornate enough to make her wonder if she really had come through it from another world. There were two doors, one ajar to what was presumably the loo, the other closed against the outside world. Nothing matched, and the lime-green wallpaper and turd-brown carpet weren’t on speaking terms either. I’m in…a bed and breakfast? Because she had stayed in her share of rock-bottom cheap places, and this definitely had the feel of one.

She sat up with a groan, noting that the savoury smells were only the product of a litter of packaging left on the desk beside a laptop.

Force of habit sent her hand questing into her pocket, and she barked out a yap of alarm, straight into twenty-first-century problems. “Where’s my phone?”

“You can’t have it until they’ve monkeyed with it,” someone said from the bathroom. A woman stepped out, still midway through applying make-up. She was dark, wearing a blouse and long skirt, and Lee blinked at her twice before recognizing her.

“You…” The woman from the Camden flat, last seen shakily igniting her cigarette with Lee’s lighter. “Kay?”

“Correct, love,” she said, regarding Lee doubtfully. “And you’re…?”