I don’t know how long the ascent takes. It’s all I can do to keep going in the blinding wind and snow. Below me, the Shard slopes away to the distant pavement. There’s a glow down there that must be the crowd and the film crew and the giant screen in the square outside the entrance to the building. For a moment I wish I was down there too, eating a ketchuppy hotdog and listening to Christmas carols, and not dangling above certain and very messy death. Why is it always me who ends up dangling? I quite fancy a hotdog, for a change.
There’s a rude squeak as my rubber soles slip on the glass, and I crash into it.
I’m exhausted.
The borrowed mountaineering skills have told me what to do, but my skinny fourteen-year-old body can no longer cope with the demands being made of it. I make a final effort, and manage to get up a couple more metres, but I slip again, and end up kissing the glass once more.
Except, no – it isn’t glass. The surface of the building is wavy now, and icy cold. In fact, it is ice.
I open my eyes and try to get my bearings. As I blink in the snow, I guess that I must now be as high as the viewing level of the Shard.
But all the glass here was destroyed, I say to myself, thinking back to the moment we lost Stacey. How…?
Then I get it. Incredibly, sheets of wind-sculpted ice have formed over the shattered windows. In fact, I now see that the rest of the building above me is covered in one solid pyramidal cap of ice, enclosing the whole peak of the Shard. There is no way in that I can see.
So, I’ll have to make my own.
I get my feet flat on the ice again, and stand out from the building, braced with the rope. I bend my legs and push away, swinging out into the stormy night. Gravity doesn’t let me go for long though, and I’m soon crashing back into the ice. I have to do this three times before I hear a DINK sound, and see cracks appear. I give a final thrust with my legs, my arms screaming at me to stop. When I hit the ice this time, I break through, and tumble down onto the wooden floor of the viewing level.
I struggle to my feet. I’m inside the Shard again, but with the outer surface now made of ice, the interior is bitterly cold. Frosty blooms cover every surface with crystal forms that twinkle in the flashes of lightning. Santa would kill to have this as his grotto. If he could get here without being fried alive by the resident ghost, that is.
‘Mary!’ I shout.
No answer but the crash of thunder.
I head for the centre of the level, where the concrete core of the building continues up. There are frosted stairs here, and I limp up them as fast as I can, pulling my scarf close. When I reach the top of the stairs I stop in amazement at what I find there.
The very summit of the Shard is a square concrete platform, no bigger than my living room at home. On each side, a triangle of steel and glass rises up to form four flat spires. The spires don’t touch though, allowing an opening to the snowy, stormy sky above.
Mary is floating up there, gathering power from the storm, filling the space with a dazzling electrical light.
In the middle of the platform, ice has been drawn up to form the bars of a glittering cage. In the cage sits Stacey, looking unfazed at the extraordinary things that are happening around her. She is wrapped in the folds of an enormous fur coat that must have come from one of the luxury flats beneath us. In front of her is an open box of Turkish delight. She pops a piece in her mouth, and points at me.
‘The weirdy boy!’ she squeals, with a puff of icing sugar.
Something moves at her words, and I see Ned. He’s on the inside of one of the four triangular spires, welded in place by slicks of ice. His eyes are wild, but he manages to aim the camera at me, the red light still twinkling.
‘Hi, Ned,’ I say. ‘The show must go on, I see.’
Opposite him, on another Spire, Venn Specter is struggling against his own icy bonds. He makes faint ‘hmm hmm!’ noises, but a band of ice is completely covering his mouth.
‘Well, Mary, I can forgive you that, at least,’ I say, as I adjust my lapels and set the specs for action.
And it’s now that Mary sees me.
‘You?’ she says, with a crackle of power. ‘Why are you still here?’
‘We, er, we were having a bit of chat, remember?’ I say. ‘Shame it got so rudely interrupted.’ I give Venn one of my coldest stares. ‘Thought we could pick up where we left off.’
Mary drifts down until she is floating just above the ice cage that contains Stacey. ‘Pretty lady!’ says Stacey, forgetting to eat a piece of Turkish delight in her admiration.
‘There is nothing more to discuss,’ Mary says in a blaze of light. ‘I need only the time to fully understand how to take over the child’s body. Since your frilly friend…’
‘Si,’ I point out. ‘His name is Simon.’
‘Since your friend Simon confirmed it can be done, I have made progress. Watch…’
Mary points down to Stacey. Small tendrils of light – like the ones she used on me to show her memories – extend from her hand until they dance around Stacey’s head. Stacey lowers her hand from her face, still clutching a lump of Turkish delight, and turns to me. She opens her mouth to speak, but the words that comes out are all Mary’s.
‘I can already control the child. Her mind is not strong. I have only to make it permanent…’
‘Stop!’ I shout, and jump forward to the ice cage, grabbing the bars. ‘Mary, get out of there! I thought we agreed you shouldn’t do this.’
The tendrils of light retract.
‘My name’s not Mary!’ Stacey shouts up at me, in control of herself again. She recoils into the furry coat. ‘Why are you shouting at me, weirdy boy? Weirdy boy not nice!’
Mary laughs, but it’s a hollow sound.
‘Don’t scare her, boy. Her fate is already sealed. Just turn around and leave.’
‘But Mary, after all the things you showed me, all the stuff we said about fairness and unfairness – how is this fair to Stacey?’
Mary shakes her head.
‘Life is unfair. I’ve had four hundred years to think about that. Now go, boy, before I tire of you.’
I watch Mary rise up to the apex of her ice pyramid one again. I see Venn and Ned encased in ice, helpless. I look down at little Stacey. She sticks her tongue out at me.
I’d like to say that the faint glimmerings of a plan form in my mind, or, better still, that a brilliant idea comes to me in flash. But that doesn’t happen. Instead I just feel cold and numb and defeated. Oh, and fed up. Yeah, really fed up.
Who does this ghost girl think she is?
‘Witch!’ I shout up at her.
Mary looks down at me, stunned.
‘That’s all you are,’ I call up. ‘Looks like those men who burnt you were right after all. I don’t know why I bothered – you’re nothing but a nasty, spiteful, child-snatching witch. So, yeah, I’m going…’
I put my foot through the bars of the cage, shattering them.
‘… and I’m taking Stacey back to her mum.’
I reach in to get her out.
And that’s when the bolt of lightning hits me.
I’m lifted clear off the floor and sent flying back. I smack into the ice sheet between two of the spires with a crash. The ice shatters, and I fly straight out into the night, propelled by Mary’s fury. In no time at all, I’m well out into the sky beyond the Shard, with nothing between me and the crowded square below. I just have time to wonder if they’ve saved me a hotdog when I begin to fall.