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By Root 323 0

the street, a saloon car pulled up. Even at this distance the Doctor recognized Tilda and the Major. Gently, they lifted a dark-haired boy out of the back of the car. His movements were sluggish, graceless and uncertain, as if he were half asleep. He was dressed in a straitjacket, the arms of which had been untied. The boy flapped around inside of it like a newly hatched chick. Tilda tugged the straitjacket from his shoulders and the dark-haired boy passively allowed his arms to be threaded into a jacket.

Try as he might, the Doctor couldn’t make out any features on the dark-haired boy’s face.

236

Tilda and the Major walked with the boy as he took his first few steps, supporting him between them. As the party approached the entrance to the library, the boy seemed to emerge from his dreamlike state. His steps became more confident, more assured. Tilda and the Major let him go and stood back and watched, like parents hovering behind a child as he ventured out on his first solo bicycle ride.

The Doctor could see the boy’s face now. The face he’d first seen lying in the alley in Soho. Skin as smooth as soapstone in the summer sunlight. Dark eyelashes framing deep blue eyes.

The Doctor had been among humans for long enough to tell that the lad was handsome, but whatever it was that humans found so irresistible about each other’s bodies was lost to the Doctor. Perhaps lost to him for ever. He couldn’t be sure.

He felt a pang of loneliness, and rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder. To get involved in the exchange of human emotions – however much trouble they always seemed to leave in their wake – just looked. . . well, ever so satisfying.

‘I just wanted to see him,’ Jack breathed, ‘just one more time.’ Quickly, he pushed past the Doctor and went back into the police box.

The door to the Library swung open as someone started to hurry out. The Doctor hesitated before following Jack into the TARDIS.

As if this were his cue, the dark-haired boy suddenly, deliberately, ran head-long into the sandy-haired boy coming out.

Soho, London, late-twentieth century

Soho was alive with colour and music and people from a hundred different countries. It had changed so dramatically since 1958 that Chris wouldn’t have guessed that he was on the same streets. He sat at a table outside a small busy café, content to watch the evening as it unfolded. Families on their way to the theatre, friends walking arm in arm chatting and laughing, lovers holding hands as they enjoyed the immunity of the Soho streets.

The pavement was so busy that people were walking in the gutter and in the road. He caught sight of a tweed jacket in the crowds, and then glimpsed a battered fedora. A red question mark poked out of the mass of people and a second later the Doctor appeared, walking alone in the crowd.

‘Hello, Christopher,’ he said, and popped into the café only to emerge a few moments later, carrying two fresh cappuccinos which he set down on the tiny table.

‘Did you ask her if she wanted to come with us?’ Chris asked, scrutinizing the Doctor.

The little man seemed confused for a moment. ‘Her? What? Oh, you mean 237

Peri?’ The Doctor spooned two sugars into his coffee, stirred it manically for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. Not this time. She’s got travelling of her own to do.’ The Doctor smiled, a little artificially, and then changed the subject. ‘How are the troops?’

Chris had spent the morning playing eight-ball at La Quatrième Pie continental-style brassiere down the road. ‘Dennis beat me five games to three.’

The Doctor glanced at his watch. ‘How old is he now?’

Chris wasn’t sure. ‘Late forties, I think. His daughter was there, she’s just graduated from UCL.’

The Doctor seemed satisfied. ‘Moriah built them well.’

‘Yes,’ Chris said, and stared into his coffee. The radio above the counter started to play an old show tune and the wound in his shoulder began to ache as he recognized the singer.

Not a day

I wouldn’t last a single day

Without your tender love

My dear

Chris rubbed at his shoulder. Would he have stayed with