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‘Anji? Come on, let’s get you to your room.’

She sighed an OK, closing her eyes and mustering her resistance. She stood quickly, hoping to surprise the pain with her sudden move but it caught her again and she realised she was swaying. The Doctor’s grip on her arm increased and she used one hand on his to steady herself. Then she looked into his worried eyes and nodded carefully.

‘I think I need a bit of a lie-down,’ she said, smiling grimly at her understatement.

‘I think so too.’

He led her towards the staircase then paused. A whine from in front of them made her open her eyes again and realise he’d found the lift, the car clanking and shuddering down its cable. Then the door was being opened and Pia was reaching over to drag the metal gate aside. Anji tried not to wince at the harsh rattle. The Doctor threw his carpet bag inside, then used both hands to guide her into the tiny square space. Only a few more moments, she chanted, a few more moments and she could lie down and close her eyes, take whatever miracle pills the Doctor would produce, and it would go away. It would all go away. With any luck, she’d not wake up again until it was time to meet Fitz.

Then, without any warning at all, the Doctor crumpled into a ball at her feet, howling.

* * *

* * *

Part Two

Material Research

‘Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive.’

– W. H. Auden

* * *

Chapter Five

Estada Lliure

Anji groaned and dropped her head on to the coverlet. Under her face, paper crackled.

‘This is hopeless,’ she informed the thin mattress. She felt like drumming her toes into the pillow at the head of the bed and beating at her scrapbook with her fists. Her nose was buried in the papers, and she could smell that odd inky mustiness of freshly printed news. She could almost feel it rubbing off on to her face. She’d never complain that the Guardian left her with dirty hands again, after this. Anji considered throwing the tantrum some more: just letting out all the incoherence with a wordless yell and the tattoo of her hands and feet. Her mouth curled into a half-smile and she let one foot bounce up and down on the pillow in a lazy jig. She was too tired though, too exhausted to waste her energy with a full-blown wail. She sighed and propped herself back up on to her elbows.

Stacked on every flat surface of the sparse room, falling into tumbled piles on the bed, were papers. Scrapbooks with cuttings sticking out at all angles, notebooks bulging so much that they were held closed with elastic bands. At some point, a few weeks ago, Anji had stopped trying to only save the cuttings she thought might be relevant and had started a huge index file instead. That lay next to her, with a pen nestling along the open spine. Along one wall, the annotated newspapers were neatly piled up. Each pile had a weight holding the top paper down, so draughts couldn’t disturb her filing system. The first week, she had been forced to re-sort the stacks twice after someone had unthinkingly opened the French windows to watch the street below. Now, whenever she went out, she kept one eye open for suitable weights.

That rock holding down January’s Solidaridad Obrera had come from the slopes’ of Montjuïc, collected on a wet and blustery New Year’s Eve. They’d walked up to watch the Magic Fountain perform – a rare treat switched on for the holiday – and then Jueves had suggested climbing up the slopes to where the formal gardens were growing unbound and untended. There were no fireworks, just a clamour of bells drifting up from the city and marking the new year. Walking back after midnight, following the winding path back in the dark, safely led by Jueves, she had stumbled on the loose stone and picked it up. Each time she moved it to get a paper from that stack, she recalled that walk and smiled. He should be back soon from wherever it was he’d been sent this time, with a whole new bunch of stories to tell