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Emerging into the colonnade of a square, he could almost feel her. It. Turning slowly he saw a very familiar shape in the shadows. He walked over and patted the shell, a habit he’d picked up from the Doctor, he was sure. Something didn’t feel quite right, some subtle subconscious element was missing, but all he could think about was the clean, hot showers. The bath the size of a swimming pool. Maybe even the auto-razor, although he was always worried that he’d fall asleep and wake to find the tiny machine had shaved his entire body. His bed, the temperature always just at the right comfortable heat, in his room. The lack of gunfire, of dirt, of broken people shuffling away from their homes. The chance to shut out the chaos of this world, even for a night. He pulled his key out and unlocked it, hearing the heavy click of the not-really‐a-Yale lock tumbling open. He pushed the door open and stepped through.

‘Hi honey, I’m –’

The power was down. One single light bulb fizzed intermittently over the console. Wires spilled over the floor, snaking and coiling. There were signs of damage, thick dust and decay everywhere. It smelt of mildew, as if it had been abandoned for weeks. A half-drunk cup of coffee was sat on the time rotor and one of the Doctor’s jackets lay on the floor, as if flung off in a hurry. There were no signs of life, human or otherwise. No warmth, no comfort.

‘– home.’

* * *

‘It’s about perception.’

The Doctor and Anji looked at Jueves. He was leaning against the window frame, hands in pockets, looking down into Las Rambles. He didn’t glance round, just continued to watch the foreshortened figures below.

‘Someone or something is distorting perception.’

Now Anji was glancing at the Doctor, questioning. The Doctor shook his head slightly, still flicking through a battered paperback book. It was two days since events in the parc, since the news about Guernica had trickled through. Now the papers were heavy with images, witness accounts. Photos of the ghost of a church, fuzzy from the dust in the air. Skeletal buildings surrounded by rubble. They devoured all the information they could, watched as the papers gradually agreed on what had happened, as word had rippled through the city. Eleana had dropped by, sullenly giving them scribbled copies of the wires. All the different versions that had laid, smudged and stinking of fresh ink, on Anji’s bed had gradually coalesced into a single version. Guernica had been firebombed by the retreating Republicans. A mistake. A terrible, unfortunate mistake. Even as Anji believed it, something nagged at her. Some little dislocation in her head that kept jolting at her when she looked at the reports, or discussed the events in the bars.

Jueves had been with them throughout, charming information out of people, finding new contacts. He’d even found an old armchair from somewhere and dragged it up the service elevator, with the Doctor’s help, as a surprise birthday present for her. They’d positioned it by the window, so she could sit and look out at the trees lining the street. The sweetness of the thought was rather let down by the frequency with which he fell asleep in it. The Doctor, in contrast, hadn’t slept at all. It was as if he’d finally realised that time had been slipping by, that they didn’t even need the TARDIS to jump ahead to the spring because it was the spring. It was inevitable, really, that the journalist would finally see through their cover.

‘You’re not really waiting for some papers out of here. You’re not working on articles for the foreign press – you’ve never sent a single wire out.’

‘Jueves –’

‘So why are you doing all this?’ he turned in to face them, waved his hand at the mountains of data. ‘Everything you are looking at hinges on perception. And someone is tapping your phone. We’ve been assuming it’s the Party but that doesn’t fit. People as suspicious as you, running some kind of investigation from a hotel room? You’d have been picked up weeks ago if