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‘It’s working,’ breathed Joyce, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. ‘It’s working. It is, isn’t it?’

He nodded, still smiling. ‘The results aren’t normally so immediate, but your mother is a remarkably strong woman.’

For a long moment she felt dizzy, disorientated. The doctor took a solicitous step forward, but she steadied herself and took another breath. Lightheaded, she saw little pinpricks of light around the edges of her vision.

‘Come downstairs and I’ll get Bernard to make you a cuppa.

We’ll have another chat, and then you can come back up and see your mother again, maybe tell her the good news if she’s woken up.’

Gently, he led her down the stairs. And for the first time in years, she realised how beautiful the smell of roses and talc could be.

Ace pressed her ear to the door to the TARDIS console room, and heard the faint but unmistakeable sound of the Doctor’s voice. He was talking to someone. She held her breath and listened to him, muttering to someone in the sort of reasonable tones you adopt when speaking to loonies. She heard the sound of another voice, protesting, but the words remained frustratingly out of reach – all she could pick up on was a general sense of urgency, a high, wheedling tone of voice that she didn’t like the sound of. She wasn’t even sure if it was a man or a woman. Her heart beat faster: there was a stranger in the TARDIS. An invader. Had the Doctor let someone in? Had someone actually broken in? Where had the Doctor landed the TARDIS and why had he taken off again so quickly? With these questions rushing around in her head, Ace gave the door an almighty kick, and though it shook ever so slightly on its hinges, it refused to give way.

‘Ace! Stop it!’ She heard the Doctor’s voice, clearer now. He was right on the other side of the door.

‘What’s going on? Who’s in there?’

‘Just give me a few minutes, Ace.’ His voice was anxious, almost pleading.

‘No, I want to know. What’s happening?’

‘I can’t tell you now. I’m sorry. Please... just a few minutes.’

‘Are you OK? Doctor!’

He didn’t answer her, but the mutterings resumed. She kicked at the door once more before realising the futility of it, then pressed her ear against it again, trying to hear what was being said. The floor beneath her jolted slightly as she felt the ship land; and moments later the TARDIS engines started up again. They were off. Again. What was going on? Ace heard the sound of something being dragged away from the door, and it opened to reveal the Doctor, looking very intense, very concerned – and, to Ace’s chagrin, not the least bit apologetic.

‘So?’

‘Ace, please, there really isn’t time for this.’

‘You’ve got time to land the TARDIS, let some stranger in, have a secret little heart-to-heart and then drop him off somewhere, and you haven’t got time to tell me what’s going on?’ ‘It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I can’t.’ His face looked genuinely pained, but Ace was too angry to take any notice of his distress.

‘Are you being threatened? Is that it?’ She looked around the room, as if expecting to find someone crouched behind the control console, pointing a gun at him. But there was no one there. She looked at him carefully, wondering whether he’d been possessed by some alien force, or replaced with a bodysnatcher-type replica. But he was the same little man that she’d just returned from the future with.

‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘It was just an errand I had to do.’ ‘If it’s “just an errand”,’ she persisted, ‘why can’t you tell me what it was, eh?’

He turned sharply to her and took a deep breath. ‘Because it’s about something that hasn’t happened yet. That’s what.’

She raised a querulous eyebrow. ‘To do with those letters?’

‘Something like that, yes. Oh Ace, don’t look like that. I’ll explain one day.’

‘That’ll be a first. So aren’t you even going to give me a clue?’

He busied himself at the controls, pointedly ignoring her.

She stared at him, arms folded, for a few moments and then gave a snort.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Have it your way. I’ll be in my room when you can be bothered to