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‘I’m supposed to be following this, aren’t I?’ Michael said.

‘Nah, it’s time travel. If you try to follow it all, you end up as loopy as him.’ She cast her eyes in the Doctor’s direction.

‘And does he know about this?’

Ace nodded, and for the first time Michael saw a softening of her expression – and, maybe, just a trace of guilt.

‘He rescued me from the Orkneys – oh, round about now, I expect, and brought me back here. Only I fiddled with the TARDIS settings when he wasn’t looking – to give myself some more time to help him – and got him to drop me off just before we first arrived here, two days ago. Since then, I’ve been trying to avoid bumping into myself.’

‘You said you thought you had a stalker? That was you?’

‘Freaky, eh? I nearly ended up running into myself until the Doctor had a little word with me the other night. He gave me a telling off and told me to keep myself out of sight until the original “me” had gone to the Orkneys. Of course, then I had to sit down and work out all the things that had happened to me while I was here the first time that might be down to me – this me, that is. Making a bacon butty, whacking Megan with a pan when she nearly caught me in the cellar, a spot of breaking and entering – and the stalking, of course. It’s weird how you imagine that you look and sound completely different to how you actually do.’

‘What would have happened if you’d done something different?’

Ace shook her head, and stared at the pan on the floor.

‘Maybe that’s the whole point,’ she said with a resigned smile.

‘Maybe we can’t do anything different – maybe we all think we’ve got free will, that we can change this and change that. And then, when it comes down to it, we just do what has to be done to make it come out all right.’

Michael smiled gently. We just do what has to be done. Too right we do.

It was like some kind of bizarre family reunion: Michael and herself along with Alexander and John. All of them on the boat.

The two boys had nearly thrown themselves over the side when the TARDIS had materialised in the galley – a precision bit of piloting that Ace felt owed more to the TARDIS than to the Doctor’s driving skills. Alexander’s face had been a picture as she’d squeezed herself out; John had looked as though he was going to hit her. And the appearance of the Doctor and Michael out of the relatively tiny confines of a police box had set Alexander swearing like she’d never heard him swear before.

Only Joyce’s decision to stay with her mum spoiled the full hand.

Michael had tried to persuade her to come along with them to see everything wrapped up, but despite the obvious temptation, she knew where her priorities lay.

So here they were, edgy and awkward on deck, trying to avoid the handrail – and each other.

‘So you two still sulking?’ asked Michael, sidling up to Ace.

She glanced along the boat at the diminutive form of the man in the deckchair, his feet up on the handrail like nothing had happened, hat perched cockily on the back of his head.

‘Just a small matter of a broken promise or two,’ Ace muttered.

‘His or yours?’

Ace wasn’t sure she could answer. He’d promised to stop using people, pushing them about like pawns on a chessboard; and then he’d gone and deliberately – deliberately – tricked Connie and Jessie into coming downstairs and play-acting for him. Two old ladies, for God’s sake. Yeah, sure, she’d been a bit sneaky, altering the TARDIS’ controls to take her back in time. But it wasn’t the same: she hadn’t put two old women in danger, just so that some grand, secret plan could smoothly swing into operation.

He hadn’t learned a thing, had he?

Ace kicked petulantly at the base of one of the handrail poles and peered over. Michael followed her gaze. It was weird to think that, frozen in time, deep beneath them were Sooal and the Annarene, trapped there in a long, unending now. The power supply, the Doctor had assured them, would last for ten thousand years. Maybe, a hundred centuries from now, the power would fail, the stasis sphere would cut out, and the three of them