Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [7]
‘And I hear there’s an awfully good Emin retrospective on at the Archer Memorial Gallery,’ she added as the door opened soundlessly, letting in the grey, cool air from the street.
‘Sounds riveting,’ whispered Ace.
‘You’d love it,’ said the Doctor. ‘All unmade beds and dirty laundry. I blame the parents.’
Ace mimed a ha ha at him.
‘A pleasure to meet you again, Countess,’ said the Doctor, shaking her hand. And from the look on his face, Ace could tell that even he was surprised at the weight of the jewellery on it.
‘Make sure you don’t leave it so long next time, Doctor. I would ask you to drop me a line, but if your letter writing is anything like your letter collecting, I’ll probably be the ruler of the galaxy by the time you do.’
He raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
The Countess returned to her crystal palace with a wink at the Doctor, and the two of them stepped back out in the drabness of the alleyway.
The Doctor was curiously coy as they strolled back up to Carnaby Street, refusing to let Ace look at the stack of letters as he fanned through them.
‘0i, Professor!’ she complained.’ I didn’t think we had any secrets from each other.’
‘Time Lords always have secrets,’ the Doctor chided. ‘It’s how we were brought up.’
‘Like Catholics and guilt,’ smirked Ace.
‘And besides, half of the things mentioned on these haven’t...’
His voice tailed away as he came to a particular letter, and his brow furrowed. Ace sidled up to him, trying to get a peek, but he angled himself away from her, gave a strange little purse of the lips, and slipped the whole lot into his inside pocket.
‘Trouble?’
‘You could say that, yes,’ he mused.
‘So what are we waiting for?’
He looked sharply at her. ‘I thought you wanted to see the sights?’
She grinned. ‘No hovercars? No jetpacs? No silver suits?
What’s to see?’
The reassuring sound of the TARDIS’ dematerialisation rumbled through the ship. After four days of touring around post boxes on numerous dreary planets, collecting the Doctor’s mail, their tour of London had been cut short by whatever the Doctor had found amongst the letters he’d picked up in London. She watched him as he set and reset the TARDIS controls, humming something vaguely operatic to himself. He’d slipped into that altered state of consciousness, Ace thought, where he didn’t even know she existed. She eyed up his jacket, hanging nonchalantly on the back of the chair that he’d dragged through into the console room. She could almost smell the adventure waiting in that little bundle of letters and cards, calling to her from his jacket pocket. What could be so important that he couldn’t let her in on it? Since they’d returned to the TARDIS, the Doctor had barely said two words to her, brushing off her questions with a ‘Later, Ace’ or a ‘Not now, Ace’.
Typical.
For some reason, Ace realised that she was suddenly standing right behind the chair, right behind the coat with the pocket with the cards. It stared up at her, daring her to reach down and –
‘Ace! Could you do me a huge favour?’
‘What?’ she answered, distractedly. She knew she must have had guilt written all over her face, but the Doctor seemed so preoccupied that he didn’t notice. She raised her eyebrows innocently.
‘The TARDIS library. There should be a book in there about Alzheimer’s disease – Beckmann, I think. Can you fetch it for me please?’
‘Yeah, sure – forgotten where it is, have you?’
Her joke went unnoticed, and she gave a huff and grumped off to get it.
As usual, the TARDIS library seemed to have relocated itself. The last time she’d looked, it had been somewhere between the sauna and the table-tennis room. Now there was nothing but a blank wall. The TARDIS was having a joke with her again. She looked up at the ceiling and put her hands on her hips.
‘Well? Where have you hidden it?’ she asked aloud.
As if in answer, a wave of light pulsed down the corridor, an arrow showing her the way.
‘If you say so,’ she muttered, and trotted down the corridor.
Five minutes later, the joke was wearing thin. She felt sure that