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Shoreditch, November 1963

Friday, 15:30

One, two, three, four,

Who’s that knocking at the door?

Five, six, seven, eight,

It’s the Doctor at the gate.

Children’s skipping chant

‘What’s she staring at?’ demanded Ace, balefully staring at one of the many girls that clustered around the entrance to Coal Hill School.

Your clothing is little anachronistic for this period,’ said the Doctor, and that doesn’t help.’

Ace defensively hefted the big black Ono-Sendai tape deck to a more nonchalant position on her shoulder and continued to stare at the girl. Nobody outstares me, she thought, especially some twelve-year-old sprat in school uniform. The girl turned away.

‘Hah,’ exclaimed Ace with satisfaction, and turned her attention to the Doctor. ‘Is it my fault that this decade’s got no street cred?’ Ace waited for a reaction from the Doctor, but she got nothing. He seemed to be gazing intently at a squat ugly van parked opposite the school.

‘Strange,’ murmured the Doctor.

‘Oi, Professor. Can we get something to eat now?’

The Doctor, however, was oblivious to Ace’s question.

‘Very odd.’

‘Professor?’

The Doctor finally shifted his attention to Ace. His eyes travelled suspiciously to her rucksack. ‘You haven’t got any explosives in there have you?’

‘No.’ Ace braced herself for the ‘gaze’. The Doctor’s strange intense eyes swept over her and then away. Ace slowly let out her breath – the ‘gaze’ had passed on.

‘What do you make of that van?’ Ace dutifully considered the van. It was a Bedford, painted black, with sliding doors and a complicated aerial sprouting from the roof.

‘Dunno,’ she shrugged, ‘TV detector van? Professor, I’m starving to death.’

The Doctor was unmoved by Ace’s plea for sustenance.

He shook his head. ‘Wrong type of aerial for that. No, for this time period that’s a very sophisticated piece of equipment.’

In this decade, thought Ace, a crystal set is a sophisticated piece of equipment. ‘What’s so sophisticated about that? I’ve seen CBs with better rigs. I’m hungry.’

‘You shouldn’t have disabled the food synthesizer then,’

retorted the Doctor.

‘I thought it was a microwave.’

‘Why would you put plutonium in a microwave?’

‘I didn’t know it was plutonium, you shouldn’t leave that stuff lying around.’

‘What did you think it was then?’

‘Soup.’

‘Soup?’

‘Soup. I’m still hungry – lack of food makes me hungry you know.’

‘Lack of food makes you obstreperous.’ The Doctor applied his much vaunted mind to the problem. ‘Why don’t you go and buy some consumables? There’s a cafe down there.’ He gestured down the alley where they had landed the TARDIS. ‘Meanwhile I will go and undertake a detailed and scientific examination of that van which has so singularly failed to grab your attention.’

‘Right,’ Ace turned and walked away, feeling the ‘gaze’, on her back. The Doctor called after her and she turned sharply.

‘What?’

‘Money,’ said the Doctor holding out a drawstring purse.

Just what did I think they were going to take, thought Ace as she took the purse, Iceworld saving coupons?

‘Thanks.’

The Doctor smiled.

From the gateway of the school the sandy haired girl that had earlier stared at Ace watched as she turned and walked away.

Ace followed the alley until it came out on to Shoreditch High Road. Across the road and facing her was the cafe. A sign above the window proclaimed it as Harry’s Cafe.

Food at last, thought Ace.

Sergeant Mike Smith pushed his plate to one side, leaned back in his chair and turned to the sports page of the Daily Mirror. The jukebox whirred a record into place, the tea urn steamed, and the music started.

Mike luxuriated in the cold weather, his memories of the wet, green heat of Malaya fading among the cracked lino and fried food smell of Harry’s Cafe. He was content to let them go, and allow the East End to bring him home from the heat and boredom of those eighteen months abroad.

The cafe door banged open and a girl walked in. Mike glanced up at a flash of