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She nodded, thought about it, nodded again. ‘Tell Jason to come and meet his father-in-law.’

The Doctor went through the front door, leaving them alone.

Isaac sat down at one of the tables, looking up at his grown daughter.

‘Um,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re taking all this rather well. Your long-lost daughter travels through time...’

‘Oh.’ He smiled for the first time, a small smile, the tip of the iceberg. ‘You’re our third set of time travellers this year.’

The Doctor walked silently to the corner of the building.

‘That’s right,’ the cook was saying. ‘One of them says she’s the Admiral’s daughter! Well, I don’t know... he seems to believe her. No, come on, how would they know about her? Well, I suppose... oh dear.’

The Doctor smiled up at the man and took the communicator away from him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said into it. ‘The mobile phone you have called has yet to be invented. Please call back.’

He closed up the communicator and handed it to the bearded man, who was blinking down at him. ‘Were you one of Isaac’s crew?’

The man shook his head. ‘You really are him, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor.

‘Oh, crumbs.’

7 Taking stock

Woodworth slammed the empty boot shut.

She got into the car, reached into the glovebox and pulled the Ordnance Survey map of Newbury out from underneath the Berretta. She spread the map out on the steering wheel, double-checking the route. People had a habit of ‘missing’ Little Caldwell. She didn’t want to be one of them.

She was forty-something, pepper-haired and green-eyed, a chunky shape inside her leather jacket. She folded the map and tucked it into the bag of equipment perched on the seat beside her.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Benny.

Isaac pushed the plunger down on the cafetière. ‘In your own time.’

‘I wish I could be as calm as you,’ she said, as they sat down at the coffee shop’s front booth.

‘I haven’t had a lifetime to build up to this,’ said her father. He poured the coffee. He raised an eyebrow at her as she heaped sugar into her cup.

‘It’s bitter,’ she said.

‘It’s supposed to be bitter. So. Begin at the beginning.’

‘Do you remember Sarah Groenewegen?’

‘Remember her?’ he said. ‘I still owe her five credits.’

‘She had the flight recorder from her ship.’ Benny took a deep breath. The Doctor was going to take some explaining.

‘Let me gloss over the details right now, but we travelled in time to your last battle, and saw the Tisiphone fall into the wormhole. Then we followed you here.’

‘But you missed,’ said Isaac. ‘We arrived twenty years ago.’ She couldn’t put her finger on his accent. Irish? ‘How did you meet the Doctor?’

Benny nearly choked on her coffee. ‘You know who he is?’

‘Are you one of his travelling companions?’

‘I used to be. Dad —’ They both started. ‘Exactly what have you been up to for the last two decades?’

‘You’re saying you don’t know?’ Isaac put down his coffee. ‘I’m sorry, but I find that a bit difficult to believe.’

‘What are you talking about?’

His grey eyes probed her face. ‘We’ve been waiting for the Doctor to pay us a house call for years. When he finally arrives, he just happens to have my daughter with him.’

Benny was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand.

None of this was planned. I just happened to run into Groenewegen.’

‘Do you believe that?’ he said.

‘Of course.’ My God, thought Benny, now I’m not sure. Is the Doctor up to something? Or have we stumbled into a trap? ‘ Why have you been waiting for him?’

He poured himself a second cup of coffee.

After a bit, Benny said, ‘You said we were the third lot of time travellers this year.’

‘Yeh. It’s been a big year for time travellers. The first one had escaped from a laboratory of enslaved physicists in the twenty-fourth century. We got her back to her own time so she could free the others. The second one we couldn’t send home, so we helped him to find a place in the present.’

‘You help time travellers?’

Isaac turned his cup around in his hands. And aliens.’

You help time