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Trix smiled. ‘I’d heard a rumour.’

‘Can you think of anything cooler than that?’

76

She was going to have to explain iPods and HVDs to him gently, she could tell. ‘We really ought to start looking for clothes for this evening.’

Fitz sighed. ‘Yeah, OK. I don’t like clothes shopping.’

‘You surprise me.’

‘If you’ve got a look, you should stick with it, yeah?’

‘You’ve got a look, have you?’

He flapped his suede jacket and looked down at himself. ‘Yeah. This is timeless. Classic. Retro. Better than a frock coat. Did you even know what a frock coat was until you met him? It’s like he’s constantly off to a wedding.’

‘The Red Fort, the place we’re going tonight. . . it’s not fascist about it, but it does have a dress code. Smart casual. You’re about halfway there.’

‘You always dress nicely,’ Fitz conceded. ‘I’ll let you pick an outfit for me.

But I get a veto, OK?’

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open.

He was still in the cellar, still tied to a metal chair, this time with what felt like home-made manacles.

Marnal was standing over him. The Doctor had been hit three times, the stun bolts forming a neat equilateral triangle on his left collarbone. He’d been conscious until moments before the third shot hit.

‘Touché,’ the Doctor said quietly.

‘There’s no escape this time, Doctor.’

‘There never is,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘We don’t have to go through these theatrics. If you’ve got something to say, we can sit down like men and discuss it. Pull up a chair.’

Marnal paced around the room. There was a small pile of books by the door that the Doctor didn’t think had been there before, which was odd. Ten books, a seemingly random collection of old and relatively new paperbacks and hardbacks. They were turned – deliberately? – so that he couldn’t see the titles.

Finally, Marnal was in front of him again. ‘I spent a lifetime trying to remember that name. Just one word, right on the tip of my tongue.’

The Doctor let him speak, tested the manacles. Steel, welded, and they weren’t going to budge.

‘I’ve lived here for a long time.’

He looked to be in his mid-thirties.

‘How long, out of interest?’ the Doctor asked.

‘A hundred and twenty-two years.’

‘Really?’ the Doctor said, nonchalant. ‘This house is a little older than I thought, then.’

‘I’ve watched the trees in the garden grow from saplings.’

77

The trick with these sort of bonds was to create a little wriggle room, but as things were going there wasn’t a huge amount the Doctor could do now. The weak link was the chair. It was made from metal, but it was quite spindly and wouldn’t last long against the concrete floor down here. But breaking it up would be very noisy.

‘It was all so frustrating. I knew all that time that if I could just say the word everything about my life would make sense. It would all fall into place. There would be meaning.’

Marnal was leaning over the Doctor, who smiled politely.

‘Have you felt like that? Oh wait. . . I see from your expression that you have. You and I are –’

‘Strangely alike?’ The Doctor completed his sentence for him. ‘That is what you were going to say, isn’t it? Or was it going to be “two sides of the same coin”? If you’ve spent an entire lifetime sitting around in this house, waiting for something to come along, to hear some magic word that will solve all your problems, hoping someone walks in and knows it all already and gives you all the answers, then no, sorry, no we’re not the same.’

‘I always thought there was more to it all than this.’

The Doctor looked up. ‘Doesn’t everyone feel like that, from time to time?’

he asked.

‘You think that a human being could feel emptiness like we do?’

‘I don’t feel. . . ’ But the Doctor couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘I’m half-full, not half-empty. I don’t feel sorry for myself, I don’t dwell on the past.’

‘You wouldn’t want to remember, would you?’

The Doctor felt as though something dark was fluttering above him.

‘Not when there’s so much more in the present and the future, no.’

‘I had fragments of