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While they had known each other for some time now, and had both been living in the TARDIS all that while, it was the first time Fitz and Trix had done any of these things together.

‘A day can be an awfully long time, can’t it?’ Trix noted, rolling on to her back, still a little breathless.

Fitz’s head had ended up somewhere around her midriff. He mumbled what sounded like an agreement.

‘What was that?’ Trix asked.

Fitz’s rather unshaven face emerged from the bed sheets. ‘I said you’ve got a flat stomach.’

‘Thank you. You could get one too, if you did a few push-ups.’

‘When did you first think we would. . . ?’ he began.

‘I hoped we might when you put the record on,’ she said.

12

‘Really?’

Trix smiled. ‘Really. Why, have you been holding a torch for me for months, or something?’

‘No. Not like that. It was. . . it was this afternoon. When we were splashing around down in the catacombs. I thought that Kyborg had drowned you.

When I saw you again, I realised then how much I’d missed you. How much you meant to me.’

Trix shifted, a little uncomfortable.

‘Hell,’ Fitz said quickly, sitting up. ‘Look, if this was just a, y’know, a thing, then it’s a thing. There’s a lot of lust in there. On my part, I mean. Those legs of yours. . . they’re long, aren’t they? Not freakishly long, obviously. But, well, what I’m saying is that if you want to keep this superficial, then I’m a pretty superficial person.’

Trix smiled. ‘I never doubted that for a second.’

‘Good, cos I mean it.’

‘What are you doing?’

Fitz pointed to the cigarette he’d just put in his mouth and turned his other hand to show her the lighter.

‘I know what you’re doing. What I meant was don’t do it.’

‘Not you as well. Does no one smoke in the future? Do you all just go straight to sleep?’

‘I’m not from the future, I’m from the present. You’re from the past, remember?’

Fitz smiled. ‘Yeah. Old enough to be your dad. I need a ciggie. Even though this is my room, and my record player, and my bed, I’ll go and find somewhere else to smoke. Happy?’

Trix sank back into the pillows. ‘Ecstatic,’ she assured him.

All his memories had come flooding back.

Rachel had done what Marnal had asked: shooed the relatives away, explained that she’d made a mistake and that he’d got better, and that, no, they couldn’t see him. It had taken over an hour to round them all up, convince them and herd them out to their Rovers, Audis and Lexuses. She’d gone back upstairs to find him in one of the many spare bedrooms.

‘Time Lords are the ruling class of the planet Gallifrey,’ Marnal began to explain. He vanished into the huge wardrobe, but his voice carried on. ‘All Time Lords have increased cranial capacity, blood with a vastly superior capacity to carry oxygen compared with haemoglobin, a body temperature of sixty degrees, a respiratory bypass system, a lindal gland, a reflex link. . . ’

Rachel had started fidgeting halfway through the list, and had tuned out long before Marnal had finished.

13

‘Most importantly, Time Lords have the ability to regenerate our bodies if we are mortally injured.’

‘Are these characters in your books?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said coldly, returning from his journey with an armful of clothes.

‘This is what I am. The Time Lords are my people. Shortly, I will be rejoining them. I have to look my best.’

He started pulling on a pair of trousers that were a little too baggy on him.

‘They sound like your books, that’s all. I read some of your stuff when I was a kid. All about the Time Lords and their adventures, that was you, wasn’t it?

I was never really into science fiction. I prefer real stuff.’

‘That was “real stuff”. That was my life. The early stories flowed so easily, I remembered some things, you see. But there came a point where. . . ’ he paused for a moment, then started again. ‘I wrote everything I remembered down. There were always gaps, but I had to keep going. I was the only person who knew anything about Gallifrey, you see. I couldn’t ask. And I didn