‘Cait?’ He clicked his fingers and a power-dressed redhead with thin metal specs and insanely high heels sauntered over.

‘Mr Morgan, sir?’

Dara Morgan pointed towards the grey overalls man.

‘How much longer?’ he asked, his soft Northern Irish accent unusually snappy.

Caitlin nodded her understanding and strode over to ask the man for information.

Dara Morgan smiled inwardly, watching Caitlin move.

He appreciated her on so many levels, but her beauty was pretty high on the list.

Everyone in his organisation was from Derry or surrounding districts of Northern Ireland. More importantly, they were all people he’d grown up with. All hearing stories from parents and older siblings about the strife, the killings, the honour. The marches, the troops, the recriminations and punishment beatings.

It was history to Dara Morgan, something from another age, almost. His generation had no time to care about the Struggles, any more than they cared about supposed potato famines or Oliver Cromwell. That was ancient history. Dara Morgan and MorganTech were the future. In so many ways.

He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and then took out his mobile, pausing to smell the scent of shampoo on his fingers.

It was so important to be clean. To look nice and smell better.

At school, they’d diagnosed it as a form of OCD, as if an obsessive compulsion to wash his hands any time he came into contact with another person was something bad!

People carried germs and, while he didn’t think for one moment he was going to be struck down with malaria just by shaking hands with a stranger, it wasn’t unreasonable to groom oneself every so often.

School never understood him, he recalled vaguely. It was too small, probably too focused on curriculums and timetables and sports.

He couldn’t wait to leave, and had done so the moment he’d finished his exams. No sixth form, college or university for him. Straight into business, straight into IT, the future of the world, straight into creating an MP3

system for the troglodytes who thought Big Brother and The X-Factor were the be all and end all of television culture. He’d needed them, of course, because they’d helped him reach his potential – they’d been the first rungs on the ladder to success. To ruling the world,

through business. He had no desire to actually rule the world, it was full of too many thick people fighting over oil and territory and God to be a sensible plan to run it.

But he could dominate in technology, see off the current so-called giants and buy access into the homes and workplaces of everyone on the planet.

That was enough.

And at tomorrow’s press demonstration, that plan would be taking its first step.

Caitlin returned and said the man was waiting on a call from another man in some service area on the mezzanine floor and he’d be done.

Dara Morgan glanced over – the overalled man was trying to call.

‘Tell your friend,’ Dara Morgan said to Caitlin, ‘that he won’t get through to his colleague. The service areas are blocked to cellular signals. Tell him to use a terminal. If the fibre optics are connected, it’ll link straight to his associate’s mobile.’

Caitlin nodded and passed the message on.

Dara Morgan watched as the overalled man inserted the fibre-optic connection into the back of his laptop and dialled via that.

There was a flash of purple and, where the workman had been kneeling, there was now just a pile of ashes. A burnt, acrid smell wafted over, and Dara Morgan wrinkled his nose in distaste. Burned flesh, melted fabric and sweat.

Vile.

‘Well,’ said Caitlin, ‘that bodes well, sir.’

Dara Morgan clapped his hands loudly, and everyone

else in the room, all of whom had ignored the death of Johnnie Bates, turned to face him.

‘People, it would appear the hotel is wired. Or “fibred”, I should say.’

There was a polite ripple of laughter.

‘Tomorrow, we take over the world.’

‘Oi!’

A word/phrase/guttural noise, spluttered with a splash of indignation, a twist of sarcasm and a great gulp of volume.

No matter how hard he tried, the Doctor couldn’t help but sigh every time he heard it. Usually because the indignation, sarcasm and especially the volume were all aimed in his direction.

He sighed and turned back to face Donna Noble, Queen of the ‘Oi’s.

And she wasn’t there.

Just the TARDIS, parked between two council dumpsters. Quite neatly, if he said so himself.

Oh.

Ah.

Right.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the TARDIS door, then walked back and unlocked it, revealing Donna stood on the threshold.

‘I assumed you were already outside.’

‘Which bit of “I’m right behind you” didn’t quite make sense, then?’ Donna asked oh-so-politely, with a characteristic head wobble that actually meant she wasn’t feeling all that polite at all. ‘Which bit of “wait for me”

bypassed your hearing? Which section of “I’m just putting

on something nice” vanished into the ether?’

There was no way for the Doctor to worm out of that one. So he just shrugged. ‘I said I was sorry.’

‘“Sorry”?’

‘Yeah, “sorry”. What else do you want?’

‘Are you “sorry” that you didn’t hear me? “Sorry” that you locked me inside your alien spaceship? Or “sorry”

that you hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t with you?’

Each time, Donna pinged the word ‘sorry’ so it sounded like the least apologetic word in the English language and took on a whole new meaning that linguists could argue over the exact implication of for the next twelve centuries.

‘No way I can win this,’ the Doctor said, ‘so I’m just gonna let it go, all right?’

Donna opened her mouth to speak again, but the Doctor reached forward and put a finger on her lips.

‘Hush,’ he said.

Donna hushed.

And winked.

‘I win!’

And then she gave him that fantastic, amazing grin that she always did when she was teasing him – and he gave her that sigh that admitted he’d been caught out yet again.

It was a game. A game that two friends who’d gone through so much together played instinctively with one another.

Familiarity, friendship and fun. The three Fs that summed up the time shared by these two adventurers.

She slipped an arm around his and pulled him close.

‘So, what’s the skinny, Skinny?’

The Doctor nodded towards Chiswick High Road and the hustle and bustle of the traffic, and quickly dragged her out onto the main street, ready to get lost in the crowds.

Except there weren’t any. Indeed, there weren’t really very many people around at all, just a couple of kids on a skateboard on the opposite pavement and an old man walking his dog.

The Doctor raised his other hand. ‘Not raining,’ he said.

‘Well spotted, Sherlock,’ said Donna. ‘Sunday?’

‘You wanted Friday the fifteenth of May 2009, Donna.

That’s what I set the TARDIS for.’

Donna laughed. ‘In which case it’s probably a Sunday in August 1972.’

The Doctor poked his head into a newsagents, smiling at the man behind the counter, who was listening to his MP3 player and ignoring his potential customer completely.

The Doctor looked at the nearest newspaper. ‘Friday 15th May 2009,’ he confirmed to Donna.

‘So where is everyone?’

‘Maybe it’s lunchtime,’ the Doctor suggested. ‘Or maybe Chiswick’s no longer the hub of society it was a month ago. Shall we walk to your place?’

‘You’re coming?’

The Doctor looked as though the thought of not going with Donna hadn’t crossed his mind. ‘Oh. Umm. Well, I was going to.’

‘Doctor, why are we here?’

‘It’s the first anniversary of your father’s death.’

‘And, grateful as I’m sure she is for you saving the world from the Sontarans, I’m not quite sure my mum’s gonna be overjoyed to see you, today of all days.’