‘So I can only assume that you’ve forgotten that you have a meeting with Jane Thackeray at the World Ecology Bureau at 10.00 and another with the Disasters Emergency Committee at 3.00?’

Dorothy said nothing.

‘You’ve not forgotten, have you?’ Sanaul tried but failed to hide his disapproval. ‘You want me to go in your place. Again.’

Dorothy held up her hands. ‘What can I say? Something’s come up …’

‘But that only gives me –’ Sanaul checked his watch – ‘four hours to prepare!’

‘Yeah.’ Dorothy started to edge towards the main doors. ‘There are some notes in my desk diary that might help. Top drawer. I’ll try and get back for the second meeting if I can. Oh, and I want to you to find out which production company is behind the Kim Fortune documentary series that went out on Channel 19 this morning.’

‘Priorities, Miss Dorothy!’

‘You’re right – do that first. I need to speak to the girl Kim interviewed who says she was abducted. See you later.’

With a grin and a wave, Dorothy closed the doors on Sanaul’s cries of protest and hurried across the lobby, stabbing at the lift call button. To her relief the lift was there waiting and the doors slid open immediately. She stepped inside and pressed the button for the garage level. As the indicator lights started to blink their way from eighteen to zero, Dorothy felt a tingle of anticipation that she’d not felt for many, many years. At the same time she felt a pang of sadness that she didn’t have the Doctor alongside her to share this with.

‘Seems as though there’s still work to do, Professor.’ She shook her head, felt the old anger bubble with surprising heat. All the times they’d overthrown evil, brought down heartless regimes – on Terra Alpha, Segonax, Colostro Minor – they’d sparked revolutions in a day and tripped merrily away in the TARDIS to somewhere new. But Dorothy knew now that the real danger began when the empires toppled: rebuilding was everything. If you walked away and just left people to it, you could be abandoning them to any of a hundred worse ways forward.

Did we really do any good? How many times had she asked that of the shadows in her silent penthouse. If we went back to those worlds we thought we’d saved, what would we find?

She thought of the pile of reports waiting for her to read, of the sheer volume of planning and admin required to bring aid to the people who needed it, to spend the funds where it mattered; the little details and the little people to coordinate so that the right changes came about.

‘Yeah, there’s work, Professor,’ Dorothy muttered. ‘And I’m doing it my way.’