Dorothy could feel the rational part of her brain dismissing what she was hearing, and yet there was something so familiar about the woman in front of her. She could feel her eyes beginning to blur with angry tears.

‘Prove it. If you’re the Professor, prove it.’

‘All right! You support Charlton Athletic cos your favourite uncle lived in Plumstead. You love motorbikes – although I never let you ride one. You taught yourself to speak proper cos you wanted to sound like a Blue Peter presenter. You can’t see a Dalek without feeling a twitch in your baseball-bat hand, you learned to love jazz, and you think being tall is overrated. Oh, and you hate clowns.’

‘She sounds pretty awesome,’ said the boy, smiling, while the girl and the older man swapped baffled looks.

‘She is.’ The Doctor’s grin grew wider. ‘It’s good to see you again, Ace.’

Dorothy felt the warm rush of surrender. ‘Blimey, Professor. It really is you.’

INTERLUDE
1990

‘This is wicked, Professor!’

Ace scrambled to the top of a rocky outcrop on the edge on the barren plateau where the TARDIS had landed. Stretched out in the valley below her were the ruins of a city; for as far as the eye could see, huge, curved walls of white-grey stone were crumbling into the desert floor, columns and buttresses that must once have arched in soaring, elegant curves above the city streets reduced to no more than dust-covered rubble. It looked more like it had melted than collapsed.

‘It’s like Athens designed by that surreal bloke with the pointy moustache.’

‘Salvador Dalí, yes,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully. He leaned on his umbrella, both hands clutching the curved red wood of its question mark handle. ‘It is somewhat reminiscent of Gradiva Finds the Anthropomorphic Ruins.’

‘You what?’

‘It’s a painting.’ His lined, quizzical face softened with a smile. ‘By Dalí!’

‘If you say so. I was thinking of that one with the melting clocks.’ Ace remembered that Manisha had liked that painting, and had hung a print on the lounge wall of her flat. Before she’d been burnt out, that was …

‘Ah. The Persistence of Memory.’ The Doctor’s voice stopped her going down a dark series of thoughts.

‘Yeah, right.’

The Doctor locked the door of the TARDIS and swung the key into his waistcoat pocket with a theatrical flourish. ‘Shall we go and take a stroll through some memory lanes, then?’ he said, peering up at her expectantly.

Grateful that the Doctor was always able to offer distractions just when she needed them, Ace bounded back down the slope and hooked her arm through his.