‘So I’m told.’ Smith smiled at Bernice as she hung back from the gentle jog to join him. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, I was wondering about you. You’ve changed your mind.’

‘So you say.’

‘No, I mean that you’ve started to act like yourself again.’

‘I just got fed up. This is all play-acting. I’m terrified. And mad. Like I’m too mixed up to care who I am. Who is this Doctor, then?’

‘A man from another planet who travels through time and space having adventures. He has two hearts.’

‘I only have one.’

‘That’s because of the Pod. When we find it, you put it back to your forehead and you become you again. You grow your other heart back. Or so I assume.’

‘So why do the villains want it?’

‘They want to be like you.’

‘Let me ask you a question. Merryweather, cover your ears, I’m in love with one of your teachers.’

Merryweather blinked and did so. ‘That’s all right, sir, so am I.’

‘Ah, wait, before you ask me the question, look at this.’ Benny pulled the list of Things Not To Let Me Do from her jacket and showed it to Smith. At the bottom of the list, she’d added, in hastily scrawled biro, ‘Don’t let me fall in love.’

‘Interesting. My handwriting changes. Ah well, too late on that last point. The question is if in my original state I’ve got two hearts and two brains⁠ —’

‘Just hearts.’

‘Well, if I’m so odd that I’ve got lots of everything, could I still love somebody?’

Benny grimaced. ‘I’ve, erm, never known the Doctor to have any concern for the trouser department. He sometimes gets his snaps out and goes all moody, but I suspect that’s more a sort of paternal bit. In short, no, I don’t think he normally does that kind of thing.’

‘I see, two hearts but no love. Well, that makes our plan easier. One, we get everybody to safety, and that includes going back for the other boys. Two, we find the boy who’s got this Pod. And three⁠ —’

‘You put it to your forehead, become the Doctor again and kick some alien bottom?’ Bernice asked hopefully.

‘Ah, no. We give it to them and they go away.’

Benny stared at him. ‘I think it’s becoming one of those days.’

Rocastle stood in the middle of the canteen, his pistol out and ready. The boys of 5B were clustered around him in a nest of sandbags. The explosions that they’d heard earlier seemed to have stopped, as had, worryingly, the Vickers gunfire.