How long was it since the Doctor had sat down and watched Countdown? He used to like Countdown.

‘You’ll take care of him.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’

Sylvia looked as if she was about to say something, but then she just shook her head slightly. ‘Not my thing.’

‘But it’s your dad…’

‘We had a… discussion about that.’

‘Ah.’ The Doctor could only begin to imagine how that went. ‘Are you sure? Because I’m positive he, Donna and

Netty would love you–’

He stopped. Sylvia was one step away from flinching at the mention of Henrietta Goodhart.

‘Look after him, please, Doctor,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s not getting any younger, despite what he thinks.’

The Doctor smiled disarmingly. ‘Course I will.’

‘There’s no “course I will” about it with you, Doctor, so don’t give me any of your so-called charm and flannel.

I wasn’t asking a question, I was telling you.’

The Doctor tried not to smile – it was like being told off by a headmistress. Then the glint in Sylvia’s eye reminded him this was not remotely funny.

‘Promise,’ he said, mentally adding, ‘And I’ll do three hundred lines: “I will not lose members of the Noble family in London”.’

‘They’re all I have,’ she said and walked out of the room.

The Doctor licked his forefinger and held it up.

Yup, the room’s ambient temperature had indeed dropped several degrees.

Half an hour later, they had piled into a cab. Wilf and Donna sat on the seat, the Doctor on one of those fold-down spare seats. He wriggled uncomfortably on it for the whole journey.

Wilf was dressed up to the nines – silk tie, good shirt, slightly tight jacket that had probably been bought in the early seventies – but was let down by the pair of trainers on his feet.

As if sensing where the Doctor was looking, Wilf held up a tatty carrier bag. Inside it was a pair of black dress

shoes. ‘They don’t half kill the circulation in my feet, so I wear ’em as little time as I can,’ he explained.

The Doctor nodded. ‘You look nice,’ he said to Donna.

‘Thanks. Had to borrow something off of Veena, who’d lent it to Mooky, so she had to bring it round this afternoon while you were out getting your suit and –what?’

The Doctor grinned. ‘Your friends have amazing names.’ He laughed gently. ‘Mooky.’

Donna raised an eyebrow at this. ‘You can talk. Mister Ood. Mister Matron Cofelia. Mister Ventraxian Gol-Zeeglar. Where d’you get off thinking my mates’ names are funny-sounding, eh?’

‘Fair point, although Ood isn’t really a name, it’s more a sort of species designation, and I… um…’

Donna was giving him one of her ‘do I look like I care’

looks, so he turned to Wilf instead.

‘Excited?’

‘Too right I am, Doctor. I get a star to myself. Named after me. How great is that?’

‘It’s more than great, Gramps,’ Donna squeezed his hand. ‘It’s bloody marvellous. Spaceman over there, ask him if anyone’s named a star after him.’

‘Have they, Doctor?’

Whether they had or hadn’t was neither here nor there right now. ‘Absolutely not,’ he told Wilf. ‘And I’m very jealous.’

‘Yeah,’ Wilf leaned forward, so the driver wouldn’t hear him. ‘Yeah, but you? You get to visit ’em, don’t you?

You get to go up there.’ He turned to Donna and nudged

her playfully. ‘You make the most of it, my girl.’

‘Oh, I am, don’t you worry,’ she said.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Oh, she is, don’t you worry at all.’

‘I mean, I’ve seen and done some things in my time, Doctor, but nothing can compare to what you’re showing my little girl, eh?’

‘Hey, I’m not just a passenger, you know,’ Donna smiled. ‘I get to make a lot of the decisions about where we go, who we see, how quickly we have to leave again, cos he’s gone and upset someone in charge. With an army.

And a big axe. And twelve legs.’

‘Ten legs,’ the Doctor automatically corrected her.

‘Oooh, all right then. Ten legs, and two arms that hung down to the ground. If you’re being pedantic. Which you clearly are. Tonight.’

The Doctor grinned at them both. ‘Maybe we should take you with us on a jaunt one day, Wilf.’

‘No!’

Both Donna and Wilf had said that together, then looked at each other.

‘It’s dangerous, Granddad.’

‘You go!’

‘I’m… I can look after myself. If anything happened to you, what’d Mum do?’

‘Kill you?’

‘Well, she’d kill him,’ Donna nodded at the Doctor. ‘I’d get away with being skinned alive. Probably.’

‘You said “no” too, Wilf,’ the Doctor said.

Wilf looked up at the stars as they drove into South

London, crossing Vauxhall Bridge. ‘I like to look, Doctor.

I like to look, and imagine and dream. But the reality? All them monsters and guns and stuff? Nah. I prefer my ideas.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Very wise. Mind you, you’d be a calming influence on her.’

‘Oh I know. She does go on, doesn’t she?’

‘I am sitting here. Right here,’ Donna said.

The Doctor was still talking to Wilf. ‘And there’s obviously something in her childhood about centipedes, but she won’t say what. Cos we went to this one place—’

‘Oi!’

Wilf laughed. ‘Oh I gotta tell you about that. When she was about eight, her dad and I took her up Norfolk way.

To the Broads? Anyway, she was paddling about when—’

‘ OI!! ’

They both looked at Donna. She was pointing to herself. One finger on each hand. At her head.

‘As I said. Sat here. Listening. Not liking.’ The two men grinned at each other.

‘Later,’ the Doctor said.

‘Later,’ Wilf confirmed.

Donna broke them up. ‘We’re here.’

The cab pulled up outside the Society, a huge red-brick building built in early Victorian times, just off the main circus by Vauxhall station.

Donna paid the driver (‘You’re coughing up on the way home,’ she told the Doctor). As the taxi roared away, she straightened her dress, checked her heels and nudged the Doctor, who was staring up at the night sky at the stars.

At the new star Wilf had shown him last night. Which was now brighter than before. And there seemed to be another couple of stars that he didn’t think should be there…

Donna nudged him again.

‘What?’

She indicated with her head towards Wilf, who was gripping a lamppost, trying to take off his trainers and hold onto his carrier bag at the same time.

‘I can’t bend in this thing,’ she hissed. ‘If I tear it, Veena will knock me into next week. She does the whole martial arts thing.’

The Doctor took the bag from Wilf and let the old man lean on him as he slipped his trainers off and replaced them with the dress shoes.

‘Sylvia bought these,’ he said to the Doctor. ‘Bloody things are three sizes too small.’

‘No they’re not,’ Donna said automatically. ‘You’re not trying.’

‘Blimey, when did you turn into your mum?’ said Wilf.

Donna opened her mouth to retort, but the Doctor, sensing retreat was the better part of valour, grabbed both their arms and placed himself between them.

‘Someone’s dinner awaits,’ he said and they marched up to the building.

The huge wooden door swung open as they reached the top step and a smartly dressed gentleman, mid-thirties, olive skin, dark hair and eyes that twinkled, waved them in.

‘Good evening, Mister Mott,’ he said in a slight

European accent. ‘Miss Noble. Doctor Smith. I am Gianni, Head of Hospitality.’

Donna pulled a ‘blimey’ face. ‘He was well rehearsed.’

‘Guest of honour,’ Wilf said. ‘I had to tell them who I was bringing.’

Gianni walked them into a small area where a couple of people aged somewhere between sixty and two hundred and eleventy were leaning on a bar. Or possibly the bar was holding them up. Either way, they looked like they were part of the furniture.

Donna wrinkled her nose at the strong smell of Scotch and looked behind them, where another door led to a vast dining area, and a hubbub of noise.