‘More moans, more complaints?’ Donna roared with laughter. ‘God, I love her, Gramps, but there are times I could flatten her, too.’

‘Here, I’ll have none of that talk, Donna. She’s a good one, your mum. Speaks her mind, but that’s no bad thing.

And she loves you, too. She just doesn’t know how to cope with a lot of things since Geoff… you know…’

‘Died? You can say it.’

‘Since your dad passed, yeah.’

Donna lifted her arm from Netty and reached out to take her granddad’s hand in hers. ‘So, how’d you meet Netty then?’

Wilf smiled. ‘She wrote to me after I got a letter published in the Journal.’

‘Ah, the Journal. They still going?’

‘Sixty years next year. This is the International Year of Astronomy, it’s all big double-sized issues. I wrote ’em a letter about the Triple Conjunction! Jupiter and Neptune!

Netty saw it, disagreed with my thoughts about how difficult it’d be to see with a telescope like mine and BANG, we had a little war across about three issues. Then one day she phoned me up out of the blue, we had coffee in London to sort out our disagreements and a week later she’d used her influence to make me a member of the RPS. And here we are.’

Donna smiled at him. ‘So when did you find out about her Alzheimer’s?’

‘Oh, she told me on our second… meeting.’

‘You were gonna say “second date”, weren’t you? Oh you sly old fox!’ Donna stared at him. ‘I’m happy for you, Gramps. To find a friend, someone you like to be with.

And I reckon Mum is, too.’

‘Oh, I know. She’s just worried about her illness, and how much strain it puts on me. She and Netty were talking about nursing homes, but I won’t have none of that.’

He looked at Henrietta Goodhart. ‘She’s a great lady, Donna. I wish you could see her like I do.’

‘I did. At the house yesterday and this morning. She’s lovely, and I think you should hang on to her.’

And Wilf felt so, so sad. ‘But one day, I’m gonna lose her. It’s inevitable. I looked it up on the internet.’

‘Oh well, that must be true, then.’

‘Seriously. It’s not good. I don’t mean she’s going to die, but I will lose her because one day she’ll retreat to wherever it is she goes and won’t come back. We don’t have the medicines, the knowledge to cure it. It’s not fair.’

Then a thought struck him. ‘I bet out there, in the stars, I bet they could treat her. I bet there’s something…’

And Donna squeezed his hands. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Gramps. God knows, with everything I’ve seen, all the people I’ve met, there’ve been times I thought there must be solutions to illness, famine, all sorts of nasty things. I thought if I shouted at the Doctor loud enough he could find a way. But it doesn’t matter if you’re in Chiswick or Cestus Minor, there are no easy answers. We just have to deal with what fate’s given us.’

‘It’s not fair,’ he repeated.

‘No. No, it’s not. And I’m so, so sorry for you. Because I love you, and I really like Netty and if I could find a way to make everything easy for you both, I really, really would. And you know what, the Doctor doesn’t know either of you that well, but I reckon he’d try ten times harder than me. And it probably still wouldn’t make a difference, so there’s no point beating yourself up over something you have no control over.’

Wilf looked at Donna, and wondered what had happened to that silly, flighty girl he’d loved but worried about all those years. Now she was a fine, brave, brilliant young woman. And he loved her even more.

And then there was Netty.

He eased his hand away from Donna’s and took both of Netty’s in his. ‘Hey you,’ he said quietly. ‘Henrietta Goodhart, I think it’s time for a singsong, like we used to, back in the old days?’

Donna frowned in confusion, but he just winked at her.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

Softly he began to hum a tune. An old gospel hymn.

‘When the stars begin to fall,’ he began to sing quietly, ‘Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning…’

He glanced at Donna. ‘She told me that her husband used to sing this with her, during the war.

‘I thought she never married?’

Wilf smiled tightly. ‘Never let anyone know I told you this, sweetheart. She was married. For three days. And he was killed in Singapore, when the bombing started. She told me that they’d sung this at her wedding, on the way in a big Silver Rolls. She had a photo of it and showed me, it was gorgeous. And then, when they tried to flee Singapore, he died holding her hand and she sung it to him as he lay dying in her lap.’ He looked back at Netty.

‘Never tell anyone I told you that, least of all her. Promise.

She really loved him so much and swore she’d never marry again.’

‘Course I promise, Gramps. Course I do.’

He started again. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do, when the stars begin to fall… oh Lord, what a morning…’

Netty’s eyes seemed to focus, and she took a deep breath, as if waking up.

‘I went, didn’t I? Oh no, I’ve not been wandering out in

the streets in nothing but my underwear?’ She looked at Donna and winked. ‘Again!’

Wilf smiled at her, a tear almost trying to escape his eye, so he blinked it away before either of them could see it. ‘I think we need to get back to the party, rescue the Doctor, yeah?’

Netty stood up and let Wilf lead the way. She hung back a little and leaned on Donna. ‘I get more tired each time,’ she said. ‘Oh, and thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘His name was Richard Philip Goodhart. And your grandfather is the only person I’ve ever met who comes close.’

By the time they’d made their way back to the main hall, the dinner was over.

Wilf and the Doctor were now propping up the far wall, and Wilf was apologising because Ariadne Holt and Cedric Crossland had refused to take the Doctor seriously.

‘I’m embarrassed to know them.’

The Doctor looked at Wilf in sadness. ‘Don’t be. These are good people. Some of them are a bit odd, but at heart they’re just marvellously normal. Why should they believe me?’

‘Well, we have had spaceships and Sontarans and stuff over the last few years.’

‘There’s no accounting for mankind’s ability to rationalise things, Wilf. What one group of people will be scared by, another group see no danger from because it’s within their comfort zone. These people are marvellous pioneers, loving the stars, the constellations and just

watching and noting and cataloguing the heavens. Like you! None of that should ever stop, it’s too important, even if things are unlikely to be recognised for a couple of centuries. Nobody took Galileo or Copernicus or Organon seriously in their own times.’

‘You take their rudeness very well, Doctor.’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘It’s not personal. People like Doctor Crossland just don’t want to contemplate things that fall outside their sphere of reference. At worst itsfoolhardy, at best easily overlooked.’ Then he looked at the glass of lemonade in his hand. ‘Usually.’

‘But this Mandragora stuff, that’s not usual, is it?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’s a malevolent entity, Wilf. Last time it was here in force, a lot of people died.

But it was trying to stop the Italian Renaissance, to stop science reaching the state it’s at now. I can’t see what it hopes to achieve today. Go back forty years and stop the transistor, or the microchip and yes, you’d spoil the next generation of human progress. But here? Nothing particularly special happens this year, this decade even, that can really affect Earth’s future that much. You lot just plod on for a century or so. Getting out to Mars. A couple of major space flights—’

‘Mars? We get to Mars? Do we find Martians?’

‘Spoilers,’ the Doctor winked. ‘My lips are sealed.’ He swigged his lemonade. ‘So I’m not sure whether to leave the Mandragora Helix alone up there and assume that it’s just keeping an eye on things, or be prepared for a big battle.’