Veena’s tattered dress was chucked on the floor (bad thing); next to it, a receipt she had got from the minicab driver (bad thing – who was she gonna claim that back from?) who had driven her from somewhere called South Woodham Ferrers back to Chiswick. The receipt was for £225 (very, very bad – her account had to be empty by now). Wilf had been awake when she got back in (very good thing) and had listened as she told him everything that had happened at the Copernicus Array. He had held her tight, promised that they’d find a way to rescue the Doctor and sent her to sleep it all off.

Donna had been furious with herself – she’d left the Doctor there, she’d abandoned him in a way he’d never do to her (bad thing). But she was also practical. He’d told her to go, and that had been right because otherwise she’d have been killed (definitely a bad thing).

Donna felt like death but needed to get help and go

back to the Array.

Perhaps she could track down Martha Jones and her mates at UNIT – she liked Martha and knew she’d drop everything to help.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she picked up the Yellow Pages and was already halfway to U when she realised that UNIT was unlikely to be there, filed under Military Organisations Dedicated to Wiping Out Martians (neither good nor bad, just a bit trigger-happy).

‘Well good morning, madam,’ Sylvia Noble snapped across the hallway. ‘I was worried about you last night.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Crawling back in at the crack of dawn after a night clubbing with the Doctor? At your age?

I mean, clubbing’s great when you’re 21, but when middle age is only a few birthdays away—’

‘Oi!’

‘Whatever. Point is, it’s time to grow up, young lady.’

‘Thanks, Mum. Too old to go clubbing, not too old to live with my mother. Great.’

‘No one forces you to live here,’ Sylvia said, putting a cup of tea in Donna’s hands. ‘Not that you do much these days. Off with Daddy Longlegs for weeks on end.’ Sylvia tugged at Donna’s dressing gown, tightening the belt, straightening out the collar. ‘And where’s he today, then?

Dragged your granddad off up the allotment, no doubt.

And it’s not a warm morning, and he’s left his thermos here.’ Sylvia licked her forefinger and de-smudged a mark on Donna’s left cheek. ‘Still, I imagine they’ll both be back for lunchtime. Sunday roast and all the trimmings?

Ha! They wish. Tell you what, it’s a trip to the Jolly Lock Keeper and the all-you-can-eat for a tenner today, my girl.

Those days of my slaving over beef and Yorkshire pudding went with your dad, let me tell you.’ Sylvia eased Donna’s red hair behind her ears and flicked her fringe.

‘And there was a note left for you last night, found it when your granddad woke me up, staggering in after you’d dropped him off. I didn’t read it, but it’s from those Carnes boys the Doctor was on about.’

Donna wanted to ask how she knew who it was from if she hadn’t read it, but that way led to whole kettles of fish about notes from headmasters when Donna was twelve to letters from Martyn Hart when she was fifteen and who had opened which of those when they were addressed to the other, so she kept quiet.

Donna also had a pang for roast beef and Yorkshire pud, conjured up by her mum, covered in fantastic gravy.

Dad carving. Granddad and Nanna over for the day, blathering on about train times and the car collectors club and long walks in Windsor Great Park. Suddenly she wanted to be ten again.

And wanted to cry.

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

‘I miss Dad.’

And Sylvia Noble hugged her daughter in a way she hadn’t for quite a long time. Then pulled away, almost as if she’d remembered that Sylvia Noble’s preset was to be grouchy and uncompromising and not tactile and warm.

Especially with her wayward daughter.

But it was enough of a moment to make Donna happy.

Because it had been a real instinctive gesture.

‘Can you call your granddad, please, find out when he’s back and whether your Doctor is joining us at the pub.’

‘And Netty?’

(Ooh, very bad thing)

‘If we must.’

Eager to change the mood, Donna opened the front door to check on the weather.

‘Mum, why d’you say Granddad’s gone to the allotment?’

‘What else does he do? It’s either the veggies or Netty.

When they’re not one and the same.’

Donna shot her a look and Sylvia had the decency to apologise. ‘Sorry. Get used to being on my own so much, I forget that I shouldn’t say to other people things I say out loud to myself.’

‘We’ll worry about you and Netty later. Granddad’s taken the car. Which he doesn’t need for the allotment.’

Sylvia frowned. ‘He didn’t say he was taking it. Said he was going to meet the Doctor.’

‘So you assumed it was at the allotment?’

‘Like the other night, yeah.’

Donna was dialling her grandfather on her mobile, but it was switched off. The silly beggar was on his way to Copernicus, wasn’t he? And he’d left Donna behind.

At which point that ‘shot heard around the world’

moment occurred.

Donna would always remember that she was in her

dressing gown, standing at a slightly open door, a note from the Carnes boys in her hand (unread, by her at least), staring at a space where a car should have been, her mum just behind her. There was a fresh mug of tea by the Yellow Pages. Over the road, old Mister Lyttle was walking his dog. A small black thing of indeterminate breed that always smelled of wet fur. To the left, a real peripheral vision type thing, a blue van was parked.

And dominating the blue sky was a massive, ferociously awful pillar of pure bright light, the very edges suffused with a faint purple glimmer.

Donna heard her mum say, ‘Oh my God, not again, not the sky on fire again.’

But it wasn’t entirely on fire. Just this one column, accompanied by a sound like a gas flame on the cooker, but ramped up by ten thousand decibels.

Donna just knew that something awful was happening where that column of light hit the ground, somewhere to the west of Chiswick. Although she didn’t know it then, all around the world, no matter what time zone, similar columns of heat energy were doing the same.

And in the sky, that leering face of stars was still up there, the hideous grin seemingly wider and broader than ever before.

‘Mum, inside, now. Lock the doors, let no one in except me. Or Granddad. Or the Doctor. Especially the Doctor.’

‘And why is he so special?’

‘Oh, just say you’ll do it, will you.’

‘All right,’ Sylvia muttered. Then: ‘And where are you

going?’

‘I need to try and find him. Both of them actually.’

‘Aren’t they together?’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘Well, you can’t go out like that.’

Donna realised she still wasn’t dressed and ran upstairs, throwing off her dressing gown when she was barely through the door of her room.

‘Don’t leave that lying on the floor,’ Sylvia called.

Donna picked it up, hung it on the door hook and sighed.

‘Priorities, Mum,’ she muttered.

Dressed in a T-shirt and an old tracksuit she couldn’t believe she ever wore but knew would be warm, Donna headed back downstairs, grabbing a heavy coat.

Out in the street, she could hear people and cars revving up. Everyone had seen the pillar of light and now they were seeing that awful face in the sky.

Give it half an hour and it’d be panic on the streets, rioting, looting and police everywhere. She had to get out of London fast.

‘No car,’ she cursed to herself.

She opened the front door – that blue van.

So wrong. So wrong, Donna Noble. So wrong.

Then she was at the driver’s window, looking at the seat. The dashboard. The lack of keys. The locked door.