Lukas leaned forward to whisper in Joe’s ear that maybe it was time to go home, when Blue Suit Guy nudged him.

‘So, everyone’s inside all the electronics shops, yeah?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The streets were pretty empty. As I walked along, I realised everyone was in shops like this, watching these demos.’

‘Today’s the launch,’ Lukas found himself explaining.

‘Everyone’s interested.’

‘You’re not,’ Blue Suit Guy replied.

Lukas shrugged. ‘Kid brother is.’

‘Ah. I see.’

Lukas tried to step away, but was hemmed in by another man on one side and Fat Lady in front.

Blue Suit Guy got his shiny pen out again. ‘Don’t mind

me,’ he said.

But Lukas did mind him. A lot.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

Blue Suit Guy shrugged. ‘Well, firstly, I’m letting a friend go home for a bit. Secondly, I was wondering why everyone was in here. And fourthly, I’m now really concerned by the technology in that laptop.’

Lukas knew he’d regret this. ‘And thirdly?’

‘Thirdly?’ Blue Suit Guy looked confused, and then grinned as if something had popped back into his head.

‘Oh yes, thirdly, I came looking for you, Lukas Samuel Carnes.’ He held out a hand. ‘I’m the Doctor and I’m here to save your life.’

Dara Morgan sipped his coffee slowly. Partly because it showed he had good manners, and partly because it was too hot to do anything else. But it probably looked like good manners to Mr Murakami and his delegation.

‘So, Mr Morgan,’ the Japanese banker was saying, ‘do we have a deal?’

Dara Morgan’s blue eyes twinkled mischievously as he glanced over at Caitlin, standing by the office door. ‘What do you think, Cait?’

Caitlin walked over, her long legs and short skirt clearly drawing the eye of some of Mr Murakami’s entourage but not, Dara Morgan observed, Mr Murakami himself.

Good.

‘I think it’s a good deal, sir,’ she purred. ‘If Murakami-San can get the M-TEK out throughout the East by Sunday, it will be… superb.’

Dara Morgan flicked his hair out of his eyes. ‘Just under two days, 3.30pm Tokyo time. Doable?’

Mr Murakami frowned. ‘Why Sunday? It’s ludicrously short notice.’

Dara Morgan just smiled. ‘Let’s just say, it’s what the entire deal hinges on. I need that guarantee, Murakami-San, or I go elsewhere.’

‘But that way, you have even less chance of a deal to be in place by then,’ the Japanese man said.

Dara Morgan nodded at this. ‘I know. But let’s face it, with the money that the M-TEK will make, smaller companies than yours, hungrier ones perhaps, will go that extra mile to meet my… MorganTech’s requirements.’ He sipped his coffee again. ‘It’ll be in the contract, with penalty clauses.’

‘Which will be?’

‘Catastrophic. For the whole of Japan.’

Mr Murakami’s people moved an inch closer to their man. ‘Was that a threat, Mr Morgan?’ he asked softly.

‘No,’ said Dara Morgan. ‘I don’t do threats. Barbarians do threats. Idiots do threats. I just state facts.’

‘It is a great opportunity,’ Caitlin cut in. ‘Please, think about it over dinner. Tonight. At our expense.’

‘Alas, we cannot join you,’ Dara Morgan added, ‘but you are at liberty to pick any restaurant in London that takes your fancy and all expenses will be covered by MorganTech. Indeed I insist.’

‘All expenses?’

‘Relating to food and drink, yes.’

‘Ah. In that case, you shall have my answer by

midnight tonight.’ Mr Murakami stood and Dara Morgan did the same, giving a slight bow as he did so. Mr Murakami responded likewise, including Caitlin in the deference, and she nodded to him and the others in his party.

Formalities over, the Japanese delegation headed for the door of the suite, but Mr Murakami turned back one last time. ‘Seriously, why Sunday? Why 3.30 in the afternoon?’

‘Because something big is happening all over the globe on Monday at 3pm UK time. That’s 11pm Tokyo time.

But we all need deals in place. I too have made a deal, you see, but it’s rather like a chain in a property purchase: one link breaks and the whole deal comes tumbling down.

Then we all suffer.’

‘All?’

‘Universally.’ Dara Morgan threw a sideways glance at Caitlin, and she immediately moved to escort Mr Murakami out of the room.

A moment later, the Japanese were gone and Caitlin was back at Dara Morgan’s side. He was standing at a massive picture window, a huge panoramic view over West London. He could see the new Wembley Stadium, Centrepoint, the London Eye and other tall London structures.

‘Monday,’ he smiled, ‘and this planet is Madam Delphi’s.’

Caitlin nodded. ‘At last. Revenge is hers.’

They took each other’s hands and held on tightly, and looked to the computer screens, which appeared to be

humming a tune, ever so slightly, causing waveforms on one of the screens to pulsate fractionally in time.

‘Welcome back,’ they said to her, together.

*

Donna stood at the end of Brookside Road and took a deep breath. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been here last (indeed, for her mum, it was probably slightly less time), but every time she ‘came home’ there were awkward moments. ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘Are you still hanging around with that awful Doctor person?’ and ‘Why don’t you call?’ and ‘Have you got a job yet?’

Of course, Granddad Wilf knew where she was, she’d told him everything right from the off. But her mum, well, she wasn’t someone who’d understand. Wasn’t someone who’d think saving Oods, stopping generational wars or ensuring Charlemagne met the Pope actually equated with a ‘good’ job typing up notes or placing stationery orders.

Taking a deep breath, she walked towards the house that hadn’t actually been her home for too long.

After her disastrous wedding and slightly less disastrous trip to Egypt, her parents had moved from their terraced house where Donna had grown up into this new semi. It had been an upheaval, compounded as it was by Donna not having a job and Wilf originally being cross because he thought he’d have to leave his astronomer buddies behind. As it turned out, of course, the allotments were easier to get to from the new house, so he was happy after all.

But Donna’s dad hadn’t been well for a long time, and in many ways the move had been his idea, his desire to find somewhere new to be, to give him a bit of challenge.

He’d got bored in the old house. He’d built all the cupboards, shelved all the walls, painted all the ceilings he was ever able to do, and he needed something new to keep him active since his illness had made him take early retirement. Doing up the new place to Mum’s quite stringent specifications would be exactly the right challenge.

They had been there three months before Dad passed.

Donna and Wilf had taken on the mantle of doing all those odd jobs Dad had been going to do, but they were never quite right, they were never ‘how your dad would have done it’. Which wasn’t altogether surprising – Wilf was twenty-odd years older, and Donna had never lifted a paintbrush or hammer in her life before.

God. How shallow was Donna Noble before she met the Doctor again? Before she learned not just to stand on her own two feet but realise that she could. Her family life was a real chicken and egg situation. Had she been useless at home because her parents had always let her be, or did her mum think she was useless because she was?

And talking about it, talking about anything, with Sylvia Noble was rarely a positive experience. Donna would love to say that her mum’s bitterness and resentment was because of Dad’s death, but the truth was Sylvia had always been disappointed in her daughter. She rarely hid it. And Donna never understood why. Had she wanted a son? Had she wanted a high-flying lawyer or

company executive daughter who would be rich enough to send her parents off to live in the country in a little sixteenth-century cottage where they could keep goats?