Had it got worse since Dad had died? Would it have been better if she had got married to Lance? Should she have told Mum the truth about that day? Like she had Granddad recently? Probably not, because Sylvia didn’t like people being open and honest. ‘Those bleeding hearts who wear their hearts on their sleeves’ was an analogy she’d tortured once, and it summed up her opinion of people actually being honest.

Donna remembered reading a magazine article once about how parents could never truly hope to understand teenaged offspring and their best bet for harmonious living was just to tolerate those three or four nightmare years. But was there a manual for sons and daughters on how to deal with negative parents? It was impossible to actually argue with a mother – they had an inbuilt ‘guilt trip’ button to press that forbade you saying all the things you wanted to say to them, whatever they threw at you.

Donna loved her mum, no two ways about that. And she had no doubt that Sylvia Noble loved her daughter.

She just wasn’t entirely sure they actually liked each other that much.

‘Hullo, Donna,’ called Mrs Baldrey from opposite.

‘Had a nice trip?’

‘Yes thanks,’ Donna smiled back. ‘How’s Seymour?’

‘Oh fine. Still complaining about his prostate,’ the neighbour groaned.

Donna thought that conversation had gone as far as she

wanted it to go, frankly, and speeded up her pace towards home.

A cat sat by a lamppost, warily watching Donna approach, not quite sure if she was friend or foe. Donna made squeaky noises to attract its attention.

It bolted.

Ah well.

Mum’s car was outside on the road (you have a drive, Mum, use it) and Donna touched the bonnet as she passed.

Cold. Mum hadn’t been out today then. Funny how she’d picked up these little things from travelling with the Doctor to find things out. Like whether a car had been driven. The old Donna would never have thought about that. The old Donna wouldn’t have cared.

The old Donna was gone.

Thank God – her life was a trillion times better these days.

If only she could involve her mum in it, though. That last little piece of the puzzle, that last bit of acceptance from each of them.

‘Oh there you are, Lady,’ said a familiar voice from behind her. ‘I wondered if we’d see you today.’

Donna didn’t bother turning around. ‘Hello, Mum,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, “Hello, Mum” – because that’s enough isn’t it.

One minute the air’s choking with exhaust fumes, the next the sky’s on fire, and that’s it. No idea where my only daughter is. No calls, no texts, not even a message sent to your granddad, so he can shut me up. Nothing.’

Donna stopped in the street and turned to face her

mother, automatically tugging two of the four shopping bags from her hand to help.

The old Donna wouldn’t have considered that either.

‘Nice to see you, too,’ Donna said. ‘Granddad got the kettle on? I could do with a cuppa, loads to tell you.’

Sylvia Noble shrugged and stomped off ahead of her daughter. ‘You know what today is, don’t you,’ she called back.

And Donna stopped dead.

Of course she knew what today was. Why the hell did she think she was there? How dare she even ask that question?

The front door opened and Sylvia pushed passed Granddad Wilf and went wordlessly into the kitchen.

‘Do you know what she just asked me?’ Donna hissed at him after kissing his cheek.

Wilf raised his eyes to heaven. ‘It’s gonna be one of them days, isn’t it?’

Donna opened her mouth to reply, then stopped.

The old Donna would have gone off on one, there and then. The old Donna would’ve started a row with her mum, throwing around words like ‘attitude’ and ‘whatever’ and ‘selfish’.

New Donna didn’t.

Because new Donna, frustrating as it was, understood that what Sylvia Noble probably wanted and needed today was a good cry.

But being Sylvia ‘I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve’

Noble meant she’d never do that.

And sadly it was going to be new Donna’s job today to

ensure she did, before bottling it up caused her mum more damage than it already had.

The Doctor was striding down Chiswick High Road, glancing into various shops where people were staring at the new laptop demonstrations. ‘It’s just a computer,’ he muttered. ‘Why so much interest?’

‘They’re already out of date,’ said a young voice beside him. ‘The M-TEK – that’s the future.’

The Doctor looked over, then down. The speaker barely reached knee height. It was a little boy. The Doctor had seen him before somewhere – then running towards him, he saw Lukas Carnes, and realised this was the little brother he’d been carrying.

‘Joe!’ yelled Lukas. ‘How’d you get away from me so fast?’

‘I’m not your prisoner,’ Joe yelled back, and the Doctor gave the arrived-but-out-of-breath Lukas a look that said ‘Oh, that told you, mate’.

Lukas pulled Joe back from the Doctor. ‘Leave him alone,’ Lukas snapped at him. ‘Touch him and I’ll have the police here.’ As if to underline this, Lukas had his mobile out and ready.

The Doctor didn’t bother pointing out that Joe had found him. Nor did he point out that Lukas was clearly only being aggressive because of what the Doctor had said in the other shop.

He had to remember that people didn’t always like getting hints about their future. Always tripped him up, that one.

Spoilers, someone once said.

‘How do you mean you are going to save my life?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Saved your life.’

‘How? When and why?’

The Doctor drew his psychic paper out of his inner jacket pocket and showed it to Lukas. It had the right date on it, the name of the shop and the message SAVE

LUKAS SAMUEL CARNES’S LIFE BY STOPPING

HIS BROTHER BUYING AN M-TEK.

‘Dunno who wrote it,’ the Doctor said, ‘cos I don’t recognise the handwriting. But it appeared on the paper about twenty minutes after I arrived in Chiswick. Bad form to ignore messages, I always think. So, you’ve been saved, my job is done, all I need to do now is find out whether Loretta’s is a laundrette, a florist or a coffee shop in this time period. It’s one of those in 2009 but I’m not sure which.’

‘Laundrette,’ said Joe.

Lukas pulled Joe behind him. ‘Don’t talk to that man,’

he scolded his kid brother.

‘But you’re talking to him,’ Joe protested, not unreasonably.

‘That’s different,’ Lukas said, realising with horror that this was exactly what his mum used to say when she’d said something he considered hypocritical or unfair.

The Doctor turned away. ‘Nice to meet you, boys, but I thought I might wander off to a lovely restaurant in Brentford, down by the canal there, to pass the time before I meet up with my friend.’

‘What?’ said Lukas, mentally kicking himself for caring. Just let the weirdo go, he urged himself. But his mouth wouldn’t stop asking questions. ‘What would’ve happened if Joe had got an M-TEK?’

And the Doctor looked at him. ‘No idea. I don’t know what an M-TEK is. I assumed it was that laptop you were thinking of buying. I did a search, but I couldn’t find any reference to it. Then I saw you watching the demo, like everyone else appears to be, so I guess that’s the M-TEK.’

‘No,’ said Joe, pushing forwards. ‘That’s the new Psiryn Book Plus. It’s rubbish. I wanted an M-TEK.’

‘But I wasn’t planning to buy one,’ Lukas added. ‘For Joe or me.’

‘So what’s an M-TEK then?’ the Doctor frowned.

Lukas sighed. ‘How can you save me from it, if you don’t know what it is?’

‘If I knew everything I was saving people from before I tried saving them, I’d save very few people cos I’d be spending all day researching what I was saving them from, wouldn’t I?’

Lukas and Joe glanced at each other.