A long-fingered hand plucked the phone from Fitz’s and snapped the covershut.Fitz almost fell off the bench in surprise. ‘Doctor! How did you get here?’

‘Public transport,’ said the Doctor, looking around himself as if afraid of being watched. ‘Highly efficient, clean and reliable. Well, in this country aleast.’ He sat down on the bench next to Fitz, handed the phone back to him, and let out a long, sighing breath. ‘Things are grim.’

This was hardly news to Fitz. ‘How’s the TARDIS?’

‘She’s reverted to her original form,’ said the Doctor, a forlorn lilt in his voice. ‘Using all her power to heal herself. And I’m locked out,’ he added, through gritted teeth.

Fitz grinned, putting on an act to try to cheer the Doctor up. The Doctor’s bouts of melancholia gave him the creeps. ‘I’m sure there’s a locksmith in the town who can knock up a spare key, Doctor.’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’s worse than being merely locked out physically. I’m locked out mentally, too.I can’t reach the telepathic circuits.’ His face drooped in sadness. ‘If the bond is broken for too long, the TARDIS will die.’

Fitz didn’t know what to say. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the hum and rumble of the traffic, the sun beating down on them from a clear blue sky. An aeroplane threaded itself through the clouds like a needle. Fitz had a sudden moment of vertigo. Here he was, in 1999 – the future. And he had no way of relating it to anything he knew. Was Sweden in 1963 any different from Sweden in 1999? He had no idea. Everything was strange – but then it would have been if he’d come here in his own time: it was a foreign country, he was a first-time visitor. He had a sudden urge to see England, to see London. Somewhere he knew, so he could see how much it had changed. Had he lived a normal life,not involving the Doctor or Sam or the TARDIS, he would be in his mid-sixties by now. Would he have changed with the times, or would he still be living in 1963, wallowing in the Good Old Days and bemoaning all the new-fangled technology like Nordenstam’s mobile phone?

That would never happen now. Fitz Kreiner would always be an outsider. Just like the Doctor. Where was home now? How could he settle anywhere now? Was the TARDIS home? Were the Doctor and Sam his family? Sam. . .

He put his head in his hands, suddenly feeling more alone than at anytime in his life. Then the Doctor reached into his pocket, took out a little transparent cube and tossed it to Fitz