Written for: TARDIS Big Bang 2009 on livejournal (tardisbigbang dot com on the web where you can also see the wonderful art done by mizz_destiny); Big thanks to Paranoidangel for the Britpicking (any mistakes remaining in the story are all my doing) and to Julie_reads for the general beta and not kicking my ass for talking about little else for weeks.

The original idea for this story came from a prompt by Livii in a Doctor Who exchange several years ago which I never got around to finishing.

Rosemary and Cedric Andrews belong to their respective novel and audio authors, although I took a few liberties with their circumstances; any others you don't recognize are entirely my fault. Several lines come from the arc "10000 B.C." and the title is from the poem Jewel Box by Eamon Grennan. Hope you enjoy!

Before

This was Barbara in the morning of her first day of teaching at Coal Hill:

She awoke early, too early, before the milkman's float rattled down the street. For lack of anything better to do, she brushed out her hair, teased it high, curled it around her face. She fastened it back with a comb handed down from her mother's mother, heavy silver with a creamy cameo whose edges were worn down and feathery. She took it down again, shook it out, let it fall where it would. In the mirror, she studied her reflection: pointed chin, heavy brows and wide eyes under a cloud of thick dark hair, the nose that always seemed too masculine for her face, the lips she thought too thin.

She sighed and began again, brushing and curling and pinning until flags of color rose on her cheeks and the hair lacquer clogged in the atomiser's tiny tube. She felt ridiculous for making such a fuss but the nerves jangling in the pit of her stomach needed some sort of an outlet before she flew apart. With each stroke of the brush, she recited the names from her class register: Adams, Atherton, Baker, Blithe, Daniels...

Father knocked on the bathroom door as he shuffled past, already grumbling about who knew what. Barbara followed him down to the kitchen and put on the kettle. He complained of the heat, and Mr Peppard's untidy garden next door, and the hole in his second-favourite pair of socks while she fried eggs and tomatoes for him and burned her own toast. She had to bite her tongue when he started in on the widow who had moved into the empty house across the street with her two children. Barbara saw nothing wrong with them at home by themselves during the day and after school now it had started again - they were bright, capable boys of twelve and thirteen - while their mother earned her wages as a secretary in a posh office in the City. To Father, though, it might well have been the end of the world.

Her soft-sided leather bag had been packed for days: a new ledger with her name embossed in gold across the cover, two books of French history she planned to review during her free periods until there was enough marking to fill her time, the pen her parents had given her for her eighteenth birthday, and myriad other things she hoped might prove useful. As she left the narrow little house in its narrow little street to catch her bus, Father kissed her on the cheek and told her how proud he was.

Before the door had even closed behind her, he was already turning away to find his coat.

This was Ian:

The alarm clock woke him at precisely half six, and he was brushed, shaved, dressed, and finishing a bowl of porridge at his landlady's table by a quarter past seven. He buttoned up his cardigan, straightened his tie, and tripped on the step down out of the front door. Once he'd righted himself and checked to make sure no one had seen, he bought his customary paper from the newsagent on the corner and inspected his car for pings and dings before roaring off down the street with his briefcase tucked away in the boot.

Miss Wright had been teaching at the school for almost a full month before Ian worked up the nerve to speak to her. It wasn't that she was a dazzling beauty, although he did find his gaze drawn to her at odd moments, nor a brilliant conversationalist, at least as far as he knew. It had more to do with the way she carried herself, a shy smile on her face as she all but glided through the corridors, just a step removed from the bustle around her. He found that he was unwilling to enter into her orbit lest he knock her off course with his clumsy attempts at small talk and inanities.

In the end, he needn't have worried. Not about the clumsy attempts, for they were abysmal at best, but about working up the nerve to approach her first.

"Good morning, Mr Chesterton," she said as she fell into step beside him on the way into the school one early October morning. "It is Mr Chesterton, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Good morning, Miss Wright! Er, very fine weather today, isn't it?"

She glanced up at the heavy rainclouds hanging over the grounds. "It is, but I'm not sure how long it will last. The newspaper said we may be in for periods of heavy sunshine later this week."

Ian waited until she had disappeared down the corridor that led to their classrooms before he groaned aloud and covered his face with one hand.

In the weeks that followed, she seemed to be seeking him out although Ian chalked most of that up to wishful thinking. Still, his conversation improved by leaps and bounds every time their paths crossed until he at last reached a point where he didn't want to drown himself in the lavatory following each of their encounters.

By the time Mr Sheard called them all together for a staff meeting at the half term, he felt comfortable enough to sit down in a chair next to her as they waited for the headmaster to begin his customary rallying of the troops. As was usual, Ian had nothing in mind to say but the fact that he'd managed to sit without falling on his bottom was progress enough. When she lowered her eyes to the floor and smirked at one of his muttered asides, it felt like a complete victory. He wanted to raise his arms in the air and run a lap of the room like a conquering football hero but settled for shooting her a smile when she looked up again.

Barbara smiled back, happy to have found one person on the faculty she could almost call a friend. She still felt terribly green and awkward most days, walking around pretending to be a figure of authority. Her fellow history teachers were a nice enough group but insular and uninviting. It hadn't been easy, all these long weeks of standing on the edges of their circle. By contrast, Mr Chesterton had a ready and affable smile and always seemed pleased to speak to her, for which she was grateful. What she hadn't anticipated was that he would have such a quick wit, and she had to fight back a delighted laugh lest she draw the headmaster's wrath.

As the speech droned on, peppered with unaccredited phrases lifted from some of Churchill's most stirring wartime addresses, she found herself watching Mr Chesterton fidgeting in his seat. He crossed and recrossed his legs, shot his cuffs, straightened his cardigan (she couldn't help but notice a bit of dried egg on one sleeve and wondered about his home life before she caught herself), tapped his shoe on the leg of the chair in front of him, then gave an embarrassed grimace when its occupant turned to glare at them both.

She gave him a mock glare of her own, then leaned in close enough to smell a hint of his aftershave to murmur, "I think we shall have to be separated for the next meeting or you will surely bring me to ruin."

He looked at her with such incredulity that she bit her lip and wished she could pull the words back in to her mouth.

"Why, Miss Wright, I'm shocked at you," he whispered. "Nary a care for my own virtue?"

To her great relief, the meeting broke up at that point and her startled giggle was swallowed up in the sound of their colleagues rising from their chairs and beginning to argue about the substance of the headmaster's speech. Mr Chesterton started to say something to her but got no further than, "Say, have you-" before he was tapped on the shoulder by the Head of Science and whisked away to the other side of the room. He turned away for a moment from whatever was being said to him to mouth an apology at her. She nodded an acceptance, only just managing to keep from rolling her eyes at the man's back, and went to join her own department.

It was full dark by the time she gave up on hovering round the fringe of their discussion and gathered her things to leave. She half-expected Mr Chesterton to materialise by her side as she made her way out onto the street and found that she was only vaguely relieved when he didn't. Although he'd never been anything but good-natured and cordial, never betrayed anything more than a desire to be friendly to the newest faculty member, something in the way he sometimes looked at her made her think he might be working up to something more personal.

It wasn't as though she would entirely mind if he did, she had to admit as she waited for her bus. He was a fine-looking man and very bright, always ready with a smile or a laugh, but an entanglement with a fellow teacher at this early stage of her career could prove ruinous. Of course, it could prove ruinous at any stage but especially in her first permanent position, when she felt as if she had to prove her worth daily.

The house was empty when she let herself in; Father had mentioned earlier that day that he would be dining with an old army friend and that she shouldn't wait on him. She warmed a tin of soup and ate it standing up in the kitchen, her lesson plan open on the counter. Her fifth formers were just beginning a section on the Renaissance and she had a nagging suspicion that she hadn't a firm enough grasp of the material.

She sat in the lounge with a dog-eared text for a few hours after eating and took notes on a pad of paper, trying to pick out the points she thought would resonate with her restless audience. When the clock struck ten, she packed the book and the notes in her bag and readied herself for bed.

Father came in sometime in the middle of the night, knocking into furniture with muffled curses and treading heavily down the hall past her room. Barbara heard his bed whine in protest when he fell into it, then all was quiet again but for his rasping snore. She pulled the pillow over her head and tried to fall back to sleep.

The weeks slid by, January melting into February, then March and April crept up on her while she hadn't been paying attention. She started taking the bus from several streets past her usual stop so that she could enjoy more of the soft breeze on her way. Her students had gentled as the year went on, less and less interested in pushing her buttons and testing the boundaries she'd tried so hard to set. By the time the Easter holidays came around, though, she would be more than grateful to see the back of them for a week.

As her last class of the day all but ran from the room, Barbara sank into her desk chair with a grateful sigh. Her feet ached, her head throbbed, and something that felt suspiciously like the onset of cramps tightened across her lower back. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Just a moment to rest, she thought, and then I'll tidy up.

Mrs Kingston was warbling an aria in the room across the hall, something she often did after a long, tiring day. Barbara hummed along a bit at the parts she thought she recognised. Footsteps echoed along from the stairwell as the last of the students escaped downstairs to the bright spring sunshine. If she were a sillier woman, she would almost think the building had an air of anticipation, like a dowager queen waiting for the last of her former court to decamp.

Shaking her head at the flight of fancy, she rose from her chair. "Only a history teacher," she scoffed.

"Only a history teacher what?"

She spun to face the door. "Oh! You startled me."

The strangely-dressed man on the threshold lifted his hat and sketched a quick bow, an umbrella with a queer handle hanging from one arm. "My apologies, madam. I came to drop something off, but it appears I've left it a bit late - or perhaps I mean early? Whatever the case, I couldn't resist exploring the school. I knew a student here once, you know. But now it appears that I've lost my way! Could you point me to Mr Chesterton's classroom?"

"Well, you're hardly lost at all. He has the room next to this one but he's probably already gone for the day."

"Oh dear, that is disappointing. I had hoped to ask him a few questions about... Well, that doesn't matter if he's not here," he interrupted himself. "I have a package for him from a professor at his alma mater. Might I trouble you to deliver it for me?"

"It would be no trouble at all, but I won't see him again until Monday morning. Will that be all right?"

"Not until Monday morning? But won't you see him at ho-" The man's face clouded with confusion and he patted his pockets before pulling out a round metallic object. It whirred in his hand and lights flashed along the top half. "Oh dear, I seem to have misread the time coordinates. It's early days yet then. I should have realised it when I saw that you're wearing your hair down, of course, but one can never really tell with women's hairstyles, you know."

"I beg your pardon?"

He tucked the object away again and pulled out a small bundle tied with twine instead. "Nothing to worry about, my dear! Here, give this to him and tell him it's from the professor."

Barbara crossed over to the door and took the package from him. "Professor who?"

"What?"

"If I'm to give this to Mr Chesterton, I should be able to tell him who has sent it."

"Oh, that won't be necessary, Miss Wright. Good day!" He raised his hat in salute and walked away, disappearing utterly before she had question him further, or even to think it strange that he knew her name and used it in such a familiar tone.

She slipped the paper-wrapped bundle into her bag and promptly forgot all about it. Fifteen minutes work saw the bookshelves neatly arranged once more and the blackboard wiped clean. Barbara buttoned up her coat and collected her things, her mind already on what to prepare for supper. Father would be expecting something substantial, since he never took time to eat during the day. With any luck, she might coax him into helping her make pasties. It was far more likely that she would have to make the meal by herself while he gave her another in a long line of lectures about wasting her life away with other people's children instead of her own. She'd heard it so many times since first starting university that it had lost most of its sting years earlier, but was still an incredibly tedious way to spend an evening.

She was mentally cataloguing the contents of the icebox when she passed Mr Chesterton as he was putting some books and papers into the boot of his car. She gave a brief wave when he started toward her, one hand raised up in greeting, and quickly turned the corner.

Ian watched Miss Wright go with a stifled sigh. They hadn't seen much of each other in recent weeks - her history club had taken to holding impromptu meetings in her classroom during the lunch period, forcing him to make stilted conversation with whoever else had taken her place at their table that day. A few lunches like that had been too many and now he had started hiding out in his own room, marking papers that should have waited for home and a healthy dose of brandy and gooseberry pie to stifle the cringes.

This wasn't to say that they had stopped speaking altogether. When she was free, and he was free, and neither of them monopolised by students nor abducted to sit with their departments, nor pressed into chaperoning students elsewhere, nor trying to catch up on marking or setting exam questions, they followed the same routine they had established at the start of the new year. Those times were fewer and farther between as the end of the term closed in on them.

Not to put too fine a point on it: he missed her. Which was ridiculous, really. They were colleagues whose interests happened to intersect on a wide range of odd topics and who had each found that eating with a like-minded companion was preferable to being bored stiff by complaints about rowdy students and unappreciative parents. Certainly they had their own complaints of that nature to voice but by an unspoken agreement they did so only occasionally and only in cleverly veiled references, though Ian was convinced his were not half so clever as hers.

After Miss Wright disappeared around the corner and he stood there for an embarrassing length of time staring off after her, he saw a group of girls approaching from the school, giggling wildly and pointing at him. He slammed the boot shut and jumped in his car before they could get too close, telling himself it did not resemble a hasty retreat in any way as he sped out of the car park.

His landlady, Mrs Lambert, was lying in wait when he let himself through the front door. Her grey hair was tucked up under a kerchief and she was wearing one of her husband's old work shirts over her blouse like an artist's smock. She waited long enough for him to hang up his coat and put his briefcase in the cupboard under the stairs, then thrust a screwdriver, another of her husband's shirts, and an empty jam jar at him.

"What's all this?" Ian cried as she chivvied him into exchanging his shirt and cardigan for the work shirt and then herded him into the kitchen.

"I've been telling you for weeks that I'm ready to repaint these cabinets. Now get up on that ladder and start taking out the screws on the door hinges, there's a good boy."

He grumbled but climbed up onto the stepladder. Mrs Lambert pulled a chair over to the sink and started working on the base units. She kept up a running commentary as they worked, filling him in on the latest neighbourhood gossip. He recognised maybe half the names but thought he did a fair job of feigning interest while he removed the doors and stacked them against the wall in the dining room.

When he'd finished moving the last load, Mrs Lambert was ready with two buckets of soapy water and a pile of rags. After taking his share, he climbed back up on his ladder and started scrubbing.

"Ian, whatever happened to that Margaret you kept sneaking up to your room?" Mrs Lambert asked suddenly.

"Marjorie, her name was Marjorie," Ian corrected absently, then jerked in surprise and nearly upended his bucket on her head when his brain caught up to the rest of the question. "Wait, you knew?"

Mrs Lambert looked up at him gaping down at her from the top of the stepladder. She snorted and stuck her head back into the cabinet she was cleaning. "Of course I knew! You weren't exactly a master of subterfuge, dear. My son was much better at sneaking into the house after dark - even the Luftwaffe was quieter than you going up those stairs."

Ian looked at the cabinets in front of him, wondering if he could crawl completely inside. His face was flaming red and he felt flushed all over, like a spotty youth who'd just been caught looking at his father's pin-up girls. He cleared his throat, loudly. "I can't apologise enough, Mrs Lambert. It was unforgivable-"

"Oh pish," she said, her voice muffled by the cabinet. "You're a healthy young man in the prime of life. I'd be more worried if you didn't sneak girls in from time to time."

He nearly upended his bucket again. "But when I first took the room, you said overnight guests weren't allowed!"

"Well, you've hardly ever had one who stayed overnight, have you?"

The wooden frame was cool against his skin when he smacked his forehead on it. "I can't believe we're having this conversation," he muttered.

"It's hardly a conversation if you keep avoiding my question, dear."

He sighed. "You do have a point. The truth is that Marjorie was looking for a husband and has since decided that I don't fit the bill, which works out well for both of us as I wasn't looking to become a husband."

"Well, I can't say I'm sorry to hear that. You're the first boarder I've had since my husband died who was willing to eat my cooking and help out with these household projects. If you run off to get married, I'll be forced to hire a handyman and you know how I hate to spend more than I have to."

Ian laughed despite his embarrassment. "I see! So you're only putting up with my nonsense because labourers are so dear?"

"Quite right! Now, have you finished cleaning up there? You've been dripping water onto my back for at least two minutes."

He nearly toppled from the ladder again as he tried to avoid adding any more moisture to the growing ring of water on the back of her shirt. Mrs Lambert just clucked at him and rose, groaning, to her feet. Her knees made faint cracking sounds as she walked out into the garden to empty her bucket of water. Ian stepped carefully down to the floor, then followed her outside.

"Just empty it into that bed along the back wall, there's a good boy. I never did care for those impatiens." She said it in such an offended tone that he nearly asked what the flowers had ever done to insult her.

He dumped the bucket as she'd instructed, then took a moment to admire the setting sun before following her back into the kitchen.

She was standing with her hands on her hips in front of the cabinets. When she heard him step inside, she said, "We make a fine pair of scullery maids, but it's a bit late to start on the sanding and all that nonsense. Here, sit. I'll make us some cold sandwiches."

"Cheese and pickle?"

"As if either of us would trust me with anything more complicated!"

While she busied herself at the counter, she asked how his lessons were progressing. Darkness fell outside, a soft purple gloaming that made the kitchen feel cosier than normal. Ian told her about the frustrations of trying to keep a roomful of sixth formers focused on pistils and stamens without letting the lesson descend into tittering and rude comments.

When she'd finished wiping away tears of laughter, Mrs Lambert turned the conversation to several of their neighbours. Ian listened attentively but without much interest to the latest goings-on of happily and unhappily married couples alike. Without meaning to, he let his attention wander off the subject entirely, wondering what Miss Wright might be doing on a soft, warm spring evening.

"I know that look," Mrs Lambert teased as she cleared away their plates and brought out a bottle of wine.

"What look?" Ian asked, hoping she wasn't any better at reading minds than she was at cooking.

"The same look you've been mooning about the place wearing for the past few weeks, that's what look."

When he sputtered, she snorted and said, "Don't be so missish! I need a bit of juicy gossip to share round the neighbourhood or they'll all clam up on me. So give over: who is she?"

He drank deeply from his glass of wine and avoided her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about. I was just trying to decide whether I should try to ring my parents this weekend or just drive up to see them."

"Dear, no man looks like that when he's thinking about his parents." She reached over and patted his arm. "But I'll stop prying, I promise."

"I'll believe that when I see it!" he scoffed.

She smiled at him over her wineglass. "A promise is a promise! But if you're going to try to sneak her up to your room, you'd better bring her home for dinner first so I can meet her properly."

Ian dropped his head to the table and prayed that the cabinets would fall on his head.

Mrs Lambert let him retire for the night soon after, content to go out into the garden to enjoy the stars and perhaps catch a bit of late-evening gossip over the hedge from Miss Middleton next door.

The rest of the weekend flew by in a blur of sandpaper and paint fumes, broken only by the occasional overcooked meal and a lengthy phone conversation with his father, who delivered his mother's usual interrogation about his social life liberally sprinkled with news about his brother's happy home life. By the time he returned to Coal Hill on Monday morning, Ian felt as if he'd been released from a particularly annoying prison. Even the antics of his most high-spirited pupils and an uncomfortable interview with Mr Sheard about the pistil-and-stamen lecture weren't enough to compete with the grilling he'd endured from all quarters.

As such, he hardly noticed that he'd gone almost three periods without wondering what Miss Wright was doing, after which he could do little else. With relief, he watched his last class of the day file out the door after the bell. Their headlong rush to freedom stalled as someone tried to enter from the corridor.

His brain ground to a halt as Miss Wright broke through a clump of teenagers and gave him a sunny, if tired, smile. One of her arms was stretched toward him and she pressed a lumpy paper-wrapped bundle into his hand.

"What's this?" he asked, turning it over and looking for some sort of identifying marks. When he looked up at her, she avoided his eyes and picked at imaginary lint on her skirt.

"I haven't the slightest idea what it is," she said. "A man came to the school looking for you on Friday. I thought you'd already left, so he asked me to deliver it to you."

"Friday? But you saw me in the car park on your way out."

"I know, I'm so sorry!" she cried. "I put it in my bag and then completely forgot about it by the time I left. It's nothing terribly urgent is it?"

"I'm sure it's not, else he wouldn't have left it with you instead of tracking me down." He smiled and slipped the twine off the package, mostly to erase the worried little frown that wrinkled her forehead.

"What is it? It's been driving me mad ever since I found it in my bag this morning."

He finished tearing off the brown paper and wadded it up into a ball which he tossed on his desk. "It's a load of old reports I wrote in university, I think. Whatever possessed someone to bring them to me?" He pulled one out at random, wincing a little at the sloppy assertions.

Miss Wright leaned in to peer at the paper he was reading. "I asked who they were from and all he would say was 'the professor'," she explained. "When I asked which professor, he just tipped his hat and left!"

"How very curious," Ian mused. He wondered who would have even held on to his work all this time.

There were reports from dating back all the way to his very first university course. The one that had been on top of the stack when he'd unwrapped the package had 'See me!!' scrawled across the front page, but Ian didn't remember any of his professors using such loopy, oddly feminine script. Nor had any of them ever signed his name or written notes with a series of interlocking rings and a question mark.

He handed half the stack to Miss Wright, who seemed to have given idle curiosity a pass and gone straight on to full nosiness, craning her head nearly upside-down to read his cramped writing.

"So he wouldn't say who he was, nor who sent the packet," he mused as she flipped through the papers in her hand. "I suppose this means a visit to ye olde alma mater is in order."

"I suppose so," she replied. "And I do wish you would stop adding 'ye olde' to everything. You're worse than some of my pupils!"

He protested and enjoyed the sound of her laugh so much that he tossed a few more ridiculous phrases into the conversation, simply to hear her do it again.

Before long, she gave a startled look at the clock above the door and made her excuses. Ian cast about for any subject that might prolong their conversation but came up empty. With regret, he said good night and turned away to stuff the packet of papers in his briefcase so that he wouldn't watch her walk out of the room.

They'd lingered so long in his classroom that the evening rush hour had started in earnest by the time he pulled out of the car park. His car moved along at a crawl as he headed across town toward his former university. The sight of the brick buildings sprawling in all directions around the central square brought on a rush of nostalgia so strong that he almost expected to see his friends walking toward him around every corner.

By the time he parked the car, it was far too late to expect anyone to still be in the offices, let alone any of the professors who had taught him, most of whom had been nearing their dotage a decade earlier. Since he'd driven all the way over, though, Ian decided to have a ramble just to see what changes time had brought to the sleepy campus. He was so lost in memories as he walked along the path that led toward the science laboratories that he collided head-on with someone hurrying in the opposite direction.

"I beg your pardon!" he cried as he steadied the other man, as much to keep himself from falling as anything else. "I wasn't paying a bit of attention to where I was going. Are you all right?"

"Quite all right!" said the man, straightening his voluminous fur coat and the loop of twine wrapped around him like a belt.

Ian patted him on the furry shoulder as the man did a double-take and gripped his hand for a hearty handshake.

"Oh my word, quite all right indeed!" He kept pumping away at Ian's hand, a crooked grin on his face. "It was I who was careless, my good man. But no worries, both of us seem in fine fettle indeed."

The man chortled a bit and Ian carefully extracted his hand before it was shaken right off his arm. "Do we know each other?" he asked.

"Oh no, no. You'd remember it if we did, wouldn't you? Yes, I dare say you would. I've something of an unforgettable face, or so I've been told. Tell me, do you have the time?"

Ian blinked at the sudden change of topic then checked his wristwatch. "It's just gone eight o'clock."

Pulling a yo-yo, a twisted lump of metal and wire, and a battered wooden recorder from his pocket, the odd little man grumbled a bit then produced an oversized and elaborately decorated pocket watch. He clicked the case open and consulted the dials - Ian saw at least half a dozen before the lid snapped shut again. "Just gone eight, hmm, that's very peculiar. I wouldn't have thought it would still be this light out by eight o'clock in November. And it's so warm! Very peculiar indeed," he mumbled.

"But it's April," Ian reminded him. It appeared he'd met another of the dotty old madmen that universities seemed to breed all on their own. And this one was talking again without even registering what Ian had said.

"I'd love to stay and catch up but Jamie's record shop is sure to be closed by now and it just wouldn't do to let him roam the streets all alone. And you're probably wanted for supper by now! Wouldn't want to keep her waiting, eh?"

Catch up? But we've only just met! Ian thought as the man, whose name he hadn't thought to ask, pumped his hand again and wished him well before scurrying back the way he'd come. "Keep who waiting?" he called after the furry figure disappearing into the lengthening shadows.

Ian wandered the nearby streets for a while, smiling vaguely at the young men and women rushing hither and yon. He crossed over the road and ambled through a small manicured green, emerging on the edge of a car park. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he surveyed the familiar buildings - the residence halls to the south and the library that cast a great hulking shadow over the smaller buildings. Past one side of the massive limestone building, he could just see the corner of the botany glasshouses winking under the setting sun.

It all seemed so long ago, in some other life he remembered mostly as tempered with the empty-headed optimism of youth. He'd had grand visions of making some brilliant scientific discovery and being hailed as the next great man of science. Somewhere along the way it had all gone off the track for that ambitious young man who haunted the laboratory. It wasn't that Ian resented the life he had; for every twenty students who chattered away during his lectures about pop music and hairstyles, there were always one or two whose eyes lit up over a Bunsen burner or a dish of agar. He could almost convince himself that there was more glory in bringing those few to an understanding of the world around them than in laboratory work and published papers.

Almost.

He laughed a little at himself, wondering what one of his friends might say to hear his admittedly pompous inner thoughts. In truth, he didn't mind teaching, in the same way he didn't mind living a quiet bachelor life in one of Mrs Lambert's rooms. They simply weren't things he thought about very often - and certainly not after indulging in a drink or two. That way lay madness and drunken recitations of poetry outside some poor girl's window, as a former flatmate could and would attest.

Still, he wondered if perhaps it were time to give serious thought to settling down, perhaps with a wife and a mortgage. He certainly wasn't getting any younger, and had to admit that his solitude had palled a bit in recent years. He went out occasionally with the few friends from school who hadn't yet buried themselves in domestic bliss and Ted Miller, who taught biology at his previous school and had made it the focus of his off-duty hours as well, often dragged him along to meet this or that eligible woman - even if it was usually to keep her friend occupied while Ted laid on the charm. It wasn't that he lived the life of a monk by any means, although getting around Mrs Lambert's strictures on guests had seemed more trouble than it was worth. Well, he wouldn't have to worry about that any longer, apparently. He felt his face heat again when he thought of her revelation the night before.

Instead of driving directly home, Ian decided to throw caution to the wind and do something a bit irresponsible for a change. He drove in the opposite direction to his landlady's cosy little house and through the heavy early evening traffic to one of the poky little pubs he had frequented during his student days.

It was much smaller and darker than he remembered, but every bit as crowded with brash young men talking loudly over each other. He took his pint to a corner table and sipped at it while watching the crowd.

One of the boys approached with a shy smile and Ian was delighted to recognise Cedric Andrews, one of his former students.

"I'm studying inorganic chemistry," said the boy - well, the young man really, although Ian could not stop seeing him as a spotty fourteen year old who had given up on a promising experiment on aspergillum. "I'm due to finish this year, and then I'll be going to America for a position with a research centre in California."

"California!" Ian exclaimed. "Whatever possessed you to go all that way?"

Cedric fairly vibrated with excitement. "Hannah, that's my fiancée, well, her father is teaching for two years at a university near Los Angeles and while we were there, I was lucky enough to be invited to tour the facility. They're doing such groundbreaking work there. You wouldn't believe the equipment they have at their disposal: they even have an IBM computer! I didn't get near it, of course, but I did meet some of the women who write the programming. Hannah's thinking of applying for a position there too if we don't have children right away." His face went brick-red when he said this and it took a moment for him to stumble back on his conversational track.

He went on at great length about the expansive vistas of the American West and the wealth of money and interest being funnelled into the research centre, but Ian was still stuck at the word fiancée. Surely a boy as young as Cedric couldn't be about to be married! He felt, all in a rush, as old as the hills and just as lonely. He smiled and shook the boy's hand, wishing him nothing but the best and love to the fiancée and of course he'd love to hear all about his California adventures and so on, then excused himself with a promise to write to the boy with his address.

Driving home, he tried to keep his mind busy by cataloguing the errands he needed to run over the coming weekend and the remaining chores Mrs Lambert had manoeuvred him into agreeing to do. By the time he parked his car, he'd nearly managed to put the entire strange evening out of his mind.

Even so, it was days before he stopped thinking of the two conversations whenever he had a free moment. It was even longer before he admitted that his mind frequently turned to Miss Wright whenever he puzzled over the odd little man's parting comments about keeping "her" waiting. As soon as he had, he resolved to ignore it as completely as possible. She was quickly becoming the one bright spot in his days, and he still worried that he would frighten her off if he spoke out of turn or let on how much he anticipated their conversations.

Ian was carrying several test tubes out of the cupboard tucked into the back of the classroom when he saw someone pass by his open door. He dropped the glassware into the well of the sink with a clank and hoped nothing had broken, then hurried out into the corridor. "Good morning, Miss Wright," he called.

She swung back toward him with a bright smile. "Oh, Mr Chesterton! Just the man I was looking for. Could you spare a moment?"

Ian swept an arm toward his empty classroom. "I'm at your disposal. Until the bell, at least."

"This won't take long -- I merely wanted to ask if you could speak to George Bell. He's seemed a bit out of sorts lately. I wanted to make sure everything is all right, but I'm not his favourite teacher at the moment."

"So I'd heard." And oh how he had heard. George had complained long and bitterly about being told to turn over the adventure novels he kept trying to hide in his textbook during lessons. "He's in my final class before lunch; I'll ask him to stay behind a few moments. Is there anything in particular you'd like me to ask?"

"No, if anything is the matter, I'm sure he'll tell you. You're very good with the students, you know. They think very highly of you." She smiled as she said it. "Catch me up at lunch?"

"Of course. Save me a seat in the staff room."

As she thanked him and went down the corridor to her own room, he had to fight the urge to puff out his chest a bit. He settled for straightening his cardigan and pretending not to watch her legs as she walked away.

He almost succeeded.

His morning classes crawled by, and the conversation with George took only moments. Long, incredibly awkward moments in which Ian floundered and the boy danced around his questions before admitting that he was having trouble with his girlfriend. Ian escaped as quickly as he was able, after offering generic and insipid advice.

This was one of the parts of his position he would willingly trade; if he could do nothing but lecture and lead experiments all day, he would. He hadn't been any great success at relationships at any point in his life and felt singularly unqualified to offer words of wisdom to students when he was only just noticing his own growing dissatisfaction with his lot.

Barbara had saved him a seat as promised, long since inured to the sly knowing looks slanted in their direction by the other occupants of the staff room. When he slid into the chair, only her quick movements kept him from spilling his bowl of soup all over her sandwich. He apologised profusely and she waved it off. If she took offense every time he nearly injured one or the both of them, they'd never have become friends in the first place.

"Did you speak to George?" she asked when he seemed to be stuck for an opening line.

"Yes!" he said and then paused, a slight flush colouring his face. "It seems he's worried that Mary Watson is about to throw him over for some rugby player."

"Oh dear, that is world-shattering news."

"It is, isn't it? I gave him a hearty lecture on the merits of a stiff upper lip and tried to turn the conversation in a more academic direction."

"Which worked splendidly, I'm sure, given how very academically-minded he is."

He chuckled into his coffee and winked at her. Barbara pretended not to see it and busied herself with her sandwich, hoping that he wouldn't see the matching flush that now crept up into her cheeks.

When his attention seemed to wander, she rapped him on the knuckles with her fork to bring him back to earth.

"Do you ever wonder if there's some other reality just beyond this one?" he asked, as though it had been weighing heavily on his mind.

Barbara wasn't quite sure how to respond so she waited for him to continue.

"A somewhat bewildering reality that lurks just below the surface of ours?" Ian said, then groaned. That hadn't been what he'd intended to say, and now he sounded like a lunatic.

"You've been stuck inside your books too long," she countered. "All that science can't be healthy."

"That came out all wrong," he tried to explain. "I had the most bizarre encounter the other night - this little man with a fur coat who acted as though he knew me, but I'd never seen him before. I haven't been able to put it out of my head."

She paused for a moment before she replied. "I think," she said slowly, "that there are many levels of reality around us all the time. We just have to learn how to be perceptive in the right ways to notice more than our usual. If you and I were to walk into the British Museum right now, we would see all the same exhibits but you would concentrate on the scientific merits of them whereas I would put them into a historical context. We both see the same thing, but it's coloured by our experiences. Do you see what I'm saying?"

Ian just stared at her, vaguely hoping that his mouth wasn't hanging open. What she'd said was almost exactly what he'd been thinking: that his focus had narrowed so far that when confronted with something out of the ordinary, he slotted it into a neat "other" category and discounted it. More than that, though, her words made him suddenly realise that she was one of those things he had such trouble categorising.

His mind drifted back to the strange little man his own resulting maudlin mood a few days prior that had sent him on a train of thought that kept circling around mortgages and someone waiting supper on him. She figured into those thoughts far more often than he though strictly necessary.

When he didn't say anything, she gave an exaggerated wince. "Did that sound too teacherish? I think I need to spend more time away from the classroom."

"I think the museum sounds like a splendid idea," he blurted. "We should go sometime. You can teach me the error of my scientific ways."

She dropped her fork. "That- I, yes. Yes, that sounds like fun," she agreed, looking startled by her own response.

"It does? I mean, yes, it does! I know that wasn't what you were saying but... Well."

The conversation petered out quickly after that as both of them struggled to find something innocuous to say. Salvation arrived in the form of the bell signalling the start of afternoon lessons and they awkwardly parted in the corridor between their classrooms.

Barbara quickly immersed herself in her lessons and left the building as quickly as she could at the end of the day. She felt cowardly and small but the simple exchange at lunch had somehow altered the path of their relationship, or so she felt. She tried telling herself that she was overreacting but the truth of the matter was that she was afraid of ruining the only friendship she'd managed to build during her time at Coal Hill.

She had never imagined that establishing herself in her chosen profession would be as difficult as it had been and even more disheartening was her lack of allies among her colleagues. Aside from Mr Chesterton, she hadn't progressed much beyond exchanging pleasantries in passing with any of the other members of staff and losing even a tiny measure of the comfortable friendship they shared was simply not acceptable.

Since she was a child, she had dreamed of becoming a teacher - of sharing the mysteries of the world with her students and discovering along the way the vast realm of things she did not yet know. University had been a revelation, at once terrifying and freeing in ways she hadn't dared to imagine. The drudgery of daily study made her long to go out into the world and do, but the camaraderie and lively discussion she found in her fellow students was enough to keep her content with staying.

Making her way out into the world held far fewer enticements. She'd struggled for several years to find a permanent position, whiling away the time in a succession of temporary and supply teaching positions. One especially dark year had seen her working as a secretary just to fill the hours between short-term assignments. Through it all, though, there had been bright sparks, when she connected with a single student or a roomful and was reminded of the very reason she had chosen her path in the first place.

She thought of all of this when Mrs Kingston asked how she'd ended up at Coal Hill over a cup of tea in the staff room a few weeks after the awkward conversation with Mr Chesterton, but said, "Random chance, I think. I happened to be at a party where Mr Drummond told everyone of his plans to move back to Glasgow once the term had finished. When he heard I was a teacher, he quizzed me for an hour on the Roman Empire and insisted I come in to meet with the headmaster."

"Well, it's lucky he did, is all I have to say," Mrs Kingston said.

And that was that. After months of beating her head against the wall that separated her from her colleagues, she was suddenly accepted into their circle. It wasn't a gradual thaw so much as a sudden torrent of invitations to lunch and weekend parties, most of which she attended by herself - feeling very much the outsider still as the others gossiped about previous colleagues.

More awkward still were the increasingly pointed comments and probing questions about her relationship with Mr Chesterton. Among the single women on staff, not to mention the married ones, he was considered something of a dish. Privately, Barbara agreed but always demurred or deflected when pressed.

After some time, the questions stopped but the significant looks when they ate together in the staff room increased exponentially. When one of the French teachers found them chatting at his car a few weeks before the end of the term, Barbara groaned aloud at the woman's raised eyebrows and exaggerated wink.

"Are you all right?" Ian asked. She'd seemed fine a moment earlier, but then she'd made a noise like she was in pain.

She coloured rapidly, her cheeks taking on a hue better suited to a tomato. "I'm fine, really. I should be going, though. I'll see you on Monday!" she called back to him as she hurried away.

"Would you like a lift home?" he shouted after her. She didn't pause to answer, just waved and hurried onward. Ian puzzled over her odd behaviour for most of the ride home but was soon distracted by the latest on Mrs Lambert's endless list of household repairs, followed by yet another of her terrible meals.

On Saturday morning, he went out to run errands. A light rain was falling as he went into a shop to purchase toiletries, but it had turned into a full-force thunderstorm by the time he exited. Rain lashed his face as he ran for the car with his purchases tucked under his jumper.

Ian turned the key and waited for the engine to settle into a steady idle before pulling away from the kerb. As he moved into traffic, he spied a familiar dark-haired woman waiting at the crossing and juggling her handbag, a few bags of shopping, and an unwieldy umbrella. He pulled up alongside her, ignoring the indignant horns that blared behind him, and rolled down his window. His shoulder and sleeve were soaked through before he had it halfway down.

"Fancy meeting you here, Miss Wright!" he shouted over the noise of the cars and the drum of the rain.

She looked up with an expression of surprise that quickly melted into a crooked smile. "Mr Chesterton! What brings you out to this end of town?"

"A little of this, a touch of that. Nothing important, really. Where are you headed? Let me give you a lift." He hoped his face didn't show how much he hoped the answer would be yes.

"I don't think so, but thank you for the offer. I'm perfectly capable of getting myself home." She looked a bit irritated; a tiny wrinkle had popped up between her dark brows. The light changed and she moved to cross in front of the car.

Ian couldn't help the words that slipped out of his mouth as she turned away. "You seem to always be walking away from me, Miss Wright. Why is that?"

She stopped as quickly as if she'd walked into a wall. Ian curled both hands around the wheel, desperately wishing he could roll back time. A big van roared by and splashed water up onto the windscreen. When it cleared, he realised that Barbara was no longer standing next to him. He sighed and turned his head to look for a break in traffic and found her on the opposite side of the car.

She opened the door and climbed in, tucking the umbrella neatly between the seat and the door and settling the bags under the dashboard. When she was situated, she turned and gave him an apologetic smile. "Well? Drive on!"

He closed his mouth with an audible snap and put the car in gear. A brief gap between two lorries widened to double the length of his car and he zipped into it. Barbara braced one hand against the window, but otherwise gave no indication that his driving was the least bit distressing. As they careened around a roundabout, Ian suddenly realised he had no idea where he was taking her.

"You can just drop me at the nearest tube station," she said, as if she'd been reading his mind.

"No, I couldn't! What kind of a gentleman would I be if I abandoned you in this weather? My mother would swoon like a Victorian debutante at the very idea."

Barbara looked torn between giggling and giving him a very cross glare. "It's hardly likely to be raining underground."

"Ah, but it will be at the other end. Unless you live in one of the tunnels? If that's the case, just say so. I've always thought the Piccadilly area would make for a cosy home."

She burst out laughing and Ian struggled to keep his eyes on the road instead of her face. After a few moments, she gave him directions to her home. He was shocked to learn she lived only streets away from his own room at Mrs Lambert's and said as much.

A comfortable silence filled the car, broken only by scattered horns as they drove through the heavy weekend traffic. Ian cast about for some reason to prolong the afternoon and came up with nothing of any use. After working in adjacent rooms for months and speaking as often as they did, he still knew as little about her life outside the school as he did on her first day.

The rain slowed and eventually stopped just as he pulled up in front of the house Barbara pointed out as hers. He hurried around to open the car door for her, but she was already standing on the pavement by the time he rounded the front. She refused his offer to carry her bags and thanked him for the lift.

As he slid back behind the wheel, she turned from her front door and called, "I think it's past time you called me by my first name, don't you?"

She was inside with the door closed before he could think of a more substantial reply than nodding dumbly at her.

He loitered outside the school until the first bell rang the following Monday morning, hoping to catch Barbara on the way in. When she didn't show, he started to worry: that she'd been injured, that she'd quit, that a plane had fallen out of the sky onto her house. With each new scenario he thought up, he was increasingly aware that he was being ridiculous but couldn't stop himself. In his third period lab, he pulled out one of the surprise quizzes he kept in his desk drawer and raced down to the headmaster's office. The school secretary gave him a funny look when he burst through the door. She told him that a supply teacher had been assigned as Barbara had called off ill and wouldn't be back until later in the week.

Feeling ten pounds lighter, but still worrying over ludicrous scenarios in his head, he returned to his room and tried to act normally. During his planning period, he went to the telephone in the staff room to ring her but suddenly realised he didn't have her phone number. Remembering the way the secretary had quickly moved from puzzlement to a look of sly understanding, he decided not to ask her for the number and went on with his day.

He was distracted to the point that even the students noticed for the next two days, and gradually became aware that he was acting like a fool. Realising it and actually stopping himself turned out to be mutually exclusive actions - as each hour crawled past, he found himself continually making lists of things to tell Barbara when she returned. His mood was so altered that even Mrs Lambert commented on it, though when he stammered out a weak story in explanation, she merely patted him on the shoulder and winked.

"I knew you'd fall, sooner or later," she said.

Ian pretended not to know what she meant but as he readied himself for bed that night, he couldn't avoid it any more. He wasn't sure exactly what he felt for Barbara but it went far deeper than concern for a friendly colleague, or even a friend full-stop. Until she wasn't there, he hadn't realised how much he looked forward to seeing and speaking to her every day.

By the time he arrived at the school on Thursday morning, both he and his lesson plans were in total disarray. He felt as though he hadn't slept in weeks and he couldn't stop the thoughts that kept swirling around in his head. His classes had run riot, taking full advantage of his distraction and he expected a summons from Mr Sheard at any moment.

When his door opened part of the way through his free period, he steeled himself for the unwelcome sight of the headmaster's bald head and hangdog features. Instead, he was greeted by Barbara's pale and drawn face and had to grip the arms of his chair to keep from leaping across the room and ushering her into a seat.

"Hello, Ian," she said. Her voice was raspy but strong and though she looked tired, she moved with her usual grace as she came over to perch on the edge of his desk.

He ignored the little thrill it gave him to hear her use his given name. "Barbara, you're back! How are you feeling?"

"I'm on the mend finally, thank you. I would have been back yesterday, but I didn't want to risk any of the students falling ill."

"I wish you had, actually. This week's been a nightmare. I'll be glad when this year is finally over!" He hoped she would take his words at face value and not ask why the week had been such a nightmare. He certainly wasn't sure that he was up to fabricating reasons, nor for admitting the truth.

"Have you any plans for the summer holidays?" she asked.

"No, not really. My parents have gone to visit my brother and his family in Toronto and my landlady has asked me to do quite a few more repairs. Other than that, I'm afraid it will be a succession of Old Miserable Bachelor Days."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, that does sound dreadful. Will they be filled with musty old chemistry tomes and scandalous amounts of whisky?"

"Very near, I'm sorry to say," he said, trying to keep his face relatively serious when all he wanted to do was grin at her like a fool. "Although, you'll have to substitute 'fascinating' for 'musty' and 'grotesque amounts of pudding' for the whisky to gain a more accurate picture."

He was about to ask if she might like to save him from this impending doom by going out for a meal or to a film, or possibly even to the museum they'd discussed so long ago, during the break when one of the fifth formers came in with a question about photosynthesis. He made a face at her over the boy's head as she slipped from the room.

It took several weeks for Barbara to regain her former vigour. By the time she turned in her final marks for the year and packed up the things she'd somehow accumulated in her room, she was beyond ready to retreat into her house and the blissful existence of a teenager-free summer.

It would be the last summer she would spend under her father's roof. Rosemary, her closest friend from university, had moved into a two-bedroom flat several miles nearer to the Coal Hill School than her father's house and would soon be in need of a new flatmate.

Barbara had leapt at the opportunity to move out, ready with an acceptance before Rosemary had even offered her the chance. She was rapidly approaching thirty and increasingly aware of a restlessness growing inside her heart. Not that she expected her life to change radically by moving a few miles away, but she was sure that this was the first step onto a wider path.

Once everything had been settled with her friend, Barbara said over breakfast one morning nearly a fortnight into the summer holidays, "Rosemary's flatmate will be moving out soon."

Father made a rumbling noise behind his paper and turned the page. She steeled herself and pushed on.

"She's marrying a very nice man from Brighton. I'm thinking of taking her room when she leaves."

That got his attention. He folded up the newspaper and set it down next to his plate.

"Rosemary - she's the one with all those unnatural notions about spirits and whatnot, isn't she?"

Barbara hummed noncommittally and busied herself with the marmalade. She wasn't about to allow him to drag her into an argument about the quality of her friends as though she were still in pigtails. "The rent is very reasonable, and I'm due a pay rise this year. It's also much nearer to the school, close enough that I'll be able to walk to and from when the weather is pleasant."

"And when it's not, I'll wager." Father gave her a small smile that she returned easily.

It slid off her face very quickly when he said, "You know, I always assumed that the day you started making plans to leave would be the same day you began planning your wedding."

She breathed in through her nose and concentrated on keeping her voice steady. "I'm hardly announcing my intentions to take the veil."

He snorted and waved a hand at her. "As good as."

"Father..."

"No, you'll listen to me. Your mother, God rest her, must be so disappointed in the both of us. Since she died, we've both retreated into this house and damn the rest of the world if they want to pull us out. You should be married by now with children of your own, instead of settling for teaching other people's."

When she bristled, he snapped, "Don't get all starchy with me; we both know it's the truth."

"It's nothing of the sort! My career is not a poor substitute for the home and husband I don't have - it's everything I've wanted to do since I was a child. I'm sorry that you think it's a waste of my life." She scraped her chair back from the table and walked stiffly across the room to put her plate in the sink.

"Don't be so melodramatic. I know what you gave up to stay with me after your mother died, and I'm sorry for that. But since then, it's as though you've given up on starting your own life. You're already on the back side of thirty and no serious beau in sight."

She stared down at the drain and counted to ten, then twenty. When she felt steadier, she said, "I'll find someone to come in to clean every week for you once I've moved out."

"Oh, now that's not what I'm saying at all! I just want you to be happy, Barbara."

He said it so quietly that she couldn't turn to face him right away because of the tears that rose up in her throat. "I am happy, Father. I know it's not what you expected or hoped for, but the life I'm building is more than enough for me."

Without looking at him, she walked from the room and went upstairs to start packing her things.

When the time arrived, it turned out that moving a lifetime's worth of possessions was so easily accomplished that it was a bit of a letdown. She'd almost expected that the actual process would be as full of turmoil as making the decision to leave had been. Instead, she was sitting in her fully furnished room, surrounded by all her things, by the time the sun set that night.

Adjusting to living with someone other than her father took quite a bit longer. She and Rosemary had shared student accommodations for a year of university, but the situation had changed drastically in just a few years.

In a word, life in the flat was chaotic. Rosemary was a much more social creature than Barbara was, constantly coming and going at all hours of the day and night. More than once, Barbara returned to the flat after a day out in the city to find an impromptu party in full swing or Rosemary snuggled up with a date on the narrow divan.

After only a fortnight or two, Barbara was starting to think that she'd made a mistake in taking the room. On the rare occasions that it was only the two of them in the flat, Rosemary needled her constantly about her lack of a social life and kept offering to set her up on a date with this or that man she knew.

"It's 1963!" she would cry, a glass of potent red wine dangling dangerously from one hand. "You need to go out and have fun, not sit around here waiting for the new term to start. We're only young once, you know."

"Yes, but-" Barbara would start to protest before being cut off.

"Look, just come out with me tonight. Bobby can bring someone along for you and you can pretend you aren't an old woman already!"

The name changed every time but the sentiment was the same: where Barbara's father had pushed her to look for a husband, Rosemary was pushing her to take full advantage of the wonders of the Pill.

It wasn't that Barbara was opposed to letting down her hair once in a while but the relentless pressure from Rosemary made her want to refuse just out of principle. She certainly wasn't as innocent as her father doubtless believed but there was something else holding her back.

If she was totally honest with herself, it was someone else who was holding her back. Over the summer, she met a seemingly endless parade of eligible men, all with something to recommend them - be it a quick wit or a handsome face or an interesting career - but she couldn't stop comparing them all to Ian.

Ian, whom she hadn't seen or spoken to since the last day of the term.

She knew she was being ridiculous but couldn't stop herself from finding fault with all the men who weren't him. In the privacy of her room, she allowed herself to be angry with her own behaviour. As a modern-thinking woman, she recoiled from the idea that she could be so fixated on what was essentially a romanticised ideal of a good friend that she blinded herself to the other possibilities even as they pursued her.

Near the end of the summer holidays, she finally gave in to Rosemary's urging and agreed to come along on one of her dates. At the very least she could have a pleasant night out on the town, she told herself.

And if anything else developed, she certainly wouldn't be opposed to that either. Rosemary and her father were both right: she had been on her own for far too long.

When she told Rosemary, her friend had squealed like the eighteen-year-old girl she'd first met and swung her around the kitchen in a joyous parody of a courtly dance. She rang her date for the evening, whose name Barbara didn't catch, and asked him to bring along a friend - but no one too grotesque.

"Not like last time," Rosemary had giggled into the phone. Barbara didn't bother to ask for details.

They arrived at the restaurant more than fifteen minutes after the pre-arranged time, something that made Barbara's skin itch. She'd never been comfortable with Rosemary's wanton disregard for the passage of time and her months of keeping a close eye on the punctuality of her pupils had made her even more inflexible than ever before.

Rosemary's date was waiting for them at a booth near the back of the room, half-obscured by a long curtain that swept down from the ceiling to trail on the floor. The flickering candlelight made it difficult for Barbara to see him clearly until he rose to greet them.

"Barbara Wright, this is Ted Miller," Rosemary announced with all the solemnity of a society matron before starting to pout a little. "Teddy, where's your friend?"

"He'll be here in a few minutes, I promise. We wouldn't want such a lovely lady to go unescorted tonight!" This he said as he half-bowed over Barbara's hand and pressed a dry kiss to the back of it.

She pretended to fuss with her skirt to hide that she was wiping off her hand. Ted slid back into the booth, motioning for the women to sit on either side of him. Barbara sat reluctantly on his left, keeping a careful distance. Rosemary started to slide in on his right then suddenly excused herself and left the table.

Barbara watched her go with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She hoped Ted wasn't the sort to turn his attention to the nearest available woman when they were alone.

He was, but not in the way she'd feared.

"Rosemary tells me you roomed together during university," he said after a short and uncomfortable silence. "Whatever made you decide to live with her again? I've seen the way she keeps house!"

She did her best to keep the conversation going in her friend's absence but she had no interest in Ted's cynical observations nor his long-winded stories about his position as a biology teacher. When the server arrived, she tried not to be offended by his arrogance in ordering for the whole table, even his friend who still hadn't made an appearance, but didn't quite manage it.

While he quizzed the server on the wine list, she took the opportunity to look around the restaurant for Rosemary, who'd been gone for what seemed like ages. She couldn't see very far in the gloom and turned her attention instead to the hideous painting that hung above Ted's head at the back of the booth. Blobs of purple and red melted into what could have been a grassy green hill, all of it contained in a gaudy gilt frame. It looked like something a nursery school might produce but Barbara had a suspicion that it cost more than she earned in a full term.

She startled when Ted put his hand on her shoulder.

"Look, here he comes now," he said and pointed with his free hand to where someone was approaching the table. "He doesn't get out very often and wasn't too keen on rounding out our party so take it easy on him, yeah?"

Barbara looked to where he was pointing and felt her mood lift immediately. "Ian!"

He acknowledged her with a short nod and a smile that looked forced before shaking Ted's hand over the table. "Barbara, you look well. How has your summer been?"

She only managed a few words in response before Rosemary returned in a flurry of chatter and distracted her.

"You'll never believe who I just saw, Barbara! Bill Thompson, of all people! I thought he'd never leave that pile of his but here he is, right in town. Oh, you must be Ted's friend Ian!" She gave him a quick hug that seemed to take him aback. "I'm so glad you could join us tonight, and on such short notice!"

She slid into the booth next to Ted and patted the seat next to her. Ian sat, looking ill at ease. Barbara studied him over the table, noticing that he looked no more rested than he had when they'd parted at Coal Hill. She wondered how he'd been spending his summer - the last time they spoke, he'd been looking forward to catching up on his reading and generally being as slothful as possible but here he was, face pinched and tight and his mood more than a little on the surly side.

All through the first course, she kept trying to engage him in conversation but he would give no more than a few words in response. Even Rosemary's gentle prodding didn't bring him any farther out of his shell.

When Ted and Rosemary put their heads together to whisper about something, Barbara leaned across the table and lightly touched his hand. "Is something wrong, Ian?"

"No, nothing's wrong." Another of his uncomfortable smiles briefly crossed his face.

She felt her brow furrow and her mouth turned down in a frown. "Are you sure? You don't seem quite yourself tonight."

This time his smile was decidedly more of a grimace. "It's nothing for you to trouble yourself over, really."

Confused and disappointed by his bad mood, she sat back and let herself be pulled into their companions' conversation for the remainder of the meal. Several times, she noticed Ian watching her but he wouldn't meet her eyes and didn't contribute to the conversation unless asked a direct question.

When their coffees arrived, Ted excused himself to speak to someone he recognised across the room - though Barbara wondered how he could have even seen the man in the first place. Rosemary followed after him, leaving Ian and Barbara alone at the table.

Rather than risking being rebuffed by Ian again, Barbara pretended to be totally absorbed in the contents of her coffee cup.

After a few moments, Ian cleared his throat and said, "Are you nearly ready to go back to work? Only a few days of freedom left."

She decided to follow his example and kept her answer as short as possible. "Yes, I am."

Silence fell again and she saw him fidgeting with his spoon and looking around the room. She couldn't hide her smile when his gaze fell on the painting over their booth and he recoiled violently.

"It's awful, isn't it?"

"Good lord, yes. I've seen more appealing things in back of my landlady's icebox, though not by much."

That shocked an amused snort out of her and she clapped a hand over her mouth as she dissolved into giggles. Ian grinned at her over the table, his earlier foul temper seemingly forgotten.

"She's outdone herself lately, you know. Last week, she attempted some sort of flan with currants and orange peel. I couldn't even pretend to eat it!"

In the absence of their friends, Ian felt more like himself. The tension and irritable mood that had gripped him when he entered to find Barbara sitting alone in the booth with Ted melted away, leaving him with the realisation that he'd been an utter prat for most of the night. He'd misread the situation, jumping to conclusions about Ted's hand on Barbara's shoulder that bore little resemblance to reality. He wanted to apologise but couldn't think of a way to do it without revealing far more than he felt ready to do.

They sat talking long after the tables around them emptied. Suddenly Barbara looked up in surprise and asked what had happened to Ted and Rosemary. Almost as soon as she'd finished the question, she seemed to realise what had happened and looked away.

Ian blushed, something he was embarrassingly prone to doing around her, and offered her a lift home. She accepted easily enough but avoided making any more mention of their missing friends.

In the car, he asked her to remind him how to get to her house, remembering only that her street crossed his somewhere. To his surprise, she told him to go in the opposite direction.

"I thought you lived just a few streets away from me?"

"I can't believe I forgot to tell you!" She looked embarrassed by the lapse. "I've moved into a flat with Rosemary - we've been friends since university. When her flatmate moved out to get married this summer, I jumped at the chance. It's nearer to the school and the rent is quite reasonable."

He found it difficult to imagine the serious, studious Barbara he knew living with the much flightier woman, who'd offered to read his Tarot within minutes of meeting him that night. When he said as much, Barbara said, sounding cross, "I do have a life outside of teaching, you know."

"So I'm learning," he said, very softly.

They returned to less volatile topics for the rest of the drive. This time, though, when Ian pulled into an open parking space in front of her building, he jumped out of the car and hurried to open her door before she could do it herself.

As they walked toward the front door of her building, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and wondered when exactly the evening had started to feel like a real date.

At the door, he started to put out a hand for her to shake at the same time that she leaned toward him. He tried to jerk his arm back but misjudged how near she was standing and the tips of his fingers glanced off her ribs. He pressed his hand against his leg to keep from reaching out for her again.

She waved off his apology and pressed a light kiss to his cheek. "Thank you for an eventually lovely evening. Once you came out of your snit you made a very pleasant date."

He shuffled his feet. "About that, Barbara..."

"Please don't," she said. "We'll just pretend it didn't happen."

"That I can do very well." He felt awkward standing there on the front steps but was loath to turn and walk back to his car.

"Are you going to Mrs Kingston's start of term party?" she asked. "I'm told it's a must-attend, or you'll be positively shunned all year."

"Well, we wouldn't want that, would we?" Feeling brave, he said, "Why don't we go together? If it's a dead bore - and I'm operating on the assumption that it will be - I can fake an illness and you'll be forced to drive me home."

"I doubt it will come to that!" she protested.

"That's right; this is your first Kingston soiree, isn't it? Trust me when I say that an escape strategy is a necessity," Ian assured her.

"I'll defer to your judgement then. Meet me here at seven that night? I'm not sure how long it takes to get to the Kingstons' from here. I've only ever been when someone else was driving."

"It's a date! And I'll see you bright and early on Monday morning."

She wrinkled her nose. "Don't remind me!"

Ian gave in to the impulse to return the friendly kiss on the cheek she'd given him, then watched from the kerb as she went into the building and turned on her lights. Feeling more light-hearted than he had in weeks, he started to whistle as he drove home.

The first week back at school was exhausting. Barbara barely had the energy to make a sandwich at night, let alone take care of the errands she needed to run. On the day of the party she rushed through her chores then hurried off to try to find suitable gifts for both

Mrs Kingston, and for Ian, whose birthday wasn't far off.

"What on earth am I going to give him?" she muttered. Clothing was far too intimate, she had no idea what sort of music he liked, and the only books he ever seemed to read were boring old science texts.

On the next street, she bumped into a tall, curly-haired man who reached out with one long arm to steady her when she became tangled in his impossibly long scarf. She apologised profusely and helped him to pick up his packages, which had tumbled onto the sidewalk. As she handed the last paper-wrapped parcel to him, a young woman with long blonde hair stepped out of a nearby bookstore and said, "I've found that biography of Newton you wanted, Doctor."

The doctor grinned, revealing a dangerous-looking set of teeth, and cried, "Excellent! Now we shall see what lies have made it into print." He winked at Barbara and said, "Really, it's the perfect combination, this book - the blending of science and history has something of an inevitability to it, wouldn't you say?"

She agreed, but along rather different lines than those he was referring to. Before she could say anything, he had walked into the bookstore after the young woman, calling over his shoulder, "Until we meet again, my dear!"

Barbara, not wanting to look as though she were following the mismatched pair, continued walking down the street but turned back after only passing only a few shops. A biography of a famous scientist would be the perfect gift for Ian and close enough to her own field that she was reasonably certain of her ability to choose a good one.

The tall man and his companion were nowhere in sight when she entered the bookstore and she sent up a brief prayer of thanks - one uninvited conversation per day was her limit, she decided. She browsed through the books on display, choosing several at random that looked interesting enough, then added a slim volume of Romantic poetry for Mrs Kingston and took the lot up to the counter to ask the clerk's opinion.

"Newton's rather popular today, miss. Maybe you should go with that one," he offered.

Barbara gratefully set aside the rest of her selection and paid. When she mentioned that the books were intended to be gifts, the clerk wrapped them for her in brightly coloured paper and threw in two small embossed cards. She wrote out two quick notes then went back out into the street with her purchases. The bells from a nearby church rang out the hour and she hurried back to the tube station.

Rosemary was out when she arrived back at the flat, which made getting ready that much faster since she didn't have to fight for mirror space. While she was still pinning up her hair, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," she called.

The door opened then closed again and Ian called, "Are you ready to go?"

"In just a moment. There's wine open if you'd like a glass."

"Don't mind if I do," he said.

She joined him a few minutes' later in the kitchen, feeling a little embarrassed as he did an exaggerated double-take and whistled.

"Are you ready to go? Traffic was a bit heavy on the way here so we should probably go soon."

Barbara collected the presents she'd purchased and Ian held the door open for her as they went out to his car.

He spent most of the ride into Chiswick trying to divine the contents of her packages and to talk her into stopping for a drink before they subjected themselves to an entire evening of their colleagues and assorted spouses.

"Are you sure we're not too early?" She asked as he parked down the street from the Kingston's house. "Mrs Kingston said the party would start at eight and it's only just half seven."

"Well, if you hadn't kicked up such a fuss about not stopping for a fortifying drink on the way, we would be exactly on time," he chided as they went up to the door and rang the bell.

"I just don't think it would look good to show up together reeking of spirits, that's all."

"Ah, there's a point I hadn't considered. Can't hold your drink, hmm? Must be murder on the laundry, spilling drinks all over yourself."

She could feel her eyes starting to roll heavenward. "Really, Ian, your jokes get worse the longer I know you. In ten or twenty years, they may very well drive me to violence."

They stood in awkward silence for long moments after her pronouncement, waiting for someone to answer the door. Finally a blond man in cricket whites opened the door and ushered them inside. He introduced himself as a friend of Mr Kingston, and directed them into the lounge.

"The Kingstons have been unavoidably detained and asked me to entertain any early arrivals until they get here."

"I hope it's nothing serious!" Barbara said. She knew that Mrs Kingston's mother had been doing poorly, and had had at least one serious health scare in the past year.

"Just a little confusion about interstellar social conventions - nothing to worry about! Now, can I get either of you a drink? I mix a mean Tom Collins."

"Interstellar what?" Ian asked, then shook his head. "You know what, never mind. I think I will have that drink."

"Excellent, erm... Sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"It's Chesterton. But call me Ian. I get enough of my last name at work."

The blond man smiled. "I'm sure you do. And this must be Mrs Chesterton! Barbara, right?"

He pumped her hand energetically, the wilted celery in his lapel bobbing with the motion, and ignored their attempts to correct his assumption. As he mixed drinks, he said, "I should have known it was you as soon as I answered the door! Mrs Kingston's very fond of you both, you know. Has barely stopped talking about you all day."

"Clearly he wasn't paying much attention," Ian muttered.

Barbara cuffed him on the shoulder and whispered, "Play nice with the madman." When the madman in question came around from behind the bar, she accepted her drink with a wry smile. "Have you known the Kingstons long?"

"Just met them this morning, as a matter of fact. I'd tell you how but it's a very long story and I think we're about to have company!"

As if on cue, the doorbell rang again and he bounded away to greet the newcomers.

"What on earth has that old busybody been saying about us, I wonder?" Ian mused over the rim of his glass.

Barbara gaped at him. Surely he wasn't that oblivious to the rumours that had been swirling around them for months.

Catching her look, he glanced down at his shirtfront. "Did I spill something on myself already? You honestly can't take me anywhere."

In the end, neither of them had to fake illness to get away. The party was a rousing success, due mostly to the fact that the Kingstons didn't make it home until late in the evening just as everyone was starting to say their goodbyes.

The blond man, whose name they'd never caught, disappeared early in the evening but Barbara kept hearing echoes of his assumption from the rest of the faculty in attendance. She'd been at a complete loss for words when two of the language teachers had cornered her and asked when she was going to put Ian out of his misery and make her move. When they started to tell her in graphic detail how they would go about it in her place, she let her temper get the better of her and couldn't resist the urge to tweak them a bit.

"Just between us girls, I think tonight's the night," she stage-whispered with a conspiratorial air. "He's so difficult to resist when I've been drinking." She walked away calmly, putting a little more hip-swinging into her gait than was strictly necessary, and immediately regretted the impulsive words. The two women erupted into frantic whispers behind her and with each step she imagined more and more eyes following her every move.

Ian stood frozen just outside the room. He'd been looking for Barbara to see if she were ready to make their escape when he'd heard his name and ducked out of sight. It was lucky he had the reflexes of a wallflower or else he might have embarrassed both himself and Barbara by blundering into what was clearly not a conversation intended for his ears.

But what did she mean by it? Was she just trying to quiet the gossipy women who'd had her cornered or was there some truth behind her words? He couldn't deny that a ridiculous amount of his time in the past few months had been devoted to thinking about her and wondering if they would ever progress beyond the comfortable friendship that had developed between them. After the evening they'd spent with Ted and Rosemary, he'd even started to hope again that it would.

In fact, he'd had some vague plans to press the issue at the party but the shock of being mistaken for a married couple had pushed them right out of his head. Now, having heard her, he felt emboldened. He pushed away from the wall and went in search of her.

By the time he found her in conversation with Mr Sheard, some of his bravado had dissipated. Her smile was friendly but reserved and she didn't immediately try to pull him into the conversation.

When the older man wandered away a few minutes later, Barbara said, "Are you ready to go? You don't look like you're enjoying yourself very much."

There was nothing in her manner or her voice that hinted that she was burning up with the desire to get him alone, just friendly concern and perhaps a touch of fatigue. He was surprised at the strength of the disappointment that swept through him.

"Ready whenever you are. Should we say good night to our hosts?"

"Let's just go. I'm afraid if I try to say good night, Mrs Kingston will draw me into another long conversation about her son. I swear I know more about that boy now than I do about my own family."

They made their way quickly out of the house and Barbara kept up a running commentary on the way home, filling Ian in on the gossip she'd collected during the evening. She seemed more cheerful and less tired once it was just the two of them, but when he walked with her up to her building, she just leaned in to kiss him on the cheek again then slipped through the door.

All the next day, as Ian made revisions to his lesson plan for the first term, he kept distracting himself with outlandish ways to gauge Barbara's interest. He felt like a teenager who had just discovered that maybe the opposite sex had something to offer after all.

The sun was only just beginning to peek over the horizon on Monday morning when Ian pulled the car into his usual parking space. He'd set his alarm nearly an hour earlier than normal in order to be at school well before Barbara arrived, hoping to catch her for a few minutes before either of them could be distracted by students and lessons. Once he was there, though, he realised he hadn't thought this plan through as well as he ought to have done. The earliest member of the faculty wouldn't be here for at least another half an hour, and Barbara was never the first to arrive. He had hoped to get her alone, but the prospect of hanging about the corridors like a lovestruck idiot made his stomach start to churn.

Mentally kicking himself, he walked briskly down the road to a little café. A plate of toast and a cup of coffee sounded just the thing. Having a flip through a newspaper wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, either. This was the first morning in years he hadn't sat down to a hearty breakfast before heading off and the absence of it was like an itch along his spine, not to mention the queer empty feeling in his stomach.

The café was bright, homely, and a welcome change to the blustery day dawning outside. Ian took a seat at a small table near the window and looked around. The place was not very crowded. Almost half the tables were empty and it wasn't a large room by any stretch of the imagination. He hoped it wasn't a reflection of the quality of the food; the rumbling of his empty stomach had started to sound like a threat.

Within moments, a stout, middle-aged waitress had filled his coffee mug, badgered him into ordering something more substantial than toast and jam, and conjured up a morning paper, seemingly out of thin air. He listened to the conversations flowing around him and had to bite down on his tongue to keep from jumping into a conversation about the recent scandalous behaviour of a local politician. It was far too early to be drawn into arguments with complete strangers.

The waitress soon returned with a plate piled high with eggs and toast and sausages and slices of grilled tomato. Ian's stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl, which the waitress acknowledged with a nod and a wink before moving off to refill the cups at a neighbouring table.

"...but that's my whole point, see? Man gets himself elected to office, he should be held to a higher standard!" cried a man with an absurd amount of messy hair seated at the next table, the coffee in his cup sloshing dangerously as he waved it in the air.

Ian shook his head and applied himself to his breakfast. It was hardly worth the upset the man displayed; there were far worse things in the world than a politician being caught out in a lie. In fact, everyone would be better served by being held to a higher standard of behaviour, not just those few who held positions of power or prestige.

As he swallowed the last forkful of eggs, Ian realised that his inner voice had sounded remarkably like Barbara. That woman really did affect him in the strangest ways sometimes. A little more time spent in her company and he'd be off fighting for women to join the army or some such nonsense.

"See, now, this man will tell you I'm right! I'm willing to bet he'd never do anything that didn't sit right with his conscience, even if it gets him into trouble."

Ian looked up from the paper to find the man staring at him expectantly. "I beg your pardon? "

"Oh, don't mind him," said the red-haired woman sitting with the other man, whose eyeglasses were sliding down his nose. "He just jabbers on and on and on. You'd think he got paid by the word or something."

The man looked affronted, but kept staring at Ian. "You wouldn't, would you? Do something that didn't jibe with your view of the world, no matter the consequences?"

"I try not to engage in philosophical debates with people I don't know."

"Well then!" cried the man, with a manic-looking grin. "That's easy enough to remedy. I'm the... I'm John Smith, and this is Miss Donna Noble."

Donna gave John a strange look then smiled at Ian and leaned forward over the table so that her low-cut top gaped dangerously lower. "Pleased to meet you," she purred. "What's your name then?"

Ian cleared his throat and tried to keep his gaze away from her prodigious cleavage. "Ian Chesterton."

"Chatterton? Bit of an unusual name, that," John said.

"Yes, but my name is Chesterton."

"Ohh, Chesterton. My hearing must be going a bit funny in my old age."

Donna snorted into her coffee.

John ignored her. "So, now we've been properly introduced, how about it? Let's say you're faced with some crisis or other, and the only way to extricate yourself is to do something you would normally find morally repugnant. Would you do it?"

"That's a ridiculous question - there's never only a single solution to a problem."

"Would that that were true," John muttered.

When he didn't elaborate, Donna gave him another strange look then leaned forward again, this time with a distinctly predatory look. "So, you married?"

"Ah, no. I'm not married," he said.

"Really," she drawled and scooted her chair closer. "Girlfriend?"

Ian shifted away uneasily, looking around for the waitress. Or anyone else who might rescue him from the conversation. "No, I'm not seeing anyone at the moment. Well, there is someone. We work at the same school. We're not in a relationship exactly but-"

"But you'd like to be," Donna finished for him. "Does she know?"

"I hope so, or I'm going to feel like quite the idiot a little later today."

Both of his new acquaintances raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'm going to ask her to go out with me this weekend." He laughed a little too loudly. "Hopefully she'll accept when I ask or I'm going to be moping around my landlady's house the whole time feeling sorry for myself."

Donna reached over to pat his hand. "If she says no, she's the idiot. But I've got a good feeling about this, Ian Chesterton."

She elbowed John in the ribs. "What about you?"

"What about me what?"

"God, you're dense. You got a good feeling about Ian here?"

Instead of mimicking Donna's cheerful prediction, John looked serious and sombre. "I don't have a good feeling; I've a great one. You're going to have a brilliant time tomorrow, and an even better future. I'd stake my lives on it."

Ian shifted in his seat again as a ripple of unease crept up his spine. He couldn't deny that the man's words made him feel that much better about his plans but there was something about his certainty that made him uncomfortable.

Donna just gaped at John. "That's a bit soppy for you, isn't it?"

"Some people consider me an incurable romantic, I'll have you know! Casanova, for one."

"Oh go on, pull the other one," Donna jeered.

John suddenly broke into a grin that nearly split his face in two then leapt from his chair and shook Ian's hand. "Come on, Donna. Let's leave this young man to his breakfast and his nerves." Without waiting for a response, he raced out the front door.

"But my eggs!" Donna yelled after him as she pulled a few crumpled notes from her pocket and tossed them on the table. "Can't even sit still for five minutes together but what're you gonna do?" she grumbled. "Time waits for no one, especially not that hyperactive overgrown toddler in pinstripes."

She leaned over Ian's table and patted his cheek fondly. "Don't let that girl get away, you hear?"

He didn't know what to say to her, this utter stranger who acted like she'd known him longer than the ten minutes or so that they'd been talking.

As the door swung shut behind her, Ian thought he heard John say, "Never mind your eggs. We'll have a big lunch in 1810!"

He leaned back to watch them race down the street together through the cafe's front windows, wondering what madhouse they'd escaped from.

Students were starting to trickle into the school when he returned and he saw Barbara walking briskly toward the entrance. He hurried across the front lawn and vaulted up the stairs just in time to see her disappear through the door of her room with one of her students who'd asked for additional tutoring.

He swore and tried not to slam the door behind him as he went into his own classroom. The day crawled past agonizingly slowly, except for the brief few moments at lunch when he thought he'd have a chance to speak to Barbara alone. Those hopes were dashed when she was cornered in the corridor by a hysterical girl waving a test paper in one hand. He lingered in the staff room until the final bell, then dashed up to his classroom.

Halfway through the afternoon, he gave up on trying to keep his attention on the subject at hand, let alone engaging the students in what he was saying. In his last period, he scribbled some equations on the blackboard and divided the class into groups to work out the coefficients. Just before the bell rang, he collected their papers and stuffed them into his briefcase. He hurried out on their heels and then loitered under a tree, out of the drizzling rain, waiting for Barbara to emerge.

When she didn't show, he paced the length of the courtyard before running back up the stairs. A few of Barbara's history club members from the previous year were just starting down when he reached the top and he suddenly remembered that she had talked that weekend of planning some sort of event with them.

He waited outside her door until the last of the students filed out, then screwed his courage to the sticking point and stepped over the threshold.

Barbara recognised his footsteps as he came into the room and said without looking up from the papers she was reviewing, "You're here surprisingly late today, Ian. I thought you'd be off like a shot as soon as the bell rang."

"Yes, yes. I was. I mean, I was planning on it, but..."

When he didn't continue right away, Barbara looked up to find him fidgeting in her doorway. He straightened his tie twice while she waited for him to speak.

"Barbara," he began. He seemed to lose his train of thought after that and started fiddling with one of the buttons on his jacket.

She laughed. "Well, out with it! It's nearly full dark outside and I don't fancy the walk home in this weather."

Ian stood a little straighter. "Nonsense! I'll give you a lift. Not fit for man nor beast outside."

She was ready to refuse the offer, but reconsidered. It wasn't an awfully long walk home but the rain now pounding against the windows made her less than eager to step outside. "Thank you. That would be lovely."

Ian helped her tidy the shelves and held her coat for her once everything was to her satisfaction in the room. He kept up a lively chatter on the short drive to her flat and it wasn't until hours later as she was changing into her nightclothes that she realised he'd never said why he'd been waiting for her.

The next day, he was still acting fidgety around her; it was enough to make her want to shake him and tell him to spit it out. She decided to wait him out -she didn't want to scare him off before he managed to say or do whatever it was that had him so agitated.

She didn't have to wait long.

"Right. Sorry to barge in on you during your planning period but I want to ask you something," he said as he burst through her door that afternoon.

"Don't you have a class this period?"

"What? Yes, no, I've left them to read ahead for a few moments. Convection currents in the atmosphere." He half-turned away like he could check on the class through the blackboard on the wall.

Barbara pressed a hand to her lips to keep from tittering. Something about his attitude was making her feel as nervous as he seemed. "That sounds fascinating."

"It is, really! I'm going to set them a special project of mapping a particular re-occurring atmospheric current with an eye to how it affects weather here in London-"

"I would venture to guess that it's probably not why you came in to speak to me though, is it?" she interrupted before he could warm to the subject and derail whatever conversation he'd intended to start.

"Not as such, no," he admitted. Without so much as pausing for a breath, he said all in a rush, "Do you have plans for this weekend? I thought we might finally get around to going to the museum together."

She wasn't totally surprised by the invitation, not after the way she'd been hoping he'd ask ever since the conversation where they'd initially discussed it. "Yes, let's! How about Saturday morning, around ten? That way we should beat most of the crowd."

Ian looked far more shocked by her ready acceptance than she thought he ought to have been. They had been dancing around each other for more than a year, growing close enough to confide secrets in each other but always holding back from that final step - the one that would carry them far from their comfortable relationship.

Or ruin everything, as she worried might happen. She wasn't certain that dating a fellow teacher from within her own school was the wisest choice she'd ever made. Despite the increasingly progressive attitudes toward her sex, there was still the expectation that an unmarried teacher was what some might call a spinster for a reason. If she did marry, she knew there would be pressure on her to leave teaching to devote herself to her husband and any children they might have. Certainly her own father would expect it.

Not that she expected to marry Ian! Heavens, it was only a date to go to a museum together and, more than likely, argue about the exhibits. She was embarrassed by the way her mind kept racing along to ridiculous conclusions and tried with some difficulty to concentrate on what he was saying.

"...the admission, since I'm the one who asked you to go. Should I pick you up or would you rather meet there?"

"Why don't you pick me up? That way neither of us will have to wait if there's some delay."

"Practical as always," he teased, and she rolled her eyes at him.

On Saturday morning, she rose far too early and was waiting for him on the kerb when his car pulled up.

"I take it you're in a hurry?" Ian asked as she got into the car.

"I like to get there before the crowds," she said primly and ignored his bark of laughter.

"Lucky I picked up two admission tickets yesterday after school then, eh?"

When they neared the museum, Ian started to complain about the lack of available parking. Barbara directed him to a nearby street that was all but empty of cars. They walked quickly back to the main entrance, dodging groups of tourists and students along the way.

A large blond man in a garish coat held up his arms as they approached the doors. "I should have known you'd turn up. I'm afraid the museum is closed for the rest of the day," he told them.

"Oh, but we've already purchased our tickets!" Barbara cried. "When did this happen?"

"About ten minutes from now."

Ian startled and felt his face set into angry lines, much like it did whenever he left a meeting with the headmaster. "From now? Whatever does that mean?"

"Well, your language was never very good at tenses, was it?" the man replied as he put a hand on each of their shoulders and started pushing them away from the entrance. "Now hurry along now, I haven't time for all of your tedious questions. You can go catch the early, early show at the Odeon or hang about across the road there to see what's happened. Happening? Will happened? I really ought to do something about the translation matrix."

Ian was ready to argue further when Barbara slipped her hand in his and started pulling him away from the buffoon in the coat.

"Let's just go, Ian," she said. "We can have a coffee instead. The museum will still be here when we come back."

Several streets away, she ducked into the first restaurant she saw. Behind her, Ian was still muttering about rude clowns and wasted tickets. They had just ordered their coffees when a loud boom slammed into the windows and everything in the restaurant rattled and shook. Both she and Ian, along with most of the others, ran for the door. People were pouring into the street from every direction, cars stopped and people shrieking.

Barbara tamped down the fear that had crawled into her throat, the long-forgotten remnants of childhood terror as she sat tucked against her mother's side in their Anderson shelter. If she closed her eyes, she knew that she'd be transported back to those long, terrible days and nights while the skies exploded and the city fell or burned around them.

Up and down the street, people were staring into the sky and pointing in opposite directions. Ian grabbed her by the elbow and started running back the way they'd come, toward the museum.

As they flew past, an elderly woman cried, "Dear God, it's not the Germans come again, is it?"

Her heart was pounding in her ears as she pelted along after Ian. She was certain the man in the funny coat was responsible for whatever had happened, but it didn't stop her from darting quick looks up into the sky to make sure there weren't planes and bombs screaming overhead. She was so busy looking and praying that she didn't notice Ian had stopped dead in front of her. She slammed into his back and gripped his shoulders to keep from tumbling to the pavement.

"Barbara, look!" he said, urgently. He thrust an arm behind him and grabbed her elbow again, pulling her around to his side to face what he was seeing as if she couldn't have spotted the gaping crater where the museum had been only moments before. "It's gone, it's simply gone!"

"But it can't be. It was just right there! Ian, we were nearly inside!"

His hand tightened on her arm as though he were trying to convince them both that they hadn't fallen into some nightmare reality where buildings could just disappear.

She didn't know how long they stood there staring, only that police and soldiers were swarming all over the crater as they were ushered away in a clump of bystanders. A young soldier in battle dress and a turtle helmet gave them what sounded like a not very well-rehearsed story about gas pockets and a doodlebug left from the war.

The crowd around them seemed content with the story but Ian's hand shook in her grip and he burst out, "What about the rubble? There would be-"

But no one heard what there would be as Ian's shout was drowned out by a sound not entirely unlike someone attempting to play the bagpipes with a lorry engine or a rusty saw. When it died away at last, the soldier's eyes were as round as his helmet and he urged them all to return home.

Ian stood his ground as the crowd dispersed around them then headed for the young man, who turned away with sharp, precise movements and wouldn't meet their eyes.

"Hang on a minute," shouted Ian in his no-nonsense teacher's voice. The soldier made a beeline for another uniformed man, snapping off a crisp salute and speaking in a low voice that didn't carry back to where they were pursuing him still.

The other man, at least a decade closer to Ian and Barbara's age, looked up sharply at them and dismissed the soldier with a jerk of his head.

"You there," Ian said. "Are you in charge of all this?"

"Group Captain Gilmore, sir. Ma'am," he added with a brief nod.

"What's happened here?" Barbara asked. "And don't give us any of that nonsense about an explosion. Not even a V-1 could obliterate an entire building with no debris left behind, no matter how many gas pockets you say you've found."

She saw Ian give her a wondering look and couldn't stop herself from snapping, "You're not the only who's ever taken a physics course."

Gilmore looked like he couldn't decide between amusement and irritation while Ian harrumphed at her. Irritation won out in the end.

"Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to stand aside and let my men do their work." He gestured at a soldier standing nearby who slung his rifle back over one shoulder as he came toward them.

"Then I suppose you won't want to know about the man who told us the museum was closed," she said as Gilmore turned away.

He turned back, narrowed his eyes at her and told the soldier to wait. "What man?"

"We didn't ask for his name," Ian told him. "He was several inches taller than me with a rather burly build. Curly blond hair and a ludicrous patchwork coat."

Barbara added, "He stopped us going in half an hour or so ago. What was it he said? Closed for the rest of the day?"

"Yes, and that queer business about tenses," Ian added. "Whatever's happened here, he's a part of it. I'm sure of it."

Gilmore didn't look like he put much stock in anything they'd said. He told the soldier to escort them to the command post and have the sergeant take down their information.

The sergeant didn't seem any more disposed to believing their story than did the Group Captain, but he was marginally more polite about it. He had them both write out statements while he hunted up a couple of cups of tea and someone to witness their signatures.

Barbara had just finished reading over her page again and was signing her name when the sergeant returned, holding back one flap of the tent for a tall, handsome man in a long gray coat.

Ian jumped to his feet and pointed his pen at them. "When is someone going to tell us what is going on?"

"It's nothing to worry about, really," the new arrival said in a flat American accent. "How's the tea?"

"We don't care about the tea," Ian blustered.

"Not very good then, huh?"

Barbara put a hand on Ian's arm to halt him as he started toward the man. "Please excuse us," she said. "We're still a bit rattled."

"It's no trouble at all," the man leered as he came over to take her hand in his. "Captain Jack Harkness, at your service." He followed this with a wink and a squeeze of her fingers.

Next to her, Ian bristled even further. Barbara slipped her hand out of the man's grip and took a step back.

He didn't seem offended, just grinned and clasped his hands behind his back then launched into what sounded like a thoroughly rehearsed speech.

"At approximately 1000 hours we were informed that a grounds crew found a piece of unexploded ordnance in a courtyard they were renovating inside the museum. By the time we arrived, the bomb had been detonated and destroyed the building-"

Barbara squared her soldiers and summoned her most no-nonsense tone to interrupt. "If you're not going to tell us the truth, you may as well let us go."

The American bounced on the balls of his feet and looked delighted. "Can't get anything past you, can I?"

She'd just started to reply when another loud boom echoed outside the tent. She grabbed onto Ian and all three of them started for the opening. Before they could make it outside, the same young soldier from earlier came skidding through and snapped to attention.

"It's back, sir!" he barked before turning and going back out the way he'd come in.

Captain Harkness sprinted after him with Barbara and Ian on his heels. They all stumbled to a stop in the street and gaped up at the solid bulk of the museum which had appeared just as suddenly as it had disappeared.

"But this is impossible!" Ian cried.

"Not impossible, just highly improbable," answered Captain Harkness. "Here, let's go back into the command tent and I'll try to explain what's happening here."

They followed him dumbly, still sneaking disbelieving glances back at the museum over their shoulders. Inside the tent, they sank into the seats they'd been in as Harkness tossed out their tea and poured new cups for them both. He asked if they both took milk and sugar, then stirred something into both cups from an oddly shaped container he'd taken from his pocket.

Barbara started to protest but he cut her off with a flourish.

"It's an artificial sweetener, I swear. Here, look, I'll have some too." He set down their cups then mixed one for himself.

"You promised us answers, not a cuppa," she reminded him.

"So I did. I don't suppose you'd believe the one about the magician and the trick that went wrong?"

"Hardly," Ian scoffed. "What's happened out there? There's no way that an entire building can just disappear and reappear like that."

"There are plenty of ways, actually," Harkness assured him. "Just not any that you're familiar with. How's your tea? Sweet enough?"

Both Ian and Barbara raised their cups and emptied them, though Barbara had a vague feeling that she'd had no intention of drinking more than a polite sip. When they'd drained their cups and set them down on the table, Harkness rubbed his hands together and leaned in conspiratorially.

"Have you, by any chance, seen a large blue police box nearby today?"

Barbara expected Ian to have another outburst but instead he merely settled back into his chair and narrowed his eyes. She didn't blame him; she was starting to feel the exhaustion that usually followed a fright.

Harkness continued, looking from one to the other. "Or possibly a dark-haired man in a leather coat, looks a little like he might be a sailor?"

"This is all nonsense," Ian protested but without the irritation that had coloured his voice earlier. "Buildings disappear into thin air and you're asking us about police boxes and sailors."

Barbara nodded, for lack of anything more constructive to do.

Harkness flashed them both another of his blindingly white smiles and clapped his hands. "I'm sorry to have detained you folks for so long, really I am. Tell you what, let me make it up to you. I'll have one of these fine young men escort you to a great restaurant a few streets from here, and everything's on me: starters, a big bottle of their most potent wine, pudding. It's the least we can do in light of your ordeal today."

"Our ordeal?" Barbara asked, confused. She felt utterly relaxed and had to fight to keep upright in her chair instead of flopping down onto the ground - certainly not the kind of reaction she would expect to have after a trauma.

"The bomb?" Harkness reminded her. "In the museum? You're both lucky it was only a little one - any bigger and neither of you would have made it out alive."

Barbara tried to make his words fit with her memories, but could summon up only a hazy recollection of the events he'd mentioned. She remembered walking with Ian toward the museum, then everything seemed to happen in slow motion - the soldier who'd helped them away from the site of the blast moving as though underwater, the medics who'd checked them over, Captain Harkness bringing them in to this tent to catch their breath....

When he left and returned with a vaguely familiar young soldier, she let herself be led out of the tent and bundled into a service vehicle.

"Do everything I would do!" Harkness called after them.

Once seated inside the restaurant where the soldier had delivered them, she and Ian didn't speak, just tucked into the food placed before them. They drank a full bottle of wine, then another, and by the time they stepped outside into the late afternoon sunshine, she could remember only a little more about what had happened in the museum. Everything seemed covered over with an opaque film, like a photograph that hadn't been developed properly or had been left out in the sun.

Ian quickly determined that he was barely fit to walk in a straight line, let alone to drive them home. They walked up the street until he was able to hail a cab to take them home.

The drive passed in a blur and then they were standing in front of Barbara's building while the cab drove off. He didn't remember paying or dismissing the driver but wasn't overly concerned about either.

"I don't understand what's happening," Barbara said with a hand to her head as though she had a headache. "I feel like there's something very important that I've forgotten to do, but when I try to concentrate, it all slips away."

"That's exactly it," Ian agreed. "I'd blame it on the wine but we didn't really have that much." His own head was starting to pound as he tried to recall the events of the past few hours.

Barbara unlocked the door and stepped inside. "Why don't you come up? I'll put the kettle on and we'll see if we can't remember anything that might help."

As he followed her up the stairs, he was vaguely aware that she was still talking but he kept hearing the American's voice echoing through his head instead. He had a feeling there wasn't much Harkness wouldn't do - especially if he were following a beautiful young woman up to her flat.

Ian regretted the stray thought almost immediately as he was suddenly unable to think of anything but what Harkness would do in his place. The blood started to pound in his veins. It seemed that no matter where he looked all he could see was the swing of Barbara's hips or the way her hair brushed against the nape of her neck or how her trousers clung to her thighs. He dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and watched as she bustled around the kitchen. Sweat beaded on his brow when she bent over to rummage through a cabinet and he cleared his throat.

She looked at him over her shoulder as she filled the kettle from the tap. "Are you all right, Ian? You look a bit flushed."

He pulled at the collar of his shirt and wiped a hand across his forehead. "It's rather stuffy in here, don't you think? Could we open a window?"

Barbara came across the room and laid a cool hand on the back of his neck. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the contact and leapt to his feet, stepping far enough away that he wouldn't be tempted to pull her against him. It didn't help much and he quickly ran out of room to put between them.

She closed the distance between them again, a familiar determined look on her face. Ian backed up against the wall and braced himself for another brush of her fingers across his skin.

"I think maybe the captain put something in my tea," he said faintly.

Her brow wrinkled as she considered his words. "Do you really think so? I feel fine, if a bit unsteady."

He leapt on the qualifier. "Ah but you do feel different! That artificial sweetener must have been something else entirely. There are several compounds he could have used to-"

Barbara put her hand over his mouth to halt the slightly manic flow of words. "I meant that I feel like I've had too much to drink, not that I think he poisoned us."

He looked chagrined above the hand she kept over his mouth. "I was afraid you were going to say that," he mumbled, his lips tickling against her palm.

She tamped down the desire to replace her hand with her lips and stepped away from him to open the window. A slight breeze that wasn't much cooler than the air within swept through the room. Beside her, Ian wiped away the sweat on his brow and sagged against the wall. She grabbed his arm and propelled him back into the chair he'd been sitting in.

"Forget the tea; I'll get you some water."

She filled glasses for both of them, then sat next to him and drank deeply. She wasn't as warm as he appeared to be, but the wine was definitely doing funny things to her composure. She felt as if she could still feel his mouth on her palm and found it difficult to look at him for fear that he would see it somehow.

She needn't have worried; Ian was looking everywhere but at her, studying the pictures she and Rosemary had hung on the walls.

"Is that Bournemouth Pier?" he asked suddenly, getting up to take a closer look.

She was surprised that he would recognise it and said so.

"I was there just this summer for a few days - my mother's sister has a boarding house in Boscombe," he explained. "We went to the Pier Theatre one night for a show."

"Rosemary lived there for a few years doing palmistry and Tarot for the tourists."

He raised his eyebrows. "What a funny coincidence! While I was there, a gypsy woman offered to read my palm - now that I think about it, she looked just like Rosemary. Are her relatives there?"

Barbara couldn't remember whether they were or not. "I'm not sure," she said.

The brief conversation deflated around them. She played with her glass, making water rings on the table and drawing crosses from them while Ian continued around the room, occasionally making appreciative noises at the photographs.

Her head felt as if it was starting to clear but still skittered away from trying to think about the events at the museum. She could remember very clearly what Captain Harkness had said and the smell of his cologne but everything before and after that was still a blur. The last mostly clear memory she had of the command post was him calling after them. She couldn't recall the actual words, but the feeling they had engendered was as strong as ever.

She felt like time was slipping away, that she needed to do something to tether herself but didn't know what exactly. Rather, she knew exactly what she wanted to do but couldn't be sure of Ian's reaction if she simply threw herself at him. The restless feeling propelled her up and out of the room. Ian didn't say anything as she left but she could feel his gaze on her back.

In the lounge, she spotted the gift she'd purchased for Ian a few weeks earlier. It was still not yet his birthday but she seized it eagerly. At least it would give her something to do besides fighting to keep her hands to herself.

"I know it's not your birthday yet but you know me - if I don't give this to you now, I'll forget all about it," she said as she handed him the gaily wrapped package.

Ian tore into the wrapping eagerly, like a young boy on Christmas morning. She worried at a thumbnail with her teeth while he opened the book and looked through it. However certain she'd been the day she purchased it, she was anxious now that he wouldn't like it.

He was delighted, though, as evidenced by the wide grin on his face. He thanked her profusely, far more than she thought necessary for such a simple gift, and kept running his hand along the embossed spine of the book as though he couldn't bear to stop touching it.

Impulsively, she hugged him and whispered "Happy early birthday" in his ear. There was a thump as he dropped the book and then his arms tightened around her, nearly lifting her off the floor. She clutched at his shoulders and then he was kissing her - not a friendly gesture of thanks, but a full-on frontal assault.

Barbara slid her hands off his shoulders and up to grip the back of his head to try to bring him closer. She didn't know how long they stood in the middle of the kitchen like that, only that her lips felt swollen and she had to struggle to catch her breath when he finally lifted his head.

"I should have done that months ago," he panted, staring at her mouth the whole time.

"Oh yes," she agreed, and pulled him back to her.

She half-expected him to nudge her toward her bedroom, or failing that, to drag him there herself. Instead, he walked her backward into the lounge, where they fell onto the divan and snogged like a pair of teenagers. They didn't break apart until Rosemary came home and exclaimed, "Finally!" when she saw them entangled together.

Over the next few weeks, Barbara felt more like a teenager than someone entrusted with the education of them. She and Ian stole moments together at the school when the staff room was empty, each keeping an ear out for approaching footsteps. Weekends were spent rambling around the city together, hand in hand. They even made it back to the museum finally and toured it together like they'd talked about so many months before.

He spent so many evenings with her in her flat that she started to expect to see him there whenever she walked through the door. When he wasn't, she missed him more than she would have thought possible.

As the term progressed, there was only one thing that dimmed her joy. While there were always petty dramas and squabble to keep her busy during the school year, Barbara grew more and more concerned about one student in particular. Susan Foreman was a bright and engaged pupil, but the gaps in her knowledge were worrying. She acted as though the simplest things baffled her but at the same time displayed a keen understanding of complex political manoeuvrings and an impressive grasp of the causes and effects of historical events.

After the girl rebuffed her offer to work with her at home so the she could specialise in history, Barbara couldn't stop thinking about it. Where had she come from before she showed up that first day of term at Coal Hill? Why the curious gaps in her knowledge, and what was causing the poor performance on her homework?

She skipped lunch one day and went to the office to look up the girl's permanent records. Everything was in order, transfer papers and vaccination records, but there were no notes from previous teachers - for a girl as odd as Susan, that was a giant red flag. While the secretary's back was turned, she copied down the girl's address and tucked the paper into her pocket.

On the way back to her classroom, she knocked on Ian's door and pulled him out into the corridor to tell him that she was meeting Rosemary for a drink after work. He offered to drive her and didn't press the issue when she said no. After checking to make sure they were out of sight of any prying eyes, she kissed him quickly and promised to ring once she was home for the night.

After her last class, she set off for the address she'd copied down. After a few streets, she was cursing the shoes she'd worn that day as they rubbed blisters into her heels. By the time she reached Totters Lane, a crooked street that seemed to have more weed-choked lots than homes, she was ready to pack it in.

She passed number 92 and a man in an old-fashioned frock coat came jogging toward her from the opposite side of the street. Barbara plastered a polite smile on her face and started walking faster. He fell in step beside her and started chatting away.

She was hampered by her too-tight shoes and the large bag she was carrying but she didn't feel in any danger - the man fairly radiated good cheer and an air of genial confusion. She wondered if perhaps he'd wandered away from a carer; for all that he appeared only a few years older than her, he gave off a very distinctive impression that he belonged to another time altogether. It was similar to the way her grandfather had acted as he slipped farther into dementia and so she felt almost protective of the stranger.

Even so, she was mindful not to let him draw her into conversation though he seemed content with merely talking at her instead of to her. In the short distance between 92 and 80 Totters Lane, she heard his opinions on everything from tomcats to Italian leather to the perils of long hair in tropical climates.

As they neared the address Susan had given to the school, he suddenly gave a shout and leapt in front of Barbara and spread his arms out wide, his frock coat fanning out like a bat's wings. She tried to step around him but he anticipated and moved with her every time she shifted from one side to the other.

"Let me pass!" she cried, and lashed out at his stomach with her bag.

He let out an oof! but stood his ground. She feinted to her left and when he moved in that direction she ran to the right and out into the street to get around him. As she did, she spotted a slender figure slipping through the gates at 76 Totters Lane. She hurried over but they closed in her face just as she got there. She dropped her bag and tried pushing and pulling on the latch but to no avail - they were locked from the inside.

She called out but there was no answer from within and, looking around, she saw that the man who had tried to distract her was gone, as though he'd vanished into thin air. She picked up her things from where they had spilled onto the ground. When she straightened up, she noticed for the first time the lettering on the gates: I.M. Foreman, Scrap Merchant?

"What on earth is going on here?" she said aloud. "Susan, are you in there? It's Miss Wright! Susan, please answer me!"

She waited for a few moments, holding her breath so that she wouldn't miss the slightest sound from inside. When all remained quiet, she tried walking around the property but the high walls kept her from seeing anything inside.

Finally, she gave up and started on her way home. It felt like she had ground glass in her shoes by the time she reached her flat and she threw them in the trash with something approaching glee before going in to soak her feet in the bath.

After ringing Ian to tell him she was home safely, she sat with her hand on the receiver for a very long time. She wanted to ring the police but there was nothing to report, not really. If she called and reported that she'd illicitly copied down a student's private information and it didn't appear to be genuine, she would be called into Mr Sheard's office almost faster than she could blink. And telling them about the man who'd walked alongside her was a dead end as well, she felt. She didn't know why but she didn't think that he was involved in any way that was malicious or dangerous.

By the time she went to bed, she'd decided that the only avenue left to her was to involve Ian. She would find some reason to keep Susan after school and then ask for his help. In addition to her desire to uncover the mystery, she was truly worried about the girl. She was just so strange and what little she said about her grandfather made him sound either mad or a complete bully, possibly even both. Every time Barbara tried to ask her questions, Susan either deflected them or answered with utter nonsense.

But Ian, when he managed to keep his temper and irritation under control, had a way with people that put them at ease very quickly. More than once, she'd seen him with just a few words convince a reticent pupil to confide in him, even though he professed that he was uncomfortable interacting with teenagers in such a personal manner. Not that she could blame him; they did tend to enmesh themselves in horribly melodramatic situations at an alarming rate.

Unfortunately, whatever magic he usually wielded with teenagers simply didn't work on Susan the next day. She, like so many of the girls at Coal Hill, clearly had a crush on him but wasn't any more likely to open up than she was with Barbara alone. With some disappointment, she left the girl in her classroom and went down to the car park with Ian.

"Where on earth did you ever hear about that pop group?" she asked as they got into his car and pulled away from the school.

"Just because you're a square doesn't mean we all are, Barbara."

She thumped him on the arm with a balled-up fist and he cried, "Hey!"

At her incredulous look, he rubbed the sore spot and admitted, "Oh all right, Carol Marcus left one of those pop-star magazines on her desk the other day and I ran out of papers to mark during my free period."

"A likely story."

"It's the truth! I do have an enquiring mind, you know."

"So I've heard," she allowed with a small grin. "Here, take the second turn on the roundabout. Totters Lane will be the first junction past the grocer's."

Ian followed her directions and they were soon driving past buildings that grew shabbier the farther they travelled. Several times, he thought he saw someone skulking at the side of the road where the headlights didn't penetrate but on looking again convinced himself it was only a trick of the weak light.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked suddenly. "We could go out to dinner instead, or you could finally come home with me and meet Mrs Lambert. She's starting to make threatening noises whenever I come in without you."

"I'm just not sure I'm ready for that yet, Ian."

"For what, meeting my landlady and eating some of her awful food? It's not like I'm asking you to move in with me." He regretted the impulsive words almost before they left his mouth.

Barbara turned away to look out the window. "No, you're certainly not doing that."

"That's not what I meant," he began but she cut him off before he could continue.

"There, Ian, up ahead on the right. That's 76 Totters Lane!"

He took the hint and dropped their previous conversation. With any luck, they'd make quick work of Susan's mysterious situation and then he could sit her down somewhere quiet and make her talk to him instead of past him.

"Lucky there was no fog - I'd never have found this," he said.

She twisted her hands together in her lap and they traded stories about their nonsensical pupil until Barbara finally spotted Susan making her way through the gates.

"It's silly, isn't it?" she asked as they got out of the car to follow. "I feel frightened, as if we're about to interfere in something that is best left alone...."

"Come on, let's get it over with," Ian said, tired already of ignoring the argument they'd abandoned. The sooner they went inside, the sooner they could get to the bottom of this and get back to the business of where they were headed and whether they would get there together.

"Well, don't you feel it?" Barbara asked in an irritable tone.

"I take things as they come," he told her. "Come on."

After

This was the morning of Barbara's first full day, after:

She stretched like a cat, arching her back and pointing her toes in the late-morning sunshine, then rolled to bury her face in the crisp white pillow. Her attention was caught on the way by the ring on her finger, a welcome weight that bound her to this time and place more than any desire she'd ever had while inside the TARDIS.

She felt a wide smile spread across her face as a man's hand stroked down the column of her spine before curving over her hip. He pressed a kiss to the skin of her shoulder, his nose poking through the fall of her dark hair to brush against the side of her neck.

This was Ian's, too.

Slipping back into life in London was easier than Barbara ever could have imagined. For a few days, she wondered if perhaps they had carried away some vital piece of the TARDIS by accident. Something that made them fit into this newly alien landscape the way it did in Ancient Rome, and the Aztec Empire, and that funny little planet she never learned how to pronounce in a way that didn't make Susan giggle.

Her father greeted them at the door of his narrow little house in its narrow little street. There were tears in his eyes, and the jumpers and shoes she thought lost forever in Rosemary's flat were lined up side-by-side in the wardrobe in her old room. He shook Ian's hand and welcomed him to the family with an awkward one-armed hug, then took a silent moment to marvel at the matching rings they flashed at him. There were no words of admonishment or disappointment, no reference to their disappearance for almost two years. He brought them into his home and his life as though mere hours had passed since he had last seen his daughter. When she finally cornered him, just the two of them next to the stove in the kitchen, he shrugged off her apologies and half-truth explanations and offered more tea.

At that moment, Barbara was convinced that the worst thing she had ever done in her life was to give her father almost exactly what he wanted, and to teach him to swallow his words in the process.

When they finally managed to excuse themselves without feeling like she was abandoning him for a second time, Ian asked to borrow her father's keys. They drove the few miles to his former house without speaking, though Ian reached over to take her hand sometime during the drive and didn't let go until he turned into his old street. Cheery printed curtains were blowing in the breeze through the front windows when they pulled up to the kerb and parked.

Before they had even reached the front step, the door swung wide open and a grey, plump lady launched herself straight at them. Barbara nimbly jumped out of the way as Ian flung his arms around the woman she presumed was the often-mentioned but never-seen Mrs Lambert.

"Where have you been? I've had to bring builders in to help me finish the shed!" she cried when she pulled back enough to look Ian in the face.

"I disappear for two years and that's all you have to say?" he teased.

"You know how I hate to spend money I don't have to, dear. Oh, who's this lovely young lady you've brought home?"

"Mrs Lambert, this is Barbara, my wife. We've been away on missionary work-"

"Don't give me any of that, young man! I know very well you haven't been off on missionary work - you would have told me that, at least."

Without warning, she pulled Barbara into a tight hug. "Are you that girl from his school he was always pretending he didn't talk about all the time?" she asked.

"I suppose I am," Barbara agreed, giving Ian an amused look over the shorter woman's head.

"Well, wherever you've been, at least you made an honest man of him! Come, let's go inside. I've just put the kettle on and I want to hear all about the wedding."

As they followed her inside, Ian asked, "Wouldn't you rather hear all about where we've been for the past few years?"

"Only if it's a story that I can repeat to all the neighbours."

Ian groaned and allowed himself to be pushed down into one of the kitchen chairs. "I don't know that they'd believe you if you did," he offered.

"Fine then, don't tell me." She set out cups and went to the icebox. "Do you take milk, Barbara?"

"Yes, please. And don't mind him - we've just come from my father's house so he's bound to be a bit out of sorts."

"If you're just going to gang up on me, I might as well make myself scarce and see what these shifty builders have done in my absence." He took the cup of tea Mrs Lambert had poured for him and beat a hasty retreat to the garden.

Barbara watched him through the small window and idly stirred her own drink.

"Not been married long then, have you?"

She started and turned a questioning look on the other woman. "Whatever makes you say that?"

Mrs Lambert took a sip and nodded her head toward the window, through which they could both see Ian knocking on one wall of the shed and studying the pitch of the roof. "You're still watching to see where he goes. That lasts for at least the first year and then you start pushing him out the door."

Seeing Ian pacing around the small building so similar in dimension to the TARDIS, on the outside at least, brought a lump to Barbara's throat and she had to force her next words out. "After everything we've been through, I can't imagine that I'll ever be pushing him to leave, Mrs Lambert."

She closed her eyes against the sudden threat of tears and felt the other woman's hand squeeze her own.

"That's exactly what I'd hoped to hear when he finally brought you home, dear," she said. "And call me Peg, please. I still look around for my mother-in-law when anyone calls me Mrs Lambert."

"I'd love to," Barbara said, feeling steady enough again just from the kind words to open her eyes. "But only if you tell me absolutely everything about Ian living here with you. And don't leave out a single pratfall!"

When Ian came back into the house, they were giggling together as though they'd been friends for years. Barbara let out a whoop of laughter when he tripped over the threshold and he knew without asking the topic of their conversation.

"Everything she's saying is a complete fabrication, I'll have you know!"

The women just dissolved into gales of laughter while he helped himself to another cup of tea. The three of them talked long into the night, then went out together to the shed where Peg had stored his belongings.

"I always knew you'd come home someday," she told him. "You left all your books, after all. I hope you don't mind but I sometimes let the Middleton's' oldest look through them - he's gone through several mad scientist phases."

"Better that than sitting here waiting for the spiders to move in," he assured her. "It's nice to think that someone made use of them."

Peg helped them carry as many of his things as would fit into the car out to the kerb, then let them go with a flurry of hugs and extractions of promises to keep in touch this time.

While Ian started the car, she pulled Barbara into one last embrace and stage-whispered up into her ear, "He's been wildly in love with you for years, even if he never tells you so."

Barbara squeezed her back and said, "He does."

Despite their happy reunions, not every part of their return was as easy as all that. There was no question of recovering their positions at Coal Hill; in addition to vanishing into thin air mid-term, there was the little matter of violating the morality clause of their contracts. The headmaster told them that he might have been convinced to overlook the elopement - and they both privately hoped no one ever noticed just how delayed the actual ceremony was - if it hadn't been for Susan disappearing along with them. He looked sorry when he told them there was nothing he could do even if it hadn't been for the scandal and ushered them out of his office. After all, married teachers could do as they wished as long as they didn't work in the same school, something neither of them had even remembered after everything else they'd been through in the past two years.

Ian was crushed when they stepped through the doors of the school and out into the silent courtyard. After the dream he'd so long held about returning home and picking up their lives where they'd left off, he felt as though he were watching everything turn to dust around them. Barbara, on the other hand, was steaming. She declared that she was more incensed than she had been in the whole of her life. She railed against the narrow-minded administrators and mean little gossips and walked so quickly off the school grounds that he had to hurry to keep up with her. Ian would later swear that she didn't take a single breath until they got into the car, where she swiped angrily at a lock of hair that had fallen forward over her face and then began making plans to apply for supply teaching positions.

He couldn't stop sneaking glances at her as he drove them through the heavy afternoon traffic, watching the way her eyes sparkled as she applied herself to fixing their lives before the angry flush had started to fade from her face.

She was as good as her word, prodding him out of bed a few days later. Already dressed in a smart suit now several years out of fashion, she had two attaché cases stuffed with CVs and reference letters waiting by the front door. Armed with her papers and their missionaries-in-Africa cover story, they each made the rounds of the local schools slated for conversion to the new comprehensive system together. When they met up with each other at the end of the day, Ian had no less than two firm verbal offers for positions to start in the new term. Barbara had come away with the name of a university administrator who was looking for a part-time history lecturer and her eyes glittered with excitement.

Leaving out the disappointment of not being able to return to the school where they'd first met, it was all almost too good to be true: their easy reception by her father and Peg, the recommendations and references willingly given by their former colleagues, even the convenient position available at the university. As they walked arm in arm down to their car, Barbara asked, "Do you think the Doctor ever made it back to our time after all?"

"I've been wondering the very same thing. I'd like to think he did, although if he'd had anything to do with our situation I'm sure he'd be here with us right now crowing about it."

Barbara smacked him on the arm. "Be nice, Ian. After all, he never said anything after Rome and you and I both know that was no spur-of-the-moment decision to leave us alone in the villa while he wandered off with Vicki."

"Perhaps," he agreed, feeling generous enough to give even the Doctor the benefit of the doubt.

When Barbara smiled at him, eyes twinkling, Ian lifted her up against him in front of a crowded café and swung her around, feeling more light-hearted than he had since they left the villa at Assessium.

"Oh, Ian, really," she chided after he put her back on her feet and stole a swift kiss to a muffled but raucous round of applause from the patrons inside.

He was chastened for a split second, until she took his hand in hers, flashed a wicked grin, and pulled him along behind her as she raced down the street toward the car. He didn't even begin to try to wipe the silly smile off his face.

As they passed out of view, The Doctor finished his coffee and stood with a flourish, sweeping his opera cape back from his shoulders as he made his way out onto the pavement. Across the table, Sarah Jane hastily slurped the dregs of her cappuccino and hurried after him.

"Are you ever going to tell me what we're doing here, Doctor?" she asked as she caught up with him. "Did you know those people just now? I saw the way you smiled at them when everyone applauded."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sarah," he scoffed. "I simply had some errands to run and thought you might enjoy a short trip where nothing was shooting at us for a change."

"Yes, but ten years into the past? Couldn't we at least have gone somewhere more interesting than half a dozen schools? I'd had more than enough of them growing up here as it was."

She didn't even give him a chance to respond before she peppered him with more questions. "What errands did you need to run anyway? It seems like all you've done for the past three days is talk to a succession of stuffy old men in stuffy old rooms about teaching positions you can't possibly be interested in."

The Doctor took her arm and steered her through a crowd of university students loitering on a corner. "Those weren't for me, as I'm sure you've deduced. And I'm afraid my timestream criss-crosses far too often in this era to allow sightseeing. But you can choose our next destination, if you'd like."

As she debated the options, he felt a familiar sensation tickling along the back of his mind. Looking all around them, he spotted a tall, thin young man standing with two vaguely familiar and oddly dressed men on the opposite side of the street watching Ian and Barbara's car pull away into traffic. He smiled and tipped an imaginary hat at them as they passed.

"Oh let's just go back home," Sarah Jane said at last in a grouchy tone. "I feel like I haven't seen my flat in ages."

"An excellent choice," he said as they turned down the alley where he'd left the TARDIS.