Clara's at home. Of course she is. She's always at home. I'll admit, it's not a concept I'm familiar with. A home you have to be at. A home you go to when you're finished with other things. A home which is stationary, and just a place, like any other, except it's not really a destination, so it's not a place, it's just… home? No. Sorry, I'm not getting it. Let's face it, even when I had one I was running away from it. I never had much chance at understanding this idea of 'home'. No, my home travels with me, like a turtle's, only faster, and a much nicer colour.

No offence to any turtles or turtle-like beings who might be reading this. I am, of course, prejudiced in favour of the Tardis.

What was I saying? Oh yes. Clara. At home. House, attic room, nanny, two kids, all that business. She is at home, which is lucky, because that's where I go to pick her up. "Clara?" She's not in the kitchen. "Cla-ra?" She's not in the living room. "Come out, come out wherever you are." She's not in the garden, and I can't help but get the feeling that this would be much more fun if it were a pop-up book, with little flaps to look behind, because then I'd be able to see when I was getting close to the end. Hall, dining room, stairs, landing, "Clara Oswin Oswald? C.O.O., Coo, ha, your initials sound like a pigeon!" She's not responding. She ought to have something sarcastic to say about pigeons. I can't think what it would be, but that's because I'm not Clara. She would know what to say…

The silence on the upstairs landing becomes lonely, and a little worrying. I was sure she was here.

"Clara?"

Finally, there is a shuffle above me, and a hefty thumpf against the ceiling. A pair of scraping, shuffling footsteps, and she appears at the top of the attic stairs, in the door of her room. "You must be joking," she groans.

That's my greeting. 'You must be joking.' Then, as my eyes adjust to the dim light up there, I jump and promptly avert them. "Clara! Please-"

"What?"

"You're in your night-things."

"…Pyjamas, Doctor?"

"Oh. Is that alright with humans, seeing you in your jim-jams? I like jim-jams. I have ones with stars on them."

"I didn't think you slept."

"Don't be silly, Clara, of course I do. Everybody sleeps."

"See, that's funny, because obviously you think I don't." Oh. She's got her arms folded. I couldn't see that before. I was so quick to blind myself for the sake of propriety, so quick to think of her modesty and my status as a gentleman, that I couldn't see that her arms are folded. Or that she has that 'unimpressed' look on her face. You know the one. The one where you can write 'unimpressed' inside little quotes like that, because it's as if she has that expression printed on a little card and she can just reach for it any time she needs to.

I'm suddenly terribly afraid that she's stayed at the top of those stairs just so she can more effectively pounce and tear me limb from limb.

Cringing, "Is it very late?"

"It's very bloody early. You're lucky Mr Maitland's away for the night."

"Angie and Artie?"

"Oh, it'll take more than you to wake them up."

"Ah. Squadron of charging Judoon, is it?"

Clara rolls her eyes. "Is that how they say it on your planet?" Present tense. She used the present tense. Tenses are difficult, aren't they? Yes, tenses are awfully difficult. There's no sense in correcting her if it's only just because tenses are so difficult. No sense in faltering, making her feel like she did something wrong. I depend on the darkness to hide any reaction that might make her feel that way. In my silence, "Anyway, Doctor, what do you want?"

Ah, now this I can answer. I can wake her up, get her buzzing, can't I? I'm better than coffee. Yeah, that's it. The Doctor: Better Than Coffee. I should get that on a business card. "You, me, bit of mystery and intrigue? I want to go and borrow an immensely powerful, very dangerous scientific instrument from its highly-guarded, very secure little bed, away from people who probably don't want to lend it to me. You'll have fun. Promise. Cross my hearts." And I do, I cross them, to make the promise real and unbreakable. Clara sits down on that top step and leans her head on one hand. That's not her 'unimpressed' face anymore. It's her 'you're a big spacey idiot' face. Remind me again why I have friends who only seem to have derogatory faces… It takes me a moment to read her meaning and then, "Oh, but Clara, I crossed my hearts and everything!"

"I'd ask if you missed the part where I told you Mr Maitland's away and Angie and Artie are still here, but you replied to me when I said that."

"Bring them along! They'll have fun too. Promise. Cross m-" Clara holds out a hand to stop me, even as I lift up my pointer fingers, reliable old crossers.

"Before you do that, think back on the offer you just made me and tell me we're really bringing the kids along."

"…Alright, bit dangerous."

Now it's my turn to fold my arms, leaning on the wall, kicking back my heels. "Don't sulk," Clara mutters, "You're scuffing the wall. You go ahead. I'm sure you can handle it. You were okay before you met me."

No, no I wasn't, but I don't think this is really the time for that conversation. And while I am a firm believer in the infinity of time, and that a time exists for everything, and that everything will have its moment to be right, and even somebody really horrible like Hitler got to say that zwei plus zwei equalled fier as a child, I really home I never actually live through the time for that conversation. I'm happy enough to skip it, thanks very much. But the fact is I wasn't fine before her and I don't want to go into the jaws of danger and excitement without her. Quite apart from the fact that she'll have a good time (I crossed my hearts, didn't I?), she's all lovely and smart and useful and people still like her even when I'm saying something stupid.

And how do I articulate all that? What do I say to her, in the face of an unfair accusation of sulking?

"…Don'wanna…"

Clara shrugs. "Well, then, you'll have to wait. Mr Maitland should be back by lunchtime. We'll go then."

"So what's lunchtime, about nine a.m?"

"About one p.m."

"What? Clara, what on earth am I supposed to do for…" Checking my watch makes me almost physically ill, "Seven hours, thirty two minutes and fifty nine seconds consecutively?!"

She stands up and starts shuffling back to bed. For the record, she has very nice jim-jams, with stripey bottoms and lacy bits on the top. They look rumpled and warm and very comfy. Yawning, she grumbles over her shoulder, "I'll tell you what I tell the kids; only boring people are bored."

Oh, well, now it's a challenge.

Me, boring? I can amuse myself on Earth for seven hours, thirty one minutes and twenty eight seconds. I can amuse myself on Earth for days. There's loads of stuff to do. Legoland, for instance. I'll go to Legoland, and where the model villages are, I'll build an exact replica of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They'll make it a feature, like a temporary exhibit by a famous artist. And when they're finished with that and they've taken lots of pictures, I'll build them Alexander's Library. Lifesize. Yes, that's it, I'll go to Legoland… Except it doesn't open for another couple of hours. Damn. Neither does the zoo, or the safari park, and all the shopkeepers are all in bed.

So I get my football from the Tardis and start trying to beat my keepy-uppy record in the garden. Apparently, though, the thud of the ball is too loud, and before I'm at thirty Clara is at her window, rapping and telling me to sod off. At least, I think that's what she's saying. If I'm honest, it's not the shape her lips are making, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she's telling me to sod off.

Suppose I could go away and come back again, but what if I miss her? No, best I just stay local.

Spend some time with the Tardis, maybe? I sit down. Nothing happens. She's a machine, after all, and not in need of any maintenance. I took care of all that the other night, in my starry jim-jams when I couldn't sleep. She doesn't have any suggestions, or anything to say. "Well," I tell her. "This is nice, isn't it?" Nothing happens. She just hums. It would be alright, if she'd hum a tune. We could have a singsong. But she just hums that engine hum she usually hums and I don't want to sing along with that. Might put myself in a trance, and then where would we be? She just sits there, humming at me, waiting for me to get up and do something. "Well, who do I still know on Earth?" I moan in the end. "Apart from Clara, I mean. Do I have any visits to make? That's what people do when they're in somebody's area, isn't it? I could bake a cake."

The hum turns momentarily to a clank. It's only a clank, a mechanical noise, but the meaning is clear; "No. No cakes."

"I got distracted! I just thought it would burn, didn't think it would catch fire. Anyway, you're alright now."

A dial flashes on the console. It's just a dial, but again, it is unequivocal in speaking to me; "Okay, I will pick a destination for you, just please shut up about the fire."

"Don't be angry with me," I tell her. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt."

The hum fades down a decibel or two. As I approach the console, the activation lever seems almost to reach for me even as I reach for it. "Silly boy. Let's just go."

"You really are quite lovely, old girl."

Clankety-thump; "Get on with it."

I yank back the lever and off we go, landing mere seconds later. We're hardly a step away from Clara's home, only a few dozen miles. A little hop and here we are. "I love magical mystery tours," I tell her, straightening my lapels as I head for the doors. "You should take me out more often."

I open the door, step outside, immediately turn around and try and step back inside. The door has locked itself, and as I fumble for my key I make sure she knows I am not ungrateful for her intervention. "No, you're mistaken. There's nobody here anymore. I don't have to visit this place. There's nobody here to visit, they're all gone. Quite alright, dear, I know it must get confusing for you, so many people in and out all the time, but you can scratch this one off the books, alright?" My key goes in, and turns, but nothing happens. I take it out and begin again. "Key in, check. Turn key, check. Tumblers click, check. And push door." Nothing happens. "Pull door? Are you putting your foot down on the pulling all of a sudden?" I pull the door and still nothing happens. "This isn't funny. If you think this is funny I implore you, think otherwise."

Nothing. Not a hum, not a clank, not a sound. She is solid and immovable and not even listening to me anymore.

I put my hand flat on the door, stroking the fine old wood. "Please?" I would offer to repaint her again, but the bribery sounds crass and obvious even to me. "Please…"

But this, apparently, is where I'm meant to be. Didn't she tell me that once? I'll always be where I'm meant to be.

So I turn back from her again. I go to the house I know, across the street. The front garden is overgrown, bushes pushing out through the iron rail on top of the wall. There's slimy lichen on the stone steps to the front door. I stood here at Christmas, or one of the Christmases anyway, and waited to be punched in the face for playing dead. I left a sporty red car at the curb outside once. There's a spare key hidden in the dried up remains of a hanging basket that A… she must have put up before they left.

Before I took them away, is probably a more honest way to put that.

It's another blue door except this one opens. It squeals on rusty hinges, but it opens for me.

Seven hours, two minutes and nineteen seconds to kill. And if you thought I was counting those silly little seconds before, you ought to see me now.

Inside, there's a smell. A thick, coagulated, cloying sort of a smell. I follow it through the kitchen, where it gets stronger and stronger and ends with me recoiling from the open pourer of a pint of milk. It's long-since curdled, gone green and foul and gelatinous. They were in the middle of making tea when they walked away from it (following me, is the honest way of saying that). There's a teapot sitting with the lid off and two teabags inside it. There's a big builders mug with three molten and crystallized sugars in it that would have been for R… for him, and a little teacup on a pretty saucer for her.

I pick up the milk carton, holding it at arm's length, and take it outside. Next door has their bins out for collection, so I drop it in.

This done, maybe I can go back. But the Tardis is still adamant, still won't let me in.

It's with a sigh, and very heavily, that I go back across the road.

Six hours, fifty six minutes exactly still to kill.

You know, I don't like that phrase 'killing time'. I'm sure you can imagine, there is a small cosmos full of reasons why I don't like that phrase. Firstly, don't murder things. In terms of life rules, that should be right up there at the top, don't you think? Don't murder things. But especially not time. It's so important, and there's so much to do and to get done and really (though once again I'll stress my belief in the infinity of time) there's never going to be enough time to do everything. Never kill time. There's always something you could be working on, believe me.

But right now I would be happy for about six hours and fifty-five minutes to just drop dead and disappear out of existence. Alright, so people in this area might lose a little sleep, and it would be the first major temporal event that the world's ever experienced, and you'd have to start looking into time travel and physics and… That's it! That's why I'm here! I have to kill seven hours dead, just disappear them. Don't you see? It's a fixed point to start humans on the route to intertemporal technology and existence! I knew the Tardis wasn't just being nasty.

On the doorstep, I shut my eyes very tightly, and I wish very, very hard… And when I open them again, my watch still says what it did before. A couple of seconds gone, maybe, but no more than that. It seems I just lack the power to kill time. Time's bigger and tougher than me. And so I sigh again and go inside.

It takes an hour and a half to clean the kitchen free of that stench. Another hour to hoover the house. Forty-five minutes to dust, followed by another hour of hovering because once you dust the dust goes everywhere and everything's stinking again. Then I catalogue the various collections – books, DVDs, magazines and CDs alphabetically, clothes by size, colour and season, travel souvenirs and knick-knacks by country of origin from west to east, photographs all face down as I pass them. That thing about the photographs, that's not really a collection, that's just something I'm doing. I tried to slip it in with the collections so you wouldn't notice and hate me for it. Then I felt guilty for trying to trick you and came clean. Now you can think whatever you want. They were just looking at me, and they were calling me names for doing all the cleaning and organizing, and then they'd just look at me again. They're just photographs, but they can still look at you.

That all took a while. It's a few minutes until one p.m. Killed time nicely there, didn't I? I'm all dusty and I didn't even have to think about the P… about them while I was in there. I go out and turn the key in the Tardis door again. It nearly unlatches and then struggles with me. I lift up my watch and tap the face, indicating that I am less than four minutes shy of my appointment with Clara. I don't want to say that out loud, simply because I do not want to share words with her right now.

The door gives in and opens. I throw it closed behind me, walk directly to the console. Change the coordinates, pull the lever, sit down hard. Somewhere in the middle of that brief flight there's a high, whingeing sort of a whine from the rotor. Saying, quite clearly, "Oh now, listen to me…"

"I can't even look you in the console right now." The whine goes away. Too quiet. "Was there a point to that?"

But then we've landed and there's no need to wait for an answer. I go out, and instead of waiting in the Tardis for Clara to duck in at the door, I go out and wait at the wall of the house. Spot my football lying in the garden and give the old record another go. But for some reason I can't make it past fifteen keepy-ups before I lose the ball. Must be distracted.

By the time she comes out, I'm kicking it up against the wall, just keeping my feet busy while I think. I don't hear her coming until, "You have got your hands in your pockets and your head down. Have you been shuffling round my neighbourhood kicking a football like a ten year old for eight hours, Doctor?"

I stop the ball and turn. Answer her question with a much more important, very baffled counter-question. "What are you wearing?"

It's sort of a silly question. I can see what she's wearing after all. The question is more about obtaining an explanation for her outfit. It consists of a knit dress with no sleeves and a tight turtleneck, black tights, black heel boots, and a long black coat. Summon that image in your head and join in me a world of befuddlement and perplexity.

Clara, however, seems dead proud of herself, so maybe it's fashion or something. She grins all over her face, opens out her coat and does a little twirl to show me. "Well, it all sounded very James Bond, this business of borrowing things you're not allowed to borrow. So I thought I'd dress for the occasion." The twirl ends with her looking at me again. Her face falls. "Doctor? What's wrong? Is it awful?" While I swallow the lump in my throat, "I thought I looked like a spy…"

I tell her, "You look like a little button doll dressed as a spy. Who I would very much like to hug right now." And before she can reply I have swept her up, my arms pinning hers down so she can't hug me back, but I can hold her very tightly. She's heavy, you know. Not 'heavy' in any way that would make her throw me off and slap me, but heavy like humans are, like another person is when you pull them in and they're against you. And by the time I've released her, I'm ready. I release her only at one side and spin her away from me, bring a bit of sparkle back to proceedings.

"Well, Mrs Peel-"

"Who?"

"…Before your time again? I miss the sixties. After this, night out in the sixties, alright? But for now, Miss Bond, let's you and I off and borrow something we're not allowed to borrow, eh?"

She hangs on my arm just enough to slow me to walking pace before she lets go. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you, if something was wrong?"

"Yes."

"Are you lying?"

"No."

"Are you still lying?"

"No."

"Then you were lying the first time?"

"…Yes?" She stares at me and shakes her head. Probably figuring out that what works on Angie and Artie will not necessarily work on me. Just because she's had success in the past with that tactic doesn't mean it'll happen all the time. I'm far too clever to always fall for the same things, and far too stupid to argue myself out of the 'are you lying' question effectively. "Nothing's wrong," I assure her, holding the door of the Tardis open. She goes ahead of me and there isn't a murmur from the machine I so recently loved so much. And yet as soon as I close the door there's a whir and a series of ratcheting clicks like a rollercoaster cart up over our heads.

Clara's eyes follow the sound from one side to the other. In the meantime, I walk past her and co-ordinate our next trip manually, without assistance even from the central computer. "I think she was talking to you," Clara murmurs, when I don't immediately jump to reply aloud to a machine which cannot communicate with me by mechanical sounds and signals. She can't. It was all just whimsy, it was inside my head, not real at all. She wasn't talking to anybody. She made a noise, that's all. "Doctor?"

"Well, you can tell her I'm not talking to her."

"Oh no. Oh no. No way. No." Clara turns on her very fine spy heel and starts clacking back the door.

"Where are you going?"

"She already hates me without me being your go-between. You're off your rocker if you think I'm letting you drive a machine you're not talking to. That's like getting in a taxi and the driver says him and the car had an argument earlier on."

"The driver of a standard Earth taxi is unlikely to have a car with a mind of its own. Saying something like that would probably mean more about his mental health than about the actual machine."

"I still wouldn't get in that taxi. No way. You two-" and here she points back and forth between me and the rotor. "Hug it out or something, but you better get over it or I'm not coming with you."

She's got her arms folded again. Got her 'unimpressed' face back on. And she's a lot more imposing now that she's not in her powder blue pyjamas anymore. I try, I honestly do try, to stare her down. I'm going to stand my ground. I was put in a very terrible place this morning. I don't understand why it was done to me. I don't like the idea that I've been betrayed somehow by my Tardis, my old girl, my own home. No, I'm standing my ground on this one.

…For all of ten seconds before she gets to me. Clara has big warm eyes, but they can be very hard when she wants them to be.

I turn to the rotor, open my arms. "Clara thinks I should forgive you. What do you make of that?"

Nothing at first. Then, very small, very slight, a sort of mumbling moan.

"Fine then. You're forgiven. Now, I've given you the co-ordinates." I grab hold of the lever and make sure Clara's got both arms and legs inside the box, thank you very much… "So let's go."