"Helen, you're marvelous, but you make a better door than a window, love." he pats her gently on the thigh and Helen has to bite the inside of her cheek not to break out into a soft smile at the gesture. "Oh you have certainly lost patience in your age, old man." and she gives him an indignant hip sway as she sets down the tea service and pouts her lip a little as she turns round.

"Oi, easy with the 'old man' will you? World's Greatest Doctor and all that rubbish but you're not too old to spank."

"Only if you promise." she gives him a wink and Nigel settles deeper into the over stuffed loafer with an unintelligible grumble to himself and doesn't speak again until she hands him his tea. Even then it's just a "Thanks" and he stares, eyes front. They watch the coronation parade in silence. Helen is perched rigidly on the settee and with an ungracious gulp Nigel pushes himself out of the chair and flops down next to her instead. "Would you rather be there?" He feels he needs to ask.

"Of course not." Helen is immediate, precise. She'd expected him to ask it. Nigel can still believe the truth. "Besides, James is. He rang me this morning."

"Rang you?"

"Oh yes," there is a small dimple in her cheeks and the smallest upturn in the corner of her lips, "On that damned telephone he swore never to lay a finger upon."

"Must have been quite important."

"It's not everyday we see the coronation of a new monarch is it?"

It's a joke. Helen made a joke; Nigel doesn't feel quite like laughing though and instead of mirth he finds the dull thump of nostalgia beat against his tired heart. They have seen monarchs come and go. And come, and go again. He doesn't doubt she will be around to see Elizabeth's heir take the throne afterwards, and their's, and so on. This will be his last, however. He know it. She knows it.

A warm weight pins down his shoulder and Nigel is surprised to see waves of soft brown draping his shoulder. "I'm so tired, Nigel."

"I know."

"Of everything."

"I know."

She sniffs once and only once (Helen Magnus had had her one good cry on his shoulder already, she wasn't going to afford herself another) and dabs her eyes with a napkin before staring at him; just staring. "You were always the smart one."

"Naw. Just bits and bobs."

"Untrue."

"We've all got our minds, Helen. You, me, James. Even Tesla I s'pose. And John. That was never the issue then, was it?" he tiptoes around the last part but still he feels her stiffen, defenses being thrown up at the very mention of a name.

Helen's eyes are blue and shine with the threat of tears but they both know she will not cry for him again. "Are you so determined to be the first of us to die?" Nigel frowns and Helen seems fully aware of her mistake and ignores it, favors watching the parade instead.

It's not his place to have the last word. Not against Helen. He'd very much like to shake her right now, the damned daft woman, and tell her to stop it. Stop all of this. But he won't.

Jeanette comes home to find them like that, still watching the festivities. In the evening Helen leaves her address in America and her kiss lingers with her lipstick on his cheek.