Chapter 1 – (Clara's POV)

Found the dairy this morning. I think it was a dairy. I mean, they were probably cows. Of a sort. Anyway I was just thinking that we were running out of milk and there it was—sort of down the hall, past the galley, a little to the left. Wasn't sure how I could have missed it before.

It must have been the Tardis, of course. Seems like the Old Girl is finally getting used to me. She even let me lie in an hour late this morning before the routine search. Although she still won't hear of us leaving Caspicoria. Last time I brought it up I couldn't find the showers for a week.

It's been 286 days since the Doctor disappeared. Been keeping a diary – sort of. Kind of hit a blank after Day 80. There are only so many ways you can say, "Went out looking, still no sign" after all. Most days I just mark with a big red X.

I didn't start writing it down for a couple of weeks though. I wasn't even worried—except in the normal way. It was more, "Hey, what's that silly Doctor gone and done now?", really. Because all he did was park us somewhere nice and wander off to get scones.

"Well, sort of scones," he said. "Sort of like scones."

Said they were a delicacy on this planet. Capsicoria, it's called. Jewel in the crown of the Resplyxian Galaxy and there's no surprise there. It's beautiful. And the safest, safest place, not to worry.

"Won't be long," he says, "And this is the safest place I know." Only just caught something about how he should really stop saying that as the door swung shut behind him. When I try to remember that day, I think I heard him pick up a jaunty kind of whistle just outside. I heard it maybe five seconds before he was out of range. I went back to the galley, not bothered at all and tried to whip up a nice soufflé before he got back. When it collapsed I was glad he was taking so long—gave me time to hide the evidence.

By the evening I was wondering if I'd wished him right out of existence. Later, I'd think I could've dreamed him up if I didn't have the Tardis. Or if I weren't still on this daft old planet with the glittering skies and the bluebells that really chime.

On the second day I ventured outside. I wasn't even looking for him so much as I was bored of waiting around. Figured I wouldn't wander far, and when I came back maybe he'd be there. I imagined his face perking up as I walked in the door. He'd have been back a few hours by then and be bursting with eagerness to show me whatever he'd gone off looking for. Probably got distracted—forgot all about scones and gone on the hunt for some rare Caspicorian cabbage beetle.

Besides, I reasoned. He hadn't even told me not to wander off. He'd even mentioned a little café that served something brilliant and just a bit like apple pie, only I couldn't remember where he'd said it was and he wasn't there to ask.

On the third day I went properly looking. Checked all the obvious places: prisons, palaces, places of worship. Checked every hospital and medical centre in the city. Couldn't do it all in the one day, but I've had the better part of a year now.

Have you seen this man? Tall, lanky, daft hair—bit daft all over, really—wears a bowtie, and a fez if he can find one. Turns out they don't even have fezzes in Caspicoria. Doesn't seem they've got the Doctor here either.

There was no one rude or unhelpful (at least not at first), and no one seemed to be hiding anything. Why would they? He's been gone a couple days and it's, "Oh, I'm sure he's fine. Have you tried this bar or that shoe shop? You said he liked hats, well there's a great hatter down that way!" He's been gone a week and they say, "Oh dear, well have you got onto the police?" By the time he's gone a month they're a bit weary of being asked. They've all seen the posters, all heard the news. But they're cooperative, sympathetic. They can't help that they really don't remember what they were doing on the 9th Day of the Moon of Little Shearers when it's nearly the Month of Addled Crows already.

It was downhill from there. The communal helplessness began to weigh down on them. Sympathy turned to pity, turned to frustration, turned to rumours of madness, delusions. Some thought I'd been lying in the first place and there wasn't any Doctor at all. She wants his insurance, said a few knowingly. But how I'm supposed to benefit from the death of a man who doesn't exist in any document on the planet, that's what I'd like to know. Anyway, in the end I stopped asking.

It was the first few weeks that were the hardest. I wanted to drop in on the kids—just a quick trip to check no one needed me desperately, maybe say I was going away. In and out, I promised the Tardis. But she didn't budge then and she won't budge now. Hasn't moved an inch in 286 days. You know, I reckon if the Doctor doesn't come back she might never budge again. Begun to dream about her. Old and faded with all her lights dead, sitting in this grassy knoll two miles from the city and overgrown with those damned bluebells. "The bluebells that really chime," the Doctor had chirped, and so they do: all night long. Church bells by which to mourn his loss.

But what's a year to the Tardis? Or even two years, ten, a hundred or more. I may well die in this blue box, on this funny little planet, in this galaxy three million light years from home and eighty years into my future.

It's not all bad. The city is really very nice, very clean, and only twenty minutes into the city on the back of something called a Krestlehorn. And the Tardis is good company as long as I don't stay out too late and tell her when I'll be home. I've even got a couple of friends.

Cesp, the Silurian woman whose Krestlehorn farm has become the Tardis's long-term roost (and whose roast of I-don't-want-to-know-what is the next best thing to mum's Sunday lamb).

And then Ronlin, the native Capsicorian whose almost-scones are supposedly the best in the city. He tells me that if the Doctor was wanting scones that day there's no other place he would have been headed than straight to him. Except Ronlin never saw the Doctor that day—reckons something happened him first. I reckon Ronlin just likes me to tell everyone that his bakery was where the Doctor was headed when he disappeared—any publicity is good publicity, and earth isn't the only place money matters. Still I appreciate the company when he comes to help search.

Speaking of money, though, I've had to earn some. Big round coins the size of your palm, made of something I'm pretty sure I've never seen anywhere else. I work in the bakery or I help Cesp with the Krestlehorns—huge grey winged things, they are, only I'm not allowed to fly them. Not yet. They run decent enough to get you around and anyway you need a license to fly. Fancy the Doctor coming back and I've got myself a flying license.

Sometimes I want to laugh at it all, only I know I must be dead back home. Mr Maitland and the kids… They probably gave me a funeral. Could well have a stone down stone next to my mum's. And flowers on a grave in London 2013 when all the while I'm eating roast-something and almost-scones with a lizard woman and a pudgy little man on a faraway planet, eighty years later. Even if I could find another ship and return Angie'd probably be dead, maybe Artie too. They'd be old, and they mightn't even remember their old nanny if it weren't for the Doctor. Their one great trip on the Tardis—just enough to give them a lifetime of wonders and terrors about whatever became of us.

And that's the other thing, isn't it. Because if I leave here, I'm leaving the Tardis behind, and I'm leaving him too. Much as I screamed at the Old Girl early on, much as I slammed doors and banged on walls, much as I shouted that I didn't give a flying crock of ice warriors where she'd hidden the toilets, just take me home you dumb cow, I was always a bit glad she refused.

I mean I know, you should give up, right? 283 days pass—you should give up. You know if he was in any proper way to come back he'd have done it by now. You know he cares about you, wouldn't want to worry you, wouldn't ever just strand you here. You even think he could have… Well, it doesn't matter what he could have. You know it doesn't matter.

Except it does.

And you don't give up.

You eat roast-something and almost-scones and you shower and pee and get into bed and fall well sleep at the end of the day—unless you've pissed the Tardis off, or the bluebells are chiming too loud in the field.

You're you-don't-know-how-many light years from home, and yet you go on living like you're Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter's just popped off for a bit of tea and got sidetracked along the way.

And everything becomes a bit normal until you start to think that maybe what you called scones back in London were the almost-scones, while Ronlin's are the real deal, and you're not sure you'll ever get to sleep again without the Tardis whirring in your ear.