Rose went a step or two ahead of the Doctor and Peter through the concrete walkways of the estate. Keisha had asked them to leave, said she was tired out, and Rose could hardly insist they stayed. But she wasn't sure Keisha should be left alone, especially after what they'd witnessed.

"I'll come back later on, yeah?" She'd lingered in the doorway, uneasy. "You hope he's gonna come back, don't you?"

"He's my brother," Said Keisha simply. Out here in the pale sunlight Rose found it hard to believe how scared she had been; hard to believe it had happened at all. Now she, Peter and the Doctor were on their way back to her mum's. She could sense how eager the Doctor was to get going, to escape this world and the remnants of Rose's old life, to remind her of how fantastic her new life with him could be. But Rose wasn't ready to move on again just yet. When they reached the garages, she stopped walking.

"What do you think we saw?" Peter stopped but the Doctor carried on for several paces before he realised they was no longer beside him.

"I don't know."

"A ghost?"

"I've never seen a real one. Things that look like ghosts, yeah – loads and loads of them. But as a general rule people never come back from the dead." Suddenly the Doctor sounded almost bitter, like a frustrated kid. "There's always been another explanation." Rose sighed.

"I s'pose the navy did say Jay was only missing in action. But what sort of action could turn him into a. . . a whooshy hologram thing? And why wait three months before coming to haunt his sister?"

"To be fair, missing in action is normally the polite way of saying they couldn't find the body and they're not going to look. I don't think the navy itself is to blame." Peter added.

"Then maybe he followed his ship home. Keisha said it had been towed up the Thames, didn't she?" Rose said. The Doctor pulled a face.

"Why bother, though? Why bring it into the middle of London?" Then he spun round and tried to set off again.

"Oi!" Rose pulled on his arm, stopped him. "I know you're dying to get off. . . But can we try to find out first?"

"It is a bit suspicious how quickly they salvaged it, three months isn't long for a mere shipwreck recovery." Peter added. The Doctor sighed.

"Ok then. First stop, Mickey's place. We need to find out more about the Ascendant – where it sank, what's happened to it since then, see if anything fishy's been going on. Quick dolphin-friendly trawl through the Internet should do it. Then we'll take it from there."

"Wow," Said Rose, batting her eyelids at him. "I never knew – our wishes really are your command." The Doctor grinned.

"One bag of chips and I'm anyone's."

"Ten-foot green aliens, I can handle. Warrior monsters in dirty great spaceships, I'm your man. But ghosts?" Mickey Smith grinned, shook his head. "You're winding me up." Rose scowled. Usually she loved Mickey's smile. It was one of the first things that had attracted her to him – that and his smooth dark skin, his playful eyes, his easy going outlook on life. But right now he was bugging her big-time.

"I said he looked like a ghost. Don't you believe me?"

"I'm your ex, not your exorcist." He said it lightly but there was an edge to his words. They'd been going out before she'd gone off with the Doctor. Now they were still close, but in a different way. More like friends. Kind of. Sometimes it did Rose's head in. She looked past Mickey and Peter at the Doctor, who was on the computer in the untidy bedroom. He was staring intently at the screen, hammering the keys and slamming down on the mouse, tutting and cursing under his breath.

"This is so slow!"

"Oi, don't break it," Mickey told him. "What are you looking up, anyway?"

"Anything on that ship, the HMS Ascendant."

"Oh, that. You should've said." Mickey stroked his chin, playing the great thinker. "Type twenty-three, 430 feet long and weighing almost 5,000 tons. Stealth design. They can operate anywhere in the world."

"They can sink anywhere in the world too, by the looks of it." Peter looked at Mickey suspiciously. "How come you know so much about it?"

"I'm a boy. It's genetic." He picked up some printouts from beneath a bundle of clothes on the floor and tossed them over to the Doctor. "And 'cause I did some research on that boat when it got tugged up the Thames. Thought it sounded a bit sus." He looked pointedly at Rose. "It's what I do now. Dig around and find stuff you might want to know about next time you drop in."

"Nice one, Mickey." The Doctor slapped him on the back. "Who says you're a total waste of space with no life?"

"You do."

"And I'm right too, aren't I? You really need to get out more." He riffled through the papers. "Hmm, sank just over three months ago. . . all hands lost, big tragedy. . . Full government inquiry, blah blah blah..."

"Ninety million quid, that ship cost. Now it's just scrap." Mickey shook his head. "They're bound to want to find out what happened." Rose shrugged.

"Won't bring back the sailors, will it?"

"Maybe it already has," Said Mickey. "If this Jay bloke really did show up."

"Keisha saw him too!" Said Rose hotly. Mickey folded his arms.

"Yeah? Doesn't say much, does it?"

"Oh, right, now I get it. This is about Keisha, right? Any other time you'd say you believed me even if you didn't, just to shut me up. But because it's her we're talking about, you don't want to know."

"That's not true!" The Doctor nipped in between them, waved a printout under Rose's and Peter's noses.

"Hooray! Look. Stanchion House. Government-owned marine engineering plant on the bank of the Thames, near Southwark. Now we know where the ship's been taken. That's good. Bunting alert! Isn't that good?"

"Whoa wait, Stanchion House?" Peter asked as he took the paper and examined it.

"Problem?"

"Not a problem no, I've just heard of it, well, actually I've been there,"

"With UNIT?"

"No they took us there on a school trip." Peter saw the Doctor hadn't caught the sarcasm. "Yes with UNIT." Rose and Mickey were still arguing.

"I know you never liked Keisha, Mickey. 'Oooh, ditch her, babe, she's a bad influence –'"

"She is!" Mickey shook his head. "The state of you after a night out with her!"

"Oh, and I was so much worse than you coming back from your stupid lads' get-togethers. . . " Rose tailed off. "Pieces."

"What?"

"Why did they bring Jay's ship back in pieces?"

"I dunno. . . ."Mickey shrugged, suddenly wrong-footed. "It's been three months. Maybe they dismantled it, ready to send different bits to different departments at this Stanchion House place."

"That would make sense, if they wanted such a quick investigation I'd bet the whole place is working on it." Peter added.

"Good theory." The Doctor said as he shoved the papers back into Mickey's hands. "Why?"

"Probably so they can get it all studied and out of sight quickly?" The Doctor picked up a newspaper from the desk.

"No, I mean, why was Keisha a bad influence?"

"She wasn't," Said Rose flatly.

"Oh yeah, right," Said Mickey.

"I've heard about some of those dives she dragged you to. And about the blokes who go there."

"That's not fair."

"Was it fair when she got her mates to push things through my letter box?" He said more quietly. "Or when she tried to have them beat a confession out of me?

"What are you on about?" Mickey nodded across to the Doctor.

"When you went off in the TARDIS with him for a year. And your mum told everyone I'd done away with you."

"So I was a bit out with the timing!" The Doctor mimed a pantomime yawn and slumped in a chair, Peter sitting in the other as they waited for the domestic to be over. "I've said I was sorry."

"Yeah. Which is more than Keisha ever did."

"I didn't know she'd done those things," Rose conceded. Mickey shrugged.

"Well, you ain't had too much time for your old life lately, have you?"

"Old life, new life, they're all the same!" The Doctor jumped back up, threw an arm round each of them, then froze. He moved his jaw awkwardly. "Except the teeth. It can be weird getting used to the teeth. Now, kiss and make up, because this is very interesting." The Doctor tapped the newspaper. "It says here that as many as twenty people have gone missing near that part of the Thames since the Ascendant turned up."

"I know," Said Mickey. "'Curse of the Ghost Ship", they call it. . .'"

"If it were anywhere else but Stanchion House I'd probably say they'd made it up to cash in and sell more copies." Peter said as he came over.

"Well I reckon it's time we had a look at what's left of this ship for ourselves," The Doctor declared, grinning away. "Who's coming? We can take the TARDIS. Have you back here, oooh, thirty seconds after we left. Deal? Who's in? Come on, who's in?" Rose, Peter and Mickey looked at each other. She spoke for them all.

"All right, we're coming. But we're all taking the bus."