This is it. We arrived the moment a man was murdered and we're leaving as soon as that little girl dies. I know it's wrong, I know there's still work to do here, but I don't care. Maybe I'm not as strong as the Doctor, but it doesn't make me harder, doesn't make me get tough about a thing, if somebody gets hurt. I'm not ashamed of that.

I tried to leave as soon as the parents arrived, but there was still enough of her there to say she wanted me to stay. Still didn't want to be in the way though. That's how come I'm out here on the gallery. With her Friend.

Poor kid. I know what it's like to be lonely. Letting her pretend the statue was talking to her was probably the best thing they could have done. All the drugs and all the rest is nothing. A lonely little girl will waste away under the best of circumstances.

The Doctor said that, in the future, when they take all these isolated cases of mysterious draining disease in individuals who were previously social recluses (his words, not mine) and realize they're all related, they call it Baden-Powell Syndrome. Baden-Powell was the guy who set up the Boy Scouts. Getting all the lonely little kids together so they wouldn't be lonely anymore. And it never has a cure, but for now it doesn't even have a name.

The Hardiwickes are in there watching something kill their daughter and they don't even have a name to curse it by.

We're leaving the second this is over.

"Yeah, you better." Who said that? Seriously. It sounded like there was somebody right next to me, somebody talking right in my ear. Threatening, actually. "You think anybody still believes you're a policewoman? You've well outstayed your welcome. Just go now, she's all but dead anyway."

"Okay, who's there?"

"Amy?" This, not from the voice, but from Rory. Putting his head through the little hatch. He climbs right out after me. "Who were you talking to?"

I sigh, shake it off. "I don't even know. I think I'm losing it."

"Oh, don't do that."

"Okay then." We don't really fit up here. Even sitting back against the wall our feet are sticking out through the balustrade. It's ridiculous. I pull mine in and curl up against Rory. "It's not fair."

"I know. It's alright, they've expected this. They're ready."

"No, but it's really, really not fair."

"I know."

A while passes in silence, but I don't like it. Not with that stone Astrid right next to us, not with all those stone people below, and all the sad ones in the next room.

"So where was Hannigan all day Tuesday, then?"

Rory's surprised I'm even asking, at first, but it doesn't take him long to catch on. I need this now. I need his voice and something other than Astrid drifting away to think about. "Oh, well, apparently, because Astrid's his goddaughter, he makes her these dolls. Or he makes the bodies and faces out of marble off-cuts and then a woman in town does the rest of the doll."

"Yeah, I saw them in her room."

"Well, he'd sent one away weeks ago and it wasn't finished yet. Apparently Tuesday, Astrid really started going at him over it. So he went into town to get it finished and bring it back. We saw it, actually. It's still down in the workshop."

No. Wait.

Go back.

We've heard Astrid talk about Hannigan. She loved him. Real, proper, favourite-uncle-type loved him. No way she was going to pounce him over a doll she already had a dozen of.

And no way that doll would still be lying in the workshop if she knew it was there. She's been down there since. She just sat and talked to me about rotting and worms eating her toes, so I think we're safe to say death and ghosts hold no fear for her.

Can't help thinking about Astrid telling me to 'shut up'. Only then denying she meant me. Had to mean me, there was nobody else in the room.

I'm looking, without properly knowing why, at Astrid's Friend.

Then there's another head at the hatch and I forget.

Polthorpe, looking deeply unhappy. He spits out a message like it's rancid meat. "She's asking for you again, Miss."

He can think what he wants, the Hardiwickes can think what they want, I'm out that trapdoor fast as it lets me. And as soon as I put my head through, Astrid tries to sit up, breathing too hard, tries to call over from the bed. They've thrown back the plastic sides. They probably never did her any good at all. Her mother is holding her, and she reaches one little girl hand out towards me.

"Detective Amy… You… you never finished telling me."

"What didn't I finish?"
"What made you decide to believe in him again?"

This isn't about the Doctor, this is about heaven. The people around us can think what they want. This is about heaven and I don't care.

"The plate. The bread and butter plate. The night I told you about when he didn't know what he wanted to eat, he decided he didn't like bread and butter. And he threw it out the front door. And I'd been bad and my aunt made me pull the weeds around the shed. The new shed they put in the place where he'd crashed on the old one. And I was pulling the weeds, and I broke my fingernail on something, and it was the plate. And that's how I knew it had happened."

"No, but it didn't mean, because it could have been any-" She breaks off because she can't breathe, because she's shaking her head. Astrid's scared. And from the moment I met her, Astrid was more than ready for this moment coming. Maybe it's different when it's right on the doorstep, but I don't think that's the reason she's suddenly afraid.

"But it wasn't, Astrid. That's the point. Sometimes you just know something in your heart. And most of the time that's what makes it real. It doesn't matter what anybody else says."

She stares then. And then her mother rolls her up close and I step back and away from it all. Right into Rory. He must have followed me and I'm glad of him.

Strangest thing.

That little girl's last words were, "Unpromise, okay?"