"So exactly who are you?" Ramani asked, reaching into the pocket of her suede jacket for a roll of mints. She offered them to Jo, who took one and popped it in her mouth.

"If I explain it to you, will you believe me?"

Jo's eyes challenged Ramani, with dark and insistent daring.

"I'll try."

Jo took a deep breath. "You see, the Doctor and I are travellers in time."

Ramani, sucking on her mint, chewed her bottom lip, and frowned.

"If you can just believe that part," continued Jo, "the rest is easy."

"No, you see…that's not really what I expected you to say."

Ramani craved the solid contact of Jo's calloused, wiry hands again to reassure her. When she'd held them, they'd been real, dependable. But once she had let them go - which she eventually had, out of sheer self-consciousness - it was hard to get them back. And now there was all this plastic tabletop in between the two of them, fostering cold Sun Hill reality, and doubt.

Demons rose up from the table to meet her. She had made mistakes. No major ones in recent times, except Maggie - but that was a big 'except'. The woman was clever and it had shaken Ramani, because she'd found herself in a misty place where truth and fiction got blurred. She lost faith in herself, unable to tell the difference. Falling for Maggie's lines, stepping over boundaries she shouldn't have gone anywhere near, her disastrous choices spilling over into the rest of the station. Ramani had been wrong, as it happened. It went awry, as it happened. She had tried not to let that affect her trust in other people, her uninhibited curiosity about them, her desire to find the hidden wonderfulness that most of them held inside, her inclination to take them as they were, not as they were boxed to be. But it would be easier if Jack and Terry and the others didn't continually remind her that she'd stuffed up.

She spread her fingers out face down on the table in front of her, reaching for Jo with her mind, but not brave enough to move her hand forward.

"The thing is, Jo, that I want to believe you. Part of me is saying, forget about all of these rational doubts, this forensic scepticism. But another part - the part that I have difficulty ignoring - knows that if I believe you and I'm wrong, then I'm derelict in my duty of care for you. I have a responsibility to look out for your welfare, that's my job. And if I don't do it properly, that job is on the line. No - that's not what I mean - it's not the job so much as the question of integrity. I'm here, talking to you because my boss and my colleagues trust me to be doing it. If I fail you, I'll lose that trust, and rightly so."

"You won't," Jo said gently.

Ramani licked her lips. She smiled sharply, exposing her crooked canine in a dubious, sceptical grin. "I want to believe you. But I need evidence."

"Right then," mused Jo thoughtfully. "Evidence. What about the Master's machine?"

"You mean at - at the warehouse?"

"That's right. If it's really high tech gear, that only a Time Lord could build, would that be evidence enough for you?"

"Jo, I need to call my neighbour to set the video - high tech equipment of any sort would have little meaning to me."

"Well what about the effect of it? From what the Doctor's said, that equipment has put a sort of spell on all the people who live nearby. He said it makes the same things happen over and over."

"Well life has been pretty monotonous."

It made a sort of sense. There were the big things - the deaths - the running joke with Terry about when the next bomb would go off. And the little things - the locker room conflicts - the interminable lack of talent round the office.

Hadn't she said as much to Terry only a few hours ago?

"I don't think it's enough. I mean if you're going to come up with a conspiracy theory that will ring true for ninety nine percent of the population, it's that their lives are unbearably tedious and repetitive. I can't be sure it's not a coincidence. With all due respect to the Doctor," she added.

Jo set her jaw firmly. "There's only one thing for it then. I'm going to have to show you the TARDIS."

"Your…wooden box?"

"That's right. Our wooden box." She smiled.

"So - I'm not sure - what will that achieve?"

"Oh, Ramani!" scolded Jo with exasperation. "It's the Doctor's time machine of course!"

Of course.

Jo stood up and began to walk. "Well come on, then."

"Now?" Ramani too got out of her seat, and buttoned up her jacket.

Jo stopped. "There's one problem, though. The Doctor has the only key."

"Well don't worry," said Ramani. "If my rank's useful for anything, it's sweet-talking custody sergeants."