AUTHOR'S NONSENSE: God I hope Shona actually does end up a companion. That is all.
Shona prodded the curry with caution. "Is it meant to be purple?"
"It's a delicacy!" the Doctor insisted. "Unique to this particular colony, to this particular decade. After this, they move onto hamburgers, and there's no way I'm taking you to then."
Shona swung back in the seed-pod seat suspended from the slime-covered ceiling. "It's weird," she said, peering at it as if a Triffid might come crawling out. "I'll give it a go, though..." Couldn't be worse than that slop Kumar down the road made. She dabbed a finger in the purple curry, then into her mouth - her eyes opened wide with how unexpectedly good it was.
Clara laughed. "Enjoying it, then?"
"It tastes like... I don't know what it tastes like, but it's good!"
"Good!" said the Doctor, getting up. "I'll go to the market and get that bicarbonate of soda."
"Hang on, what?" Shona asked. "Bicarbonate of soda? You can't just leave us here, we're on an alien planet!"
The Doctor jumped out of the booth, saying as he left: "You'll be fine, Kraxos 5 is the safest planet in Andromeda!" And he was gone.
Shona stared into space a while, wondering out loud: "Bicarbonate of soda?"
"Oh! Yeah, I should probably explain that." Clara pulled a vial full of some liquid stuff from her jacket pocket. Looked kinda sparkly, but sparkling with darkness instead of light. Weird. "Someone poured this acid into a colony of sentient insects we were visiting. We managed to get most of it out before much damage could be done, but we need to neutralise what's left of it. So yeah. Bicarbonate of soda. That's what we visited your shop to get."
She was still staring. "You were in the middle of saving all these insects... and you stopped off to have a curry?"
"It's a time machine! Could pop off to the end of the universe in the middle of a date and be back in a few minutes' time. Which I've done before, funnily enough."
"A date?" Funny how today kept leaving even gobby Shona speechless.
"Hah, not with the Doctor, if that's what you're thinking! He'd be insufferable on a date, can you imagine?" Clara put on a Scottish accent: "Oh Clara! Here's some life-threatening danger, and by the way your hair looks lovely and brown today, have you been rolling in mud?" She laughed, and Shona couldn't help joining in.
Then the laughter trailed off, and Clara's smile closed up. "But yeah. That was with... someone else. Who I'm. Not dating any more. So that's all over now." She was trying to look steadily into Shona's eyes, expression neutral, but Shona couldn't help but see the traces of sadness behind that mask.
Subject change time? Subject change time.
"So you and the Doctor, you don't go on dates, you just travel round the universe and save insect colonies and get into life-threatening danger and stuff? That's just what you do?"
"Yeah," said Clara. "It's a full-time job, keeping that idiot out of trouble. Even if we can never manage to stay safe for lo-" A black-gloved hand clasped itself over her mouth; her eyes went wide with panic.
Shona was about to cry out for help, but the glove over her mouth stopped her from doing that. A glove with a bit of tissue hidden in the palm, covered with some sweet-smelling liquid that was making her feel all woozy...