THIS IS A WEIRD CHAPTER. IT SEEMS KIND OF ALL-OVER-THE-PLACE. NO CHAPTER BREAKS WITHIN FELT RIGHT, SO... IT'S A HODGEPODGE. THINK OF LIKE A QUILT.


THE DEAL

Lunch at a little tea room came next. Dumplings with a bit of chicken in gravy and a pot of Earl Grey. It was pretty awful food, much too English. Fortunately, the Doctor was not terribly picky about eating, so he didn't mind it too much, in spite of its cardboard-like properties.

Martha pushed her dumplings around the plate and seemed distracted in the extreme, but the Doctor did not need to ask why. He knew that something about the girl she had seen was still bothering her, and he thought perhaps, as long as they were here, he should look into it.

"What did she say, Martha?" he asked, out of the blue while she was sipping her tea.

"Erm," she said, blinking her eyes wildly, setting down her cup. "Nothing much. Just that she loved that old house, and then she insulted her sister."

"What did she look like?"

"I only saw her from a distance."

"Basically."

"She was a black girl. Pretty. She had a nice voice, but nothing particularly unique stood out about her."

"Okay. What age?"

Martha thought. "Maybe fourteen? I'm not a very good judge of that."

"Hmm," he contemplated, sipping his own tea now.

"What?"

"Well, if she gave you a vibe, then... I've dealt with this alien species before, the Isolus, whose pod crashed here and a juvenile individual possessed a young girl, twelve years old. I mean, the behaviour sounds totally different, but that girl had something. She was inexplicable somehow."

"When was that?"

"It was 2012, but all the same. Could just be a similar phenomenon, your girl possessed by a different alien. But if she's hanging about Wester Drumlins, then maybe it's worth looking into. We don't need anything interfering."

"You're probably right, as usual," she conceded. "I'm going to the ladies'."

As she walked away, he watched her. He imagined Captain Jack sitting here right now telling him that watching a woman simply walk to the bathroom is a sure sign of being in love. Bollocks. He did not need Jack, or anyone else to tell him how he felt. He knew what the signs were, in his own hearts. Watching Martha walk away was just fun, purely enjoyment. There was a lot to admire there.

As she stepped out of sight, a man came into the tea room. He sat down with a woman across the dining area, carrying bundle of flowers, wishing her a Happy Valentine's Day. She squeaked with happiness, and both of them got to their feet and hugged. The Doctor smiled at this display, having been reminded of the special lovers' day that fell today. Yes, they were out of their element, and yes, they had just had a romantic dinner, it could be said, the night before, but did that give him the right to ignore Valentine's Day? He was someone's (God help him) boyfriend now, and he needed to pay attention.

When Martha came back to the table, she eyed the flowers across the room. "Aww, that's sweet! Oh, that's right, it's Valentine's!" she commented, though the Doctor did not detect any hinting in her tone. She was just taken with the gesture, and felt that the man was being nice.

"Would you like to do something special tonight?" he asked her.

She sighed and smiled at the Doctor. "You're sweet too. But it's not necessary."

"Are you sure? It's a good night for lovers," he reminded, taking her hand.

"But we just had our big date. I don't want to cheapen it."

He chuckled. Then, he reached into his breast pocket and took out a pad of paper and a little pen. "I'll tell you what..." he said, scribbling some words down. "There! Happy Valentine's Day!" He ripped the top sheet from the pad with flourish and handed it to her.

She read it out loud. "IOU one Valentine's celebration. This coupon is to be held for a time when you really, really need it." She looked up at him. "Nice! Thank you." She leaned across the table and kissed him.

"You're welcome. Now let's talk again about your girl."


One week later, and Martha had still been unable to describe her feelings toward this girl as anything other than "strange" or perhaps déjà vu. The Doctor had seen the girl, but had noticed absolutely nothing uncommon about her, had felt no vibe, had gotten no radiation or feeling of any kind as a result of her. Whatever this was, it was focusing on Martha.

They had moved into a by-the-week boarding house on what they hoped was only a semi-permanent basis. Of course, they'd had to pretend to be married, and even then, not every house would allow a biracial couple to stay in their midst. Back in Soho, they found a place run by a Jewish man and his Muslim wife. They were, to say the least, sympathetic to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" as a couple, so long as they swore they were married.

The little flat came furnished (and then some, with random junk in varying degrees of usefulness crowding the cupboards), and there was a tiny parlour, a tiny kitchenette and a tiny bedroom with a tiny little bath. Within the week, the Doctor had been hired as an actuary, and sacked already, ironically, for not having respect for the constraints of time. Martha had lectured him about being late, leaving early and the like, insisting that if he was going to live in this world right now, he needed to participate in it. But she also knew that his brain and bodily impulses did not necessarily work the way others' did. If he got a bee in his bonnet about the mysterious girl at Wester Drumlins, about the sequence of Sally's instructions, or, say, the sticky residue left on drywall by a housefly, he felt that it was important to pursue it.

For her part, she got a job in a shop. It was a self-serving move, but she decided to work in a clothing store. She thought it might be nice to have a bit of a discount on what she still felt were "retro" clothing items. Also, she had worked in a clothing store while she was attending university, so she had a few years' experience, and if the Doctor was going to act like a flake, then she needed to be certain to hold down this job.

Seven days on, it was a Friday, and Martha was just finishing up pouring the hot spaghetti into a metal colander in the sink, when the Doctor came in. He smiled at her in her oven mitts, her hair pulled back, the table set for two. He hung his long coat up, and said, cheekily, "Hi honey, I'm home."

She giggled. "How was your day, dear?"

"Didn't get the Peterson account," he quipped, kissing the top of her head.

"Seriously, how was your day?" she asked.

"I didn't see her today," he told her. "I wish I could set up a device to detect her energy signature or something, so we'd know when she was there. I could do it, I have the sonic. Except I'd need a DNA sample from her."

"Er... you're not thinking of actually trying to do that are you?"

"No, I think that might actually be crossing the line a bit," he assured her. "Not to mention counterproductive. If I could find her for that, then I wouldn't need to build a device."

"Very true. How are we doing on the camera?"

"I found a man who might let us borrow one," he answered. "I asked him the price, and he was evasive about it, but I think it's worth a go."

"How did you find him?"

"He ran an ad. He does home camera and entertainment services, whatever that means. So I rang him up."

She closed her eyes. "Now tell me again how this works."

"I take that transcript from Sally's packet and record it. Eventually, we're supposed to run into a bloke named Billy who'll get zapped back here from 2007. We give him the recording, along with a list of the seventeen DVD's. Years from now, he's supposed to go into video and DVD production and insert the recording as an Easter Egg intended for Sally Sparrow. That's how she will get all of her information about the angels, about me, about how the timey-wimey stuff works..."

"Timey-wimey?"

"Yeah," he said, sitting down absently. "I'm supposed to say that on the recording."

"Okay," she answered, scooping spaghetti onto two plates. "So how long before we meet Billy?"

"Well, that's the problem. There's nothing in the packet about where or when he turns up. Wish I could build a signature detector for him too. I suppose I could try to track down one of his family members – I do have his surname, his family's Nigerian..."

"Gee, it's too bad you can't just build something that detects, like, time-travelling energy," Martha mused, now spooning red sauce. "I don't know, maybe the angels leave like a trace signature on people when they transport them like that. Doesn't seem likely that people could just get zapped without carrying something of the angels with them."

The Doctor stared at her, mouth open, brow furrowed.

When he hadn't spoken for thirty seconds, she looked up. "What?"

"I feel like a moron."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't think of that. You're a bloody genius, you know that? All I need is a... well, a Timey-Wimey Detector. Of course the angels leave a trace of temporal goo on people – that's time travel without a craft for you."


The next day was a Saturday, and the two of them went to seek the man with the camera. The workspace he used was accessible by a back alley. Martha instinctively reached out to take the Doctor's hand as they stepped through the doorway. The place seemed exceedingly seedy. Orange walls, peeling at the corners with a maitre d' booth up front, broken in two places and repaired with duct tape. Several doorways surrounded them, a few covered by flowered curtains, some by accordion-style Formica sliding doors. Jefferson Airplane blared from someplace and the air was absolutely filled with marijuana smoke.

"Well, at least we'll be relaxed while we're here," the Doctor mumbled, looking about with a bit of concern.

Martha was pulling a face. "Let's just do what we have to do and get out of here as soon as we can."

"I hear that."

She heard a noise on her right, a large metallic crash. On impulse, she threw back the curtain of the room from which the sound seemed to be coming. The room was dressed up like a parlour – flowered sofa and coffee table with a large, ugly landscape painting on the wall behind it. Fake curtains to denote a fake window and a mini café table with some plastic fruit in a bowl.

And with all of this, an ironing board lay flat on the floor, its metal legs having given way underneath. A woman was on the floor as well, and she seemed to be doing the splits, one leg slung over the ironing board. She was wearing an apron and high heels, and that's all. A group of men were helping her to her feet, another group of men were fiddling with a camera, while another, very hairy man stood by in a delivery uniform. Well, a delivery shirt, shoes and cap, anyway. His trousers seemed to have mysteriously disappeared, but his unnaturally large, erect penis was bobbing in front of him. He had his hands on his hips and he seemed exasperated.

"You know, you'd think you'd spring for some decent props," he was saying. "If I'm going to bang her while she's ironing, you know that there's going to be some weight put on the ironing board."

The woman was wincing in pain as the men set her in a chair. Finally, the delivery man's gaze trained in on Martha. With the unabashed exasperation matching that of a moment ago, he asked, "May we help you?"

"No no, I just was wondering what that crash was. Now I know. I'll go. Sorry." She ducked back out of the room.

The Doctor asked, sotto voce, "Is it what I think it is?"

"Only if you think they're making porn."

"Mm-hm," he said, his eyes having gone uneven. "No wonder they were so vague about the price."

Just then, a sweat-soaked, heavy-set man came out of one of the rooms.

"Hi," the Doctor said in a sprightly, friendly voice. "Are you Donovan?"

"Who wants to know?"

The Doctor stepped forward and grabbed the man's hand (though he immediately regretted it) to shake. "John Smith, remember? We spoke on the phone."

"Oh right, the bloke who wants to borrow one of our cameras," Donovan answered.

"Yeah, so... where do we stand on that, exactly?"

The man looked him over, and then he looked Martha over. As if Martha were deaf, Donovan said to the Doctor, "She's... exotic. Where's she from?"

"I'm from London, thanks, what's it to you?" she snapped, self-consciously.

He ignored her and again addressed the Doctor, crooking an eyebrow lasciviously. "Frisky."

The frown on the Doctor's face now would have made a small child cry. "You haven't answered my question," he growled, teeth clenched. "Where. Do. We. Stand?"

Donovan crossed his arms and sighed. Again he looked the couple up and down, and said, "There could be a market for this."

"Indeed," said the Doctor.

"Right then. You give me twenty solid minutes of the two of you and I'll give you an extra reel to do with what you like."

"Done," the Doctor said.