The number of the superphone requires three standard telephones to dial and, written down, covers about nine pages of an A5 notebook, front and back. Granted, that's in the Doctor's handwriting, which is not known for its compact grace. Nonetheless, it is composed of quite a number of numbers, and a few wiggly hand movements, and one particular manoeuvre that requires passing the receiver twice behind one's head. He recommends this only be attempted with cordless phones, to lessen the risk of strangulation. He's lost friends over that one.

You may imagine, from your own experience, how difficult it might be to teach these exercises to a companion.

From this imagined experience, you may well imagine the difficulty Clara is having in teaching it to two children when he finds her. That's why he stands in the hallway until she notices him; it's a funny old watch. That, and that he needs those restful minutes.

The Doctor knew he was coming back to head her off. This is not a miscalculation. This is not the inherent inaccuracy of one-pilot Tardis travel. He knew he was doing this. He knew it was technically a matter of interference. He knew he was interrupting an established pattern of events and therefore contravening the most basic tenets of responsible time-travel. He also knew those children were crying, and had had to pass the receivers of three separate phones twice around their heads to let him know it. There was no conflict. He wouldn't even have called it a decision.

Now that he sees her, even in this frustrated state, confused, half-remembering, determinedly keeping herself from snapping at her young charges, the overwhelming rage he felt when he thought she was in trouble is a bitter taint. Relief is total. Easy to forget the brutal depths he's capable off while relief is fresh. Angie sees him first, and Clara follows her eyes. Sees him and smiles. A small smile, thoughtless, wondering why he's here, but still a smile.

A smile and he forgets enough of his anger to remember he's just abandoned Lizzie and Jessica in 2086.

"Doctor," Clara mumbles, and he finds himself thinking the other women will be fine, will take care of each other until he gets back. "We were just talking about you."

After just a millisecond of a pause, he swallows the lump in his throat and launches into the act, "So I see!" He pulls Clara away by the shoulder, turning their back to the children while hissing loud enough for them to hear, "Why are these uninitiated youths learning my home contact details?"

"Funny you should ask. There's a good reason."

"Promise?"

"Double promise," Clara tells him, and with oh, such intriguing confidence.

"You do know I'm very old?" he says. Just a reminder. Just so she'll know where she stands. "And I've seen and done and heard just about it all, so whatever you've got that you seem to think is so-"

"You'll be interested."

His pretence breaks into barely-contained giggles, "I know I will! Oh, do tell, somebody stick the kettle on, fetch up the latest soufflé attempt, the day I'm having, Clara, you just would not believe if I told you, good thing we can go there-"

He is, throughout this, making himself comfortable at the table. His left hand reaches across and corrects one of the sums of Artie's maths homework. The forefinger of his right delivers fascinated little flicks to some beads Angie has strung into her hair, wondering how they stay on. And yet, Clara is not putting the kettle on. No soufflé, burnt or sunken or eggy or otherwise, is forthcoming.

So he looks at her again. Maybe there's something he's missed. At first, it doesn't seem that way. Clara looks very much like Clara. In fact, she looks exactly like Clara. She is much aided in this by the fact that she is Clara, that helps, but it's more than that. For instance, she's wearing one of those little dresses she likes, with the high waist and the long skirt that flares when she turns and has a lot more material to it than it appears to. This dress is a deep wine red and patterned all over with tiny white flowers. She's wearing a little belt high up on it with a gold clasp, and dark tights, and little wedge-heeled boots, and her black jacket, and a watch, and really looking an awful lot like Clara, like the image that comes into his mind when he thinks the name-jacket, jacket she's wearing her jacket her jacket is on and she's folding her arms at him.

"You're supposed to be somewhere already, aren't you?"

"Couple of minutes ago."

"No problem. After all, what's a Tardis for, except never having to be late to the party?"

"No." She snapped that. Her eyes are that little bit wider, body frozen, waiting for his reaction.

Thinking they are beneath his attention, Angie is nodding at her brother, the two of them silently discussing whether or not they should leave the room now. The Doctor, with absolute nonchalance, reaches out and sets a hand on each of their shoulders. "Don't be silly," he breezes, with only a touch of curious terseness, "I don't mind giving you a lift."

"It's fine, thanks." Clara tries to smile. It doesn't take. "Tardis always messes up my hair."

So he tightens his grip on Angie ever so slightly and asks coyly, "Off to meet a gentleman, are you?"

Clara's resolve suddenly surges, "Yes, actually."

But Angie looks at the table, and nowhere else. Artie squirms under the Doctor's other hand. Lifting his forefingers up just enough, he waggles them back and forth; as close as he can get to pointing, "Better than a lie detector, these two. A lie detector wouldn't have caught that. Because I don't doubt for a moment that you're off to meet a gentleman, but I got the context wrong, didn't I? There's nothing romantic about this at all."

Clara relents. Not the good sort of relenting, where you come out with the truth all of a sudden. No, she just gives up the lie and hardens. Turns away from him and heads for the door. All she deigns to say, and this with an edge he could never expect from her, "You're not coming."

Suddenly plaintive, out from under Clara's gaze, Angie grabs back at the Doctor's arm. "She won't tell us either!"

It all leaves him feeling a bit guilty about using the children to gauge her. He turns his determined grip into a hug, one under each arm. "You two, off and watch cartoons. I'll sort this out." There's a mutter between them, how they'd better just go to bed. Dad, apparently, is home, and they don't get cartoons on their little bedroom tellies at this time of night. The Doctor can't have that. He can't have them in separate rooms and each of them with nothing to do, worrying about Clara. He needs them distracted. A quick flash of the sonic towards the ceiling does the trick. "Go and try the one in Angie's room now. One night only, mind."

They go, but only ruefully.

Clara, for her part, is standing at the door, still with her back to him. She hasn't let herself out. She isn't moving now.

"I know," he begins, "you would never willingly worry those children-"

"No."

"-Or me. So what on Earth is going on?"

This time she looks at him. Big warm eyes, filled with pain and pity, truly torn. She looks him over and says again, "You're not coming, Doctor."

"It's funny, but every time you say that it sounds like more of a challenge."

She turns the lock on the door. But the Doctor still has his screwdriver in his hand and turns it back. Clara turns it again, and again he turns it back. They do this twice more before she bites, "Yeah, very mature."

"You're just getting later and later for this mysterious meeting. You were going to tell me all about it two minutes ago."

"No," she says simply, "I wasn't. When I get back, I'll tell you all about it."

She snaps the lock, and this time holds the snib open, struggling with it when the sonic hums, but she has the door open before he can stop her. The Doctor pulls himself up from the table and follows after. "And if you don't come back?" he calls. Halfway down the garden path, she turns, looking at him strangely, fearfully. "Forgive me if I'm jumping to wild conclusions, but it sounds like that sort of an evening."

"If I don't come back, you'll never even hear about it, because I didn't get to finish teaching the kids how to call you."

"So I have to come with you. I'm committed now. If they can never call me then I'm stuck with things as they are now, I've made a mess out of that part already, so I have to run with what I've created for us, temporally speaking."

"You mean… You mean I've already done this? And… And they had to-?" She trembles. He tries to go to her. The dimness of streetlights, the fine drizzle in the air, she looks small and cold and vulnerable. Whatever's going on, whatever's on her mind, it's too much for her. Which sounds like an insult but that's not how he means it. Clara's capable. She's smart and brave and very, very capable. He just doesn't want her to need to be. Whatever it is, he wants to take it away. To share in the carrying, at least. He puts an arm out to wrap round her. But Clara reaches up, bats him away with one hand. Sways her head and repeats sadly, "You're still not coming."

"Then you're not going," he says, and catches her by the collar.

Something about this panics her. She tugs away and mutters and calls out, "No, I have to, please." But she can't quite reach his holding hand with any strength. The Doctor turns and starts to pull her towards the Tardis.

"Quick chat, you and I. Don't worry. Soon as we're all caught up I'll drop you back to five minutes ago and you can be on time and everything."

"No, I can't be here, he'll come here. What about the Maitlands? I have to go or he'll find me here."

This time, Clara is hugged. Whether she wants to be or not. It's the Doctor who needs the warmth and the comfort of it. Needs to set his head down on top of hers and sigh longingly, "I want to go back to Switzerland." He needs to hear her be so confused as to murmur, 'What?' even in the midst of her distress. "So where is this meeting you're late for?"

"Not far."

"Let's go. And if you, Miss Oswald, say one more time that I am not coming with you… there'll be… consequences. I'm sorry, I'm not good at threats. Imagine a fond but firm threat and add that in yourself."

She drifts for a moment, then nods, "Okay, got one." They go together, both of them feeling much better about it, through the garden gate and out into the street. "There's a park, just around the corner. But Doctor, you have to stay out of sight. I don't know what's going to happen."

"I will stay out of sight-"

"Thank you."

"-Until some danger to you makes itself known when I will heroically step in and rescue my third damsel of the day." Which might be slightly more than a day by now, speaking purely in terms of twenty-four-hour stretches, but still, between whisking off exhausted students and saving witches from the flames and now this, the Doctor expects to be sewing a Shining Armour badge to his sash somewhere in the very near relative future. Clara is much less impressed, and goes on another little rant about how he simply mustn't be seen and not interfere and this man she's supposed to be meeting felt really dangerous and something, but he's busy quite liking the idea of performing three so different tailored rescues in (almost) one day.

"I'm not kidding," she seethes, shoving him as though it might pull him out of the reverie. "I'm scared, Doctor."

"Yes. Hence rescuing. It's not a rescue when you're enjoying yourself."

"I'm not scared for me, I'm scared for you."

"Then explain why." She fights with herself. Ultimately, she holds her silence. "Go on. Give'us a clue. Little clue. A clue about a clue."

"Well, Doctor-"

This is not Clara's voice. He heard those words and thought they might be the hesitant beginnings of an explanation. He was so ready for that, so convinced she couldn't resist him forever, that he assumed. Takes him a moment or two to realize that Clara isn't the one who spoke. And the words themselves don't sound explanatory, but smug and self-satisfied and a little bemused. "Well, Doctor," the new voice says. "What a pleasant surprise."

He finds Clara stepping in front of them. "The park," she says, as nasty as she can possibly be, "We were going to meet at the park."

"We were going to meet at eight," the stranger says blithely.

The Doctor pushes a little of Clara's hair out of his periphery to get a good look at him. They have been interrupted by, as they had already discussed, a gentleman. It is clear from his sharp suit and careful posture, from the roundness of his vowels, that he at least pretends to be a gentleman. He is tall and bald, with a diamond stud in one ear. He has a reserved, charming smile on his face. But above all of this, and beneath it and crawling in the skin and surrounding it like an aura, he gives a sense of danger, and of evil.

It is not a term the Doctor uses loosely, but the stranger for all his ordinariness exudes monstrosity.

"What does it matter where we meet?" he says, when Clara can't answer him. "One way or another you've brought me the Doctor."

"Oh, trust me, I tried not to."

Clara sounds almost tearful. The Doctor doesn't look to see whether or not she's crying. He has no desire to know and can't say what his reactions would be.

There's no decision to make; he steps in front of her.

Smiles and says wryly, "I should have known it was you." The stranger puts out a hand. The Doctor would shake it, except that he feels Clara tugging the back of his jacket. So instead he rolls his eyes at the hand, "As if I would make it that easy."

The stranger shrugs, "Can you blame me for trying?"

"Of course not. Everything's worth a pop, just once, don't you think?"

"Are you asking, Doctor, if I'm a gambling man?" His grin loses just enough of that reserve and becomes shark-like, vicious.

If Clara wasn't shaking and didn't need him to be steady, the Doctor might well give a little shudder. But as things stand he grins right back, "I'm asking if you have time-travel capacities at your disposal."

"Naturally."

"Then why don't we do this in 2086? I've found a little something there that might be of interest to a man of your… interests. I'll tell you where. And if you don't like it, well, you know where to find me if you come back to five minutes ago."

The gentleman produces a pocket watch on a long chain, and watches the second hand while he muses on it. "Sounds as though I can't lose."

"Then let's all just go," Clara says softly, pulling the Doctor's sleeve, trying to bring him with her.

She's still scared. Lonely and small with it. It takes several deep breaths to keep the bright, easy smile on his face, "Then let's make that the wager, shall we? Because I'd like to tell you here and now, 2013 or 2086 or the year one trillion and not if we lived through all the years between, you'll never win this one. I'd stake a whole packet of Jammies on that."

As though they were great friends, the stranger laughs, "How can I refuse?! Oh, you are a most refreshing catch, Doctor. To the future!"

Cagily, they face each other a moment. Then, beginning to turn, leaning away, hopping back as though they might catch each other. These little dances done, the stranger turns his way and begins to walk. The Doctor turns, and by physical force turns the transfixed Clara, guides her shuffling back towards the house.

From the corner of his mouth, "Clara?"

"Yeah?"

"Who was that?"