Brighton Rock

5

They stole out of the rain and into Cathy's Tea Room. While they had been walking back into town from the racecourse the weather had increased tenfold, a severe storm rolling in from the choppy, grey sea and attacking the buildings with bullet-like water droplets. Clara shook out the umbrella and left it in the stand by the door while the Doctor drifted over to find a table, one nestled warmly into a corner right by a rattling, old radiator. Thunder rolled outside; it was dark and dreary despite being barely noon. Clara would have believed it if somebody told her it was eight o'clock at night. There were small, cardboard menus on the table which Clara picked up to peruse once she had sat down, the Doctor trying to find her change.

"You didn't bet on the horse in the end, then?" Clara asked, though they had stuck around long enough to find out that Depth Charge had won the race, meaning the Doctor had been correct.

"Felt like cheating," she shrugged, "And I don't wanna pull a Biff Tannen."

"You'll pickpocket people, but you won't gamble. How interesting," Clara mused jokingly.

"I'm a complicated gal."

It had a nice atmosphere in Cathy's Tea Room. Clara was an enormous fan of tea rooms and cafés herself, the hearty home-cooking and the endless supply of tea. Some of her favourite memories of her time with the Doctor happened to be, bizarrely enough, on low-key dates of theirs to cafés and whatnot. Endlessly travelling the universe, the places they'd been, people they'd met, things they'd done – and idle afternoons spent escaping the rainy weather in humid eateries like Cathy's were her fondest recollections. Maybe it was a testament to the strength of their relationship, or something like that.

"Ooh, they do smoked kippers here."

"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast," the Doctor quipped; Clara laughed.

"Halfway between a fish supper and a full English, I am winning. And it costs, uh… what's that?" she held the menu out to the Doctor. "It says 3D."

"No, it's – threepence. That's what it means. Don't you worry your pretty head about all these numbers, Coo. I know you don't understand them," she took the menu, trying to work out what she wanted herself, while Clara glared at her. She glanced up. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, for – that's too rude? That's your limit? Patronising you about your ineptitude when it comes to mathematics? An ineptitude I've been subjected to for decades?" the Doctor questioned. "We both know you can hardly manage post-decimal currency, Clara. I bet you don't even know how many pennies are in a pound in 1964."

"Like… seventy?"

"No."

"Well… it's like, ten shillings, right? A pound?"

"Nope."

Clara paused. "…Whatever. What's the answer?"

"Two-hundred-and-forty pennies in a pound. Twenty shillings in a pound, twelve pennies in a shilling, and then there's half-pennies and farthings – which is a quarter of a penny. Then there's sixpences and crowns, which are five shillings. Ten shillings is half a sovereign, a guinea is a pound and ten shillings. The 'd' on the menu stands for denarius, in a throwback to old, Roman currency." Clara stared at her. "And now you see why they have Decimal Day in 1971 and make everything into nice multiples-of-ten. Just wait until they introduce credits. Then there's just one credit and no other denominations. Nothing less than a credit, no name for a value of credits higher than one credit. Easy-peasy."

"Uh-huh. That might be the most boring thing you've ever said to me."

"You asked!"

"Do you ever put the kids to sleep in lessons?"

"They fall asleep in your mock exams," the Doctor grumbled. Clara was annoyed by that, mostly because a few kids had fallen asleep in her mock exams.

Rain pattered against the dark windows as the conversation died out; the glass panes were foggy and soaked on the other side, making it difficult to see anything clearly except for bloated, vintage cars, distorted by the water and gliding past on a blurry road. She drank in the smell of the coffee and the second-hand cigarette smoke flooding the room and rising to the stained ceilings in patches and clumps. Around half the chairs and tables were occupied, the soft buzz of conversation providing a source of comfort in their fluctuating situation.

"This time yesterday we were in an almost identical type of café, only a hundred years in the future," Clara said, "Feels like a lot longer…"

"I love them. If you wanna know exactly what kind of place you're in, the local café is the place to be. Or the pub. Depending on what time of day it is. Some of our favourite dates have been in cafés," she said, still eyeing the menu. The Doctor glanced up and caught Clara smiling warmly at her. "What?"

"I was just thinking the same thing, that's all. About our dates."

"Aren't we cute." A waitress came gliding over promptly, after they had chatted and perused the menu for barely a few minutes. Clara always felt a tremendous pressure to decide what she was going to eat in such a short period of time. But it was the Doctor who was holding them up, for once; Clara asked for her smoked kipper and a pot of tea, while it took Thirteen a bit longer of eyeing the menu to finally decide to throw all caution to the wind and order two cooked breakfasts as well as a coffee. All for herself.

"You want two?" the waitress questioned her.

"Yep."

"You know that's double of everything?"

"Sure do."

"And you're gonna eat it all yourself?"

"Oh, I'll have a slice of her toast," Clara said. The waitress was still unconvinced. "Honestly, she will eat it all. She's like a hoover, just inhales food. It's alarming." The Doctor only smiled, and the waitress decided she didn't care much about questioning their eating habits any longer. She sighed and rolled her eyes and then wrote the order on her notebook. Her name-tag betrayed her as Tara, not the Lily they were looking for. There was always the possibility that she wasn't working that Saturday, Clara supposed.

"I'm ravenous. No dinner, no supper, no breakfast – the hunger pangs are this close to throwing me into a swoon," the Doctor complained, holding up her thumb and forefinger to Clara.

"Wish I had something to read…" Clara pondered, "Sick of newspapers, though. Sick of reading about what might or might not have happened on May 30th, 1964."

"We need to think of a plan," Thirteen said.

"And here I thought you wanted us to have a nice, relaxing holiday."

"Well. You know me," she said wryly, then lowered her voice, "Now, then. If the police can't convince this girl to turn on lover-boy, what tricks do you think we can play? Aside from your go-to tactic of trying to seduce her."

"If this sociopathic teenager can get her wrapped around his finger, I'm sure I can manage it."

"We don't even know how old she is. And it's crawling with police out there. All she has to do is shout and everybody's gonna mob the twenty-something 'invert' trying to lure a bona fide schoolgirl into her bed."

"Yeah, alright," Clara muttered, "So no flirting? Because insecure, working-class straight girls are my speciality."

"You know, you're not supposed to live up to the 'predatory lesbian' cliché, Coo. Just because this is the 1960s doesn't mean you have to embody all the negative stereotypes of period pulp fiction."

"I love period pulp fiction."

"Clearly. Look, we'll just play it safe, okay? There are other ways to get people to spill the beans."

"I don't know. Teenagers in love do tend to think that the whole world is against them. I remember when I was that young, I probably wouldn't have rolled over on someone I was seeing to the police. And I certainly wouldn't give you up to the feds." They were talking relatively quietly, and nobody was bothered with listening to them, even given the fact they weren't being quite as careful as they should be talking about the private facets of their sexualities.

"I guess not…" the Doctor mused, thinking. She regressed into silence now, while Clara continued to wonder about if they had brought any books with them. Shortly thereafter Tara their waitress returned with tea and coffee to Clara's great relief. There was nothing she wanted more than a good cup of tea. She gave herself an extra sugar cube to make up for the chaos of the previous day, thinking about how interesting it was that she was suddenly more comfortable talking about being gay in 1964 than she had been in 2064 for a handful of hours.

"Okay, so," Clara began, stirring her tea, "Police interrogation tactics aren't as technical as they are where we're from right? They don't have the same knowledge or methods."

"But neither do we. We're not trained detectives. And the timeline is still too fragile to call down my trained-detective daughter," the Doctor pointed out.

"Well… the police want to know about some bank heist, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"But we don't."

"Nope."

"We just need to know where to find this boy, we can take it from there ourselves," Clara continued, "So… hm. We could, y'know – kidnap her?"

"What? First you want to sleep with her, now you wanna kidnap and question her. What's next? Waterboarding?"

"Waterboarding does get good results."

"We're not in Guantanamo Bay, Oswald. You can't just go around waterboarding random waitresses. Look – maybe there's something in your seduction tactics. Though it's been a long time since you've had to utilise them," the Doctor said. They were going in circles with no solid ideas between them.

"My seduction tactics are nowhere near as malicious as you think. You just have to be nice and a smooth-talker. Funny, clever, lend an ear. Subtle. Talk about boys."

"Boys? You seduce women by talking about boys?"

"Listen, they're proven methods. You just have to do what you do when you talk to anybody – find common ground, shared interests, shared complaints and problems."

"And that's it?" she asked incredulously, "That's your big secret?"

"I think it helps that I'm hot," Clara shrugged, indifferent, drinking more tea and letting her eyes wander to the murky windowpane again. The Doctor shook her head, displeased.

"You're like one of those awful guys who thinks that by being nice to women they're entitled to sex."

"That's not true, I like to think I'm always nice," Clara defended herself, "Or I always try to be nice, at least. And contrary to my heinous reputation, the majority of people in the world have not lowered themselves to sleeping with me."

Thirteen leant back in her chair and crossed her arms, sticking her feet out until they were practically underneath Clara's chair opposite. They both grew hungrier by the second.

"…Far-cry from hunkering down for GCSEs, huh?"

"Tell me about it. Maybe it puts it into perspective a bit."

"Puts what into perspective?"

"You being right about me worrying too much about the kids. I mean, there is only so much we can do. Besides, if one unruly teenager can change the course of British history for the worst, I'm sure that group of rowdy sixteen-year-olds can remember half a dozen quotes from Catcher in the Rye."

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are," the Doctor did her surliest Holden Caulfield.

"I'll tell you about girls," said Clara, "They're phoney." The Doctor laughed.

"I'm sure they'll do swell in their exams. Even teenage boys find Catcher in the Rye a riot."

"A rye-ot," Clara reiterated.

"God, you're the worst human being in the world."

"I don't even like it. I wanted to set The Bell Jar."

"You can't make them all read that for their exams, they'll kill themselves. They're already all emotionally warped and hormonal. Puberty does those kinds of things to you."

"That's what Tom said. But The Bell Jar is just Catcher in the Rye but, like, better. Anyway, he put up enough of a fight about it that I gave in and let him do Salinger. He's very passionate about it. Gave me bargaining tools to set The Crucible for Year Thirteen's coursework," Clara explained. She was sure Thirteen already knew what texts she had set for what year, but they did often get caught up in their separate departments. She herself wasn't too clear on the specifics of the History syllabus, though.

"The Crucible is not historically accurate."

"Here I thought you'd be all over a literary metaphor for the red scare. And obviously we can't forget that Arthur Miller was briefly married to that old flame of yours, Marilyn Monroe."

"I just don't like the way it portrays Abigail Williams."

"I love the way Winona Ryder portrays Abigail Williams," Clara said snidely.

"She was, like, twelve in real life. I'm starting to worry that you don't have some kind of sinister disposition over here, Coo."

"You're forgetting that I almost did get hanged for witchcraft in Salem."

"So why would you want to relive those memories by teaching some kids about it for a year?" the Doctor questioned. Clara didn't really have a good answer. "What are you thinking of setting for next year, anyway? Fresh lot of sixth formers to disillusion."

"Ha, ha. And I don't know. I'm in a spat with Tom about it."

"You're the head of department."

"Yes, well, he's very passionate about books. It's a good quality for an English teacher to have. Besides, I think he's still a bit miffed that Lorna made me department head and not him. He's trying to get me to set Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the coursework. He's dying to do some Williams for the play."

"And what do you want?"

"I'm lobbying for The Importance of Being Earnest, but Tom doesn't like Wilde and says Earnest has 'no substance.' I think it's got heaps of substance."

"And gay subtext."

"Yeah, well, Hot Tin Roof also has a plentiful supply of that. Only angrier. Forgive me if I choose Cecily Cardew and cucumber sandwiches over Maggie Pollitt and the southern grotesque," Clara muttered, then she spied plates of food making their way through the tables in the careful possession of Tara. She managed to carry both of the Doctor's enormous Full Englishes, while Clara's kipper was small-fry by comparison.

"Excuse me," Clara stopped Tara as she made to leave the table, "Is there a waitress here called Lily?"

"What's this about?" Tara asked seriously, "There've been a lot of people in here asking after her lately."

"I'm her cousin," Clara lied, "Our grandfather recently died, see, but my mother – her aunt – misplaced the name and address to telegram to about the funeral arrangements. She's flighty like that."

"Dead grandfather, as well as everything else what's been going on with her?"

"Everything like what?" Clara continued. The Doctor was already wolfing down her food, piercing the sunny egg yolk with the end of a sausage; she hadn't even picked up the cutlery.

"Oh, I dunno. She's got some feller. I seen him lurking in here once."

"Really? What's he look like?" Clara asked. Tara was a gossip, which worked in their favour.

"Tall-ish. But young. Weird scar. I told her I don't like the look of him, none of the girls do, but she wouldn't listen. Screamed at us. And normally she's so quiet… but if you're her family, maybe you can talk some sense into her."

"It'd be my pleasure, if he's as shifty as you say," Clara smiled, "Is she working today? This is gonna sound funny, but I haven't seen her since we were small. I'm from up north."

"Oh. She's the mousy one, in the back right now, smoking on her break. Looks a bit sick, Cathy worries she's not eating properly. I've got other tables…"

"Sorry for keeping you. Thanks for the help." Tara went off again. Thirteen was still demolishing her lunch. "Could I have some of your toast, do you reckon?" The Doctor's mouth was full, so instead of answering she just picked up a slice and gave it to Clara. Fish and toast was a funny combination, but not one she minded.

They didn't talk for the next few minutes, the Doctor much too engaged with her food and Clara scanning the room every few seconds to try and spot this 'mousy' Lily they were after. It began filling up in Cathy's Tea Room as people began arriving for the lunch time rush, angling to get out of the worsening storm. The wind had picked up severely and the windows rattled now; through the single-glazing Clara felt an icy breeze as she cut off shreds of her kipper to eat. She stole a rasher of bacon, too, much to the Doctor's annoyance.

"I cook for you every day, and you won't even let me enjoy the sanctity of my own meals?"

"I want some bacon," Clara pouted.

"Whatever. Nothing's sacred with you around. So you're her cousin now?"

"Apparently. I thought it's a good story."

"So long as nobody goes and tells her. She said Lily screamed at them when they questioned her about this guy."

"Yeah…"

"But he can't love her. So he must be manipulating her."

"I guess she's naïve. Thinks she's in love. Emma Grayling once suggested that my infatuation with you was a bad thing, which I wasn't particularly happy about."

"But were you naïve?"

"Maybe. Handsome stranger whisks me away in a spaceship – how's anyone supposed to stop themselves falling in love with you?"

"Donna managed it. And Adam Mitchell, I don't think he's in love with me."

"He might be. All this time, he's been using my sister just to get closer to you."

"You really are naïve." She went about shoving an entire hash brown into her mouth, much to Clara's disdain. Couldn't she at least cut it up first? Then again, Clara thought she had better count her blessings Thirteen hadn't drenched everything in hot sauce, which she tended to do. She'd once put hot sauce on a Caesar salad.

"Does this place still exist when we're from?"

"No. It's a Starbucks."

"Oh," Clara's mood fell slightly, "That's a shame. This is the best smoked kipper I've ever had. Second best, actually, after Jenny's – but she did run that seafood restaurant for years. I could kill for one of Jenny's lobster rolls right about now, you know."

"Are we gonna get a new car?" Ever since the incident involving Adam Mitchell's borrowed Ferrari being destroyed after driving through a time-rift they'd been carpooling to work every day with Sarah Pickman. They hadn't generally talked with her much before – she was in the French department, after all – but she drove them as long as they helped pay for the petrol.

"We keep wrecking them."

"I know, but… I was just thinking we could get, like, a fixer upper."

"Oh?"

"Some old, busted ride. I could strip it out and revamp the whole thing. Y'know, over the summer. You said you wanna stay in Brighton for the whole summer instead of going back to the ship, and it'd give me something to do. Wouldn't cost much, if that's what you're worried about."

Clara didn't need to think about this long, "If you can find a write-off you fancy repairing, feel free. As long as it's not a Vespa."

"…I wasn't thinking about a Vespa," she said unconvincingly. "It's just this decade. Like we were saying, I lived here for a long time once. And I had a car, and people who actually let me drive it. A bright-yellow roadster."

"Who are you, Jay Gatsby?"

"Funny."

"Why not just grab a car from the TARDIS?"

"Because I need a project. Something to do outside of lesson plans. Nick isn't even really changing up the syllabus at all, anyway, so I basically have nothing new to plan," she said.

"Just, I don't know, run it by me, yeah? Before you make any rash purchases."

"Sure thing. I can't wait. Gonna enter into street races."

"Have fun with that. But I'm serious, not a Vespa."

"I already have a Vespa on the ship anyway… even though there's nothing more Brighton than a Vespa."

"Debatable, I think – oh, sh…" She stopped herself from saying 'shit' halfway through the word. Across the room was Tara talking to a short girl with skin so pale it was nearly translucent, mousy brown hair and a timid air about her. Tara was pointing out Clara to this girl, with big, round glasses with lenses so thick they were like miniature telescopes, and there wasn't a shred of recognition in her eyes.

"Dammit," said the Doctor, realising the same thing Clara had. But she didn't run like Clara had suspected she'd do. Instead, this girl who most certainly passed unnoticed by most everybody in all areas of life, marched right towards them and pulled up an empty chair to their table. They both froze.

"What do you want?" she hissed at them. Already she was drawing attention. "I haven't got any cousins from up north, and I definitely don't know any Americans. I've never even met an American."

"I'm not really sure I count," said the Doctor, trying to finish her food and pay attention to this most surprising turn of events. Lily stank of cigarette ash and Clara found this slightly intoxicating, and she struggled to stop her hand from shaking.

"We just wanted a word," said Clara.

"There've been a lot people wanting words with me lately."

"So we've heard. We're not the police." Clara had had a plan up to that point, a plan to tactfully get Lily to overhear a staged conversation about boy troubles – the usual, 'my boyfriend keeps killing people and wants me to help him cover it up' troubles – which would trick her into gossiping and opening up, like Tara. But she wasn't as timid or easily tricked as Clara had been counting on, apparently.

"I don't care if you're not the police. You could be anyone, showing up here asking after me. How do you know who I am? How do you know where I work?"

"We want to talk to Baby," said Clara seriously. If it were possible, the girl turned even paler.

"Anything you can say to Baby, you can say to me. We're getting married in the morning. At the registry office."

"Romantic," Clara said dryly.

"It is romantic," she snapped, "He loves me."

"Does he?" Clara asked, "Because we heard that you're his alibi for a bank robbery."

"He was with me."

"You know the police can't make a wife testify against her husband in court, don't you?"

"So you are with the police."

"Do we look like we support the totalitarian subjugation of the populace?" the Doctor questioned, "I'm not a class traitor. Damn pigs."

"Yeah, okay," Clara waved a hand at her to make her be quiet, "Nobody cares about anything you have to say."

"Gee, thanks. Look, we're not cops, kiddo. But the boy's bad news. He doesn't run with a good crowd, y'know? You gotta tell us where he is."

"We saw him try to kill somebody yesterday," Clara began to whisper, "A family man, two kids and a wife. Almost had his throat ripped out underneath Palace Pier. Can you imagine that? Dying out there with the seaweed and the rubbish? Washed away in the tide?"

"I know what kind of person he is," Lily said firmly. She was involved much deeper than they initially suspected.

"Is he your first boyfriend?" Clara asked, guessing. The girl didn't answer, she looked at the floor instead. Clara knew this meant 'yes.' "There'll be other boys. I've known lots of boys. And trust me, I know they all seem like they're the answer to some big question, but… they're not."

"You've known 'lots' of boys? You're the kind of girl my mum warned me about when I was young. The kind of girl she told me not to be."

"Oh, well, I mean – it's the 60s. You can get the pill now."

"I don't think this is the time to have an argument about abstinence and contraception," the Doctor told her.

"My point is that you will meet another boy. A nice one, who won't do anything that you'll need to cover up to the police," Clara implored, "Surely you see that's not good? That he'd ask you to do that? Men shouldn't do that, don't you think? It puts you in danger. Someone who loves you wouldn't want you to be in danger."

"Things aren't as simple as all that," she said. It was true, of course – Clara had lied to the police on the Doctor's behalf more times than she could count, and vice versa, like the time Eleven had been arrested on suspicion of being the Black Dahlia killer. She'd also stolen a car that day. But she doubted Lily knew anything about Baby's ability to see through time and manipulate it to his will, or about his dreams of grandeur as Brighton's criminal overlord. "Why should I wanna meet another boy? I'm already sixteen and I ain't never had one before."

"Only sixteen? You've got loads of time," Clara told her. She scoffed.

"This is the age respectable girls get married at."

"No, it's – you… he's not good for you," Clara felt useless. And she taught sixteen-year-olds in school every day, was supposed to help them through life and stop them from making ridiculous mistakes like this – but now all of her time as a teacher had been for nothing. She couldn't convince one confused girl decide that marrying a psychopathic gangster was a bad idea. "You know he's in the mob?"

"That's just something people say. It's not as bad as the papers make out."

"He's only marrying you to keep you quiet, he doesn't-" Clara hissed. Then Lily let out a horrendous shriek, wordless sounds, and Clara jumped back in her chair and leant towards the window. The entire café went dead, everybody now turning to look at the incident in the corner. The girl, however, remained oblivious. Didn't care a jot for the scene she was making.

"You don't know anything. I don't even know who you are, never seen you before in my life," she continued.

"That doesn't mean we don't have your best interests at heart," said the Doctor, "We just want-"

"No. I'm not taking advice from a couple of perverts like you," she kicked out her chair onto the floor and stood up, "And I'm not taking orders from the people in here anymore, either." And with hardly any warning she was sweeping out of the room.

"Someone's more neurotic than she let on," Clara remarked.

"Go after her," Thirteen hissed, "I'll pay, you go. She might lead us to him or give us some kind of clue."

"Me go after her?"

"You're the Phantom! Go, I'll wait behind."

Clara, all alone, gave chase. She wended through the tables and picked a black, man's overcoat from the back of a chair as he himself had nipped off to the toilet. His companion, who was obviously his wife, objected to this loudly.

"I'll bring it back," Clara said, using her telekinesis to easily tug it out of the wife's hands and throw it around her shoulders as she followed Lily out into the midday storm. She wrapped the black coat tightly around her otherwise rather obvious red dress and tried to turn up the collar against the wind and rain, but it lashed against her face and soaked her hair anyway. Lily was already crossing the street, hardly looking at the cars and the trams going by, while Clara remained on the opposite side, shadowing her and wishing she'd brought the umbrella.

Clara had never been able to pinpoint the exact time in her life when her joking alias as 'the Phantom' had become a legitimate, Doctor-ish moniker. Some ridiculous identity she had grown to share with her vampiric counterpart – as well as their literary pseudonym (she wrote the poems, Ravenwood wrote the books) – thanks to their joint prowess when it came to sneaking around. Of course, she didn't have the liberty of not showing up on camera or passing utterly unnoticed if she just stood still; but Ravenwood couldn't walk through solid objects or teleport. And of course, the biggest benefit was that she could still eat garlic bread.

Lily glanced over her shoulder to check she wasn't being followed; Clara paused and leant on the side of a parked car, watching Lily's blurry shape in the glass frontage of a shop opposite. With the black overcoat and staying across the street it was easy to remain unseen, and as Lily went on her way so did Clara. A black trilby flew towards her in the storm, presumably lost by someone who couldn't keep their hand on it in the wind. Clara snatched the damp thing out of the air and put it on her own head, taking advantage of a gap in the traffic to cross the road at the same time. With the upturned overcoat collar and the trilby, following a girl to her mobster boyfriend in the middle of the storm, she suddenly felt like a character in a noir detective story. Perhaps she had a revolver stashed somewhere on her person, Captain Jack style, ready to pull out at the last second if she got into a tough spot. Of course, it this were a detective story, she would presumably have more than a purely financial interest in the girl. A will-they-won't-they inkling of intense romance rippling under the skin. That wasn't the case, though, obviously, and Clara – fighting against the bitter chill, almost out of character for the late spring of May – was getting carried away in idle fantasies.

Some rattling Ford she recognised as being a model from the late-Forties shot by, breaking the speed limit and careening into a muddy puddle pooling next to the pavement; dirty brown water splashed over Clara, soaking her legs which weren't quite protected by the coat. That snapped her out of her detective idealising, unless the detective she was pretending to be was Inspector Clouseau. Out in the stormy sea she saw the West Pier, which was enough to make her stop dead in her tracks. The West Pier, she knew from the Doctor's idle, hobbyist lectures, had stood derelict for decades when they came from. But in 1964 it was there as a rival to the Palace Pier, the only one to remain in the future. In the 21st Century, the West Pier was nothing more than a skeletal, blackened husk out on the ocean, destroyed by storms and various fires.

Clara's brief lapse of concentration meant that Lily, when she glanced over her shoulder again, still didn't spot her. She looked like a tourist trying to shield herself from the storm with a sensible coat, holding her hat to her head, gawking at the seafront. Lily had grown up in Brighton and was probably numb to the razzle dazzle tourist attractions – Clara, after all, hadn't given Blackpool Tower a second look for a very long time; it was an eyesore on the horizon, just like some of the roller coasters (mainly because she had never much liked roller coasters.)

At that moment, Clara had a dawning realisation about something nasty, one which she hadn't put together until that second. She'd been too distracted by Archie Speyer earlier – who was undeniably hot, or she thought at least – to take much note of two separate pieces of information she had learnt. But now she remembered. Finley Fletcher had been a suspect in the death of his wife in 1966, a death eventually ruled a suicide. His wife whose name had been Lily Watson before marriage. This girl Clara was tailing only had two years of life left in her, she'd die at the age of eighteen, all because of her juvenile infatuation with a manipulative murderer. She could not let that stand and continued her careful pursuit with all the more verve.

Lily Watson ducked into a red telephone box. Clara had only ever managed to teleport properly when she was panicking about something – like if she needed to quickly save the Doctor from being shot, or quickly save the Doctor from falling to her death, or quickly save the Doctor from being hit by a car, or save the Doctor from spilling hot coffee on their new living room rug – and obsessing over Lily's impending phoney suicide worked in her favour in this regard. She slipped into smoke in the rain, a pulsing headache in the background to this rare exhibition of her mutated 'superpower', and managed to appear outside the phone booth, by the side which was mostly blocked out with the large, vintage handset. Leaning against it she was shrouded from Lily within, too short to be seen over the top of the phone. Plus, the heavy rain worked in her favour, though it had ruined her hair; it made it very difficult to see through the glass.

She'd shown up too late to work out the number the girl dialled, but could just about hear muffled words when whoever was on the other end picked up.

"Baby? … Yeah, I know… I know you said not to call, but… no, listen… would… LISTEN!" she screamed at him, showing that dark streak that had briefly come out in the tea room. There was a pause. "There's these girls asking questions. …No, not coppers … course I haven't been followed!" She had been followed, though; the girl wasn't proficient when it came to these criminal activities she was all of a sudden embroiled in. "Yeah, one was an American… northern, she said… they said they saw you-" The voice on the other end of the phone grew briefly loud enough for Clara to hear the buzz of it, even through the glass and over the rain. "I didn't tell them nothing, Baby. I'd do anything for you, you know that. Because you love me." Another soundless lapse while Lily listened to the instructions she was being given. It lasted for a while, so long that Clara wondered she hadn't hung up the phone. "Go home, lock the doors, don't answer to anybody," she said, clearly repeating the orders, "No, I won't call you again... In Cathy's… you'll stop them, won't you, Baby?" A pause. "Baby?" Still nothing. "I love you, too," she said emptily. He had already hung up the phone.

Anticipating that Lily was about to leave the booth and check, again, that she hadn't been followed, Clara hastily vaulted over the sea wall and down onto the rainy beach. It was a long fall, admittedly, almost ten feet, but telekinesis was helpful in situations like that where she needed to make herself scarce. Above she heard the door of the booth slam shut in the wind, pressing herself against the soaking concrete to avoid Lily. At least if she went home and away from Baby she'd be safe. For a while. Nobody had seen Clara jump the wall because nobody was out at the beach in that weather, and the visibility was so poor.

About a minute went by until Clara rushed over to the rickety, wooden stairs leading back up to the promenade, where she tried not to slide about in the mud-like sand too much (not helped by the fact she was wearing shoes with kitten heels that day). She got to the top and the phone booth as fast as she could, nearly knocking down a poor man who was also trying to get to it.

"Sorry," she apologised after barging right past him, "It's urgent business. I won't be long." She shut herself in the booth and picked up the handset of the phone, quickly dialling '100.'

"Operator assistance, how may I help you?" asked a clean-sounding woman speaking with strong intonations of received pronunciation.

"Hi, could you please tell me the last number dialled from this phone?" Clara asked politely, but quickly. Lily had told Baby that she and the Doctor had been in Cathy's.

"Of course, just a second," said the operator. Clara waited, tapping her foot, looking apologetically at the man outside still waiting to use the booth. "The number is Brighton, 33945."

"Okay, uh…" she flipped through the wall-mounted telephone directory in front of her, searching for that specific number. "33945… 33945…" she found the page, but it had only the name 'V. Morgan' attached to it. "Do you have an address for this number, please?"

"Yes, the address is 38C, St Mary's Place," said the operator.

"38C, St Mary's Place?" Clara repeated, managing to dig out a pencil from inside the pocket of the borrowed, oversized overcoat.

"That's correct."

"Great – thanks for your help," Clara said, scribbling the address onto the page in the directory with one hand. She hung up the phone and tore out the page, folding it and then balling up her fist around it as she left the booth, returning to the horrid rain.

Retracing her steps and hurrying now she wasn't having to hide, she made it back to Cathy's in under five minutes. Outside the door she let the borrowed trilby fly off into the wind again (knowing that if she didn't, her wife would steal it and wear it unironically and look like an idiot) and pushed open the door. The bell tinkled above and she hurriedly took off the overcoat and returned it to the man she'd taken it from.

"Thanks for that," she told him while his wife glared at her. The Doctor waited in her chair at the table, ready to go and finally done with her food.

"You look awful," she said, "Soaking wet."

"Thanks," said Clara, picking up the half-slice of cold toast she had left behind after leaving to follow Lily. She held out the piece of paper to the Doctor.

"What's this?"

"His address," Clara explained, "She walked to the nearest phone box and called him, so I called the operator and asked for the last number."

"Good initiative."

"You taught me everything I know."

"St Mary's Place – that's not so far, I know it," she said, "'C' is an underground apartment. Hard to get into."

"Uh-huh. We have to go. She told him on the phone where we are, no doubt he'll send somebody else out here after us, so we don't recognise them before it's too late."

"It's what I'd do," said the Doctor, dropping two of their shillings onto the table and standing up, "Come on, then. It's time for this Doctor to pay Baby-Faced Fletch home visit."