The flat was frumpy and the rent unreasonable; some things in London never changed.
It was a poky little bedsitter in Tower Hamlets. The street contained a tiny shop for silks and woollens; after that was a silversmith's, iron grates shuttering the storefront as a deterrent to jewel thieves. Weather-beaten brickwork straggled up above the florist's to a dingy maisonette with its own front door, shabbily overlooking Brick Lane.
Just one room. Pre-furnished, two south-facing windows dumping in heat from dawn to dusk under mouldering lintels. From without, it was soiled and yellowing with age, a victim of the florist's damp overgrowth. And the interior was little better. Hot, cramped, rife with water damage – painfully dated even for 1969. It smelled of potpourri and cloves, enough dust teeming on the air to reconstitute the previous tenants' full DNA profile.
Entirely apart from aesthetic appeal (of which there was none, if the mismatched florals had anything to say about it): it was the lack of walls that troubled Martha most. The washroom was closed off, a little flickering cupboard comprised of pedestal sink, tub, and a toilet with an actual pull chain and cistern – all in a hair-raising shade of olive. But beyond that, the most privacy to be found was a Chinese folding screen, flimsily separating the mattress from the kitchen – its bird-and-flower panes very obviously see-through. No place to undress or trim her toenails or breathe outside the loo.
"You said there'd be a bedroom," Martha'd observed, as non-critically as she could manage, on their first introduction to the flat.
Amir Chowdhury – curry extraordinaire, landlady's son, and irritatingly fast friend of the Doctor's – had dismissed her concerns with a cheerful, "But there is a bed!" And he'd gone right back to fiddling with the hot and cold taps, proudly demonstrating the water pressure to the Doctor, who oohed and lovelyed appropriately.
She'd found herself looking around in stoic dismay. A solid seven steps from the kitchenette to the bed – it was worse than her own crammed flat back home. An ancient iron radiator rusted, unused, beneath the windowsill closest to her. The same mildewed sill from which a philodendron poured – one of several shiny, recently-misted houseplants, all of which made Martha's skin crawl, imagining what sort of slithering, many-legged things were undoubtedly roosting within.
The Doctor and Amir had moved onto the hob, fawning like schoolgirls over the different heat settings.
For a weak, defeatist moment, she almost wanted to cry.
It looked like the home of someone very, very old – mainly because it was. Sufia Chowdhury was a woman so prodigiously ancient she was largely referred to in the past tense (despite being entirely alive and well, visible every morning at sunup watering the flower boxes on the fire escape).
Sufia's only conditions upon their tenancy had been that her plants were watered on schedule – and that Martha and the Doctor were married. A lie which the biodampers, psychic paper, and a bit of hammed-up, faux-affection from the Time Lord had easily told.
Martha was going to be trapped. In these four peeling walls. Playing house for God knew how long – her future at the mercy of some random bloke's stumble into the Weeping Angels four decades away.
Until then, she was stuck in in this blighted era. In this stifling, twee shoebox of a flat. In the confines of an imaginary marriage that was all a grand joke to the Doctor.
In a body that wasn't even entirely hers anymore.
She managed to get her emotions under control with a deep, steadying breath, swallowing hard.
"We'll take it," she heard the Doctor declare, without once looking back at her – apparently won over by the percolator.
She'd a temper with him for the rest of the day. He didn't care to ask why.
Four days in – already their rapport was suffering.
Mrs Chowdhury wanted the first two months' rent as a deposit, which came in at just over fifteen pounds. Between Martha's clothes and the Doctor's costly radio, neither of them having any real employment yet, the Time Lord was again required to resort to unorthodox measures to make ends meet.
The cash point he'd burgled was covered in police tape when they returned – no longer an option for them. Martha fretted over being caught, but CCTV was scarce in 1969 and the Doctor's fingerprints were in no registry on the planet. The reminders put her fears at ease.
Right up until the point he decided he was going to rob a bank.
And he had, without much fanfare either. They'd both agreed that her entry would only draw undue attention, so she waited outside by a lamppost, nibbling her thumbnails and waiting for the coppers to show – feeling sickly, like the whole city passing by knew what she was getting up to. The Doctor, not a care in the world evidently, had swaggered right in, chatted away blithely with the tightly-buttoned female teller – flirted, perhaps, although Martha couldn't really tell through the window.
In an era without computers or databases, as it turned out, being an attractive white male in a suit – with the benefit of psychic paper to handwave the need for ID – was about all that was required to stage a slick heist.
He returned after what felt like an eternity, but Martha was disturbed to find was little over two minutes, with a paper parcel labelled John Smith.
"How the hell did you manage that?" she'd hissed. Then, clamping her hands over her ears the second he started to explain, rapidly shaking her head: "God, no, forget it. I don't want details."
"Safe deposit boxes," mused the Doctor, as he tore into his loot in a park several blocks away – at the harrowed insistence of Martha, who was desperate to flee. "Handy little things, aren't they?"
Fifty-nine pounds, a string of pearls and a keepsake locket full of human ash later, she again found herself verging on tears as she begged him to put the belongings back.
"What – go back to the scene of the crime?" he scoffed. "Now I'm no criminal mastermind, but that seems a bit on the nose to me."
"Doctor, I'm serious."
"You were all right with it twenty minutes ago," he said, bemused, frowning at her. "What's changed?"
And they'd got into it a bit.
"That's someone's family," she'd said, furious – rather appalled at his seeming indifference. "Right there, in your hand."
"Not all of them," said the Doctor, shaking the locket. "Only a bit. Not too special."
"Not funny, Doctor. And not just that – there's an heirloom!" She'd risen to a shout, gesturing at the pearls – attracting curious glances from the passing parkgoers. "And probably his life savings! This isn't right. All that history, gone – just because you couldn't think up another alias?"
"John Smith the car salesman will live," the Doctor retorted. "He's got a house, a mortgage, an incredibly predatory business loan he'll be paying back for the rest of his life… and, moreover, all of his belongings." He sighed. "You said you didn't want details, but this isn't his stuff, Martha. Just used his name to get in. Then I sonicked the box of someone who won't miss it."
She stared at him, almost in amazement. "Who wouldn't miss a loved one?"
"Since you're so very concerned," he said, "let's take a look at what else our mystery man's got."
At which point he tipped out the rest of the contents of the parcel, that he had been keeping concealed.
There were black and white photographs – a man and a woman and a baby. A large family; a stately old woman. Several newspaper clippings, snippets of campaign retrospectives and political victories. Griffiths Wins Big in Smethwick; Conservative Party Triumphs. It was dated five years prior – 1964.
There was a creased pamphlet in red and blue, stamped across its centre the slogan Keep Britain White.
There was a soft red badge with a white cross on it, in the fashion of crosshairs. Martha slowly picked it up, turning it over between her fingers: only to find the words White Defence League embroidered carefully along the bottom curve.
The tears had risen then, in her internal conflict, and she crumpled up the cloth emblem in her fist.
"If I'm going to steal someone's life savings," the Doctor said, seeming exasperated, "I'm going to make sure it's someone who deserves it. Now will you quit worrying?"
A bit limply, she nodded.
"After I get that paperhanging job, I promise – no more stealing. All right?" He caught her eye. "I promise."
Martha sniffled a bit. "It still doesn't make it right. Even if he is awful."
There was a partial tear at the very corner of her eye. The Doctor reached forward and gently brushed it away with the back of his knuckle.
"There's such a thing as too good, Martha Jones."
"I'm sorry for shouting at you," she said softly.
"And I'm sorry for showing you all that."
She shook her head in a faint dismissal.
"On the bright side," he'd said, "now we have enough for Mrs Chowdhury. So." He'd stuffed everything back in the parcel – the money and jewellery went in his pocket. "Curry?"
When he binned the parcel, ash and all, she tried to swallow the little quivery pang in her throat.
She found it worth remembering, sometimes, that the Doctor wasn't human.
He offered her the necklace from the safe deposit box. She'd refused to wear someone's dead relative's pearls – yes, Doctor, even if the someone in question was a Neo-Nazi – so he'd gone to pawn it that night.
And Mrs Chowdhury was paid in full.
Without at all discussing the arrangement, she took the bed and he took the sofa. Not that he seemed to sleep on the scratchy floral upholstery; she hadn't seen him horizontal once. He'd take off his shoes and his coat around the flat, but that was it – he was always on, suit buttoned, quiff gelled, never relaxed.
Martha made a trip to a chemist for necessary toiletries, and then indulged in a gloriously cool shower that felt like a heavenly luxury, after three days in a sharehouse without proper facilities. The Doctor only ever went in the loo, it seemed, for the tube of Venusian mint on the sink. "Got to keep these teeth," he'd told her though a mouthful of foam, upon spotting her puzzled, semi-worried glance at the sheer vigour of his brushing.
Both the flat to their right and the one directly above them were vacant. The one to their left was occupied by kindly pensioners who, save for snoring at night, scarcely made a sound – Martha often worried if they were still alive on the other side of the wafer-thin wall. There was plenty of noise from the street, cars and heavy foot traffic, Amir's place being a bit of a hotspot among the youth, but for most of the day it was quietish. She didn't exactly like hearing arguments at two in the morning, dogs barking, or her next-door neighbours shagging like rabbits after getting back together for the third time; but it was something she'd come to grow used to, living in her flat back home. There were meant to be footsteps, clattering, bumps in the night. The overwhelming hush was almost unnerving.
The Doctor spent his time tinkering, working around the clock, very nearly non-stop, on his timey-wimey detector. Martha pointed out that no matter how quickly he assembled the thing, it wouldn't actually detect anything until Billy Shipton was in 1969. She wasn't certain he heard her; he'd detonated all the eggs in the building that night in his inventing fervour.
He put up a good front, but Martha could sense the mounting tension in him. He wanted out – as quickly as possible.
She told herself, over and over, that it wasn't because of the countdown hanging over their head. That it was simply because he hated being stuck in one place, one time.
They hadn't talked about it since the first day, the issue of her continued possession. The looming fact that in a few days' time she was due to need another infusion of orgasmic energy – and that he was the only one who could provide her with it.
Mostly, Martha tried not to think about it. When she did, she got warm tingles all down to her toes. And then she'd spend the next several hours gripped in a horrible guilt about it all.
On the fifth day, she had a grand old time on her own in London 1969. Bus drivers refusing to let her in, cabbies barrelling past her extended hand as though she were invisible, people turning their noses up at her on the street for seemingly no reason other than she happened to be black, and they didn't particularly like it.
She'd walked the city until her heels were chafed, looking for work. There were about a million Help Wanted signs, shops hiring everywhere.
"Not hiring your sort, I'm afraid," chimed the middle-aged cow that received her in the Woolworths she'd idly ventured into.
Having had it just about up to here with the absurdity, an outburst was long overdue – and she was primed to lay into the woman good and proper. That was when the store manager had come tottering over, as awkwardly tall as he was wide, booming in a heavily Northern accent, "Nancy?"
The woman had glared over her shoulder.
"You leave the customers alone, now, you hear me?"
With a scoff, and a derisive look at Martha, she'd slunk away.
"Sorry about that. Still training her," he grunted by way of explanation, batting a dismissive hand. "Don't mind that. What can I help you with?"
It was down to an unfortunate presumption that she was hired. The application she filled out was full of alarming gaps, clumsy lies in education and experience. She'd no references to speak of and there was no one who could vouch for her as a suitable employee.
"Just moved into this area," she'd said uncomfortably, when prompted. "With my, erm… husband."
"Lot of heavy lifting, must be."
The statement puzzled her. "Er…"
"You've got a…" He gestured to the side of his own face, brow uplifting, peering at where the scrape on Martha's temple was beginning to scar.
"Oh. Oh, er, no, that was…" She chuckled lamely. "I only fell." I was hit by a car opened more questions than it answered, after all.
"Bit clumsy, are we?"
It seemed like a poor trait for a sales associate to have, so rather than attempt any ditzy, self-deprecating charm, she answered, "No, sir, not normally."
"Wouldn't have to do with your husband, would it?"
The implication was so out of the blue to her that she was regrettably slow in her answer.
"Um, no." She gave an expression that was both tentative smile and frown. "Of course not."
Martha couldn't exactly blame him for the presumption; an allegedly married woman with a not-insignificant head wound enters a shop behaving strangely, with troubling lapses in employment history and evasive answers to simple questions. She'd likely jump to the same simple conclusion herself, should she receive a patient behaving in that manner in the A&E one night: battered wife, open and shut, file a report, onto the next.
She didn't encourage the speculation, of course… but she didn't particularly dissuade him of the notion either.
And either through misplaced pity or some sort of deluded, chauvinistic notion that she needed protecting from a non-violent man – Martha got a job in a shop.
The manager, Mr Ardley, sent her off with a bundled-up uniform and instructions on when to report to the store for training.
"You be careful," he'd said to her as he saw her off, sounding a bit too worried.
"Aw, I told you you'd find something," the Doctor said when she got back to the flat, grinning at her. "Said so, didn't I?"
She left out the bit about why precisely she'd been hired – not imagining he'd particularly enjoy where he fit in the narrative.
The Doctor took his first break from the detector when Mrs Chowdhury came by to see how they were settling in. It was the first Martha had really seen of the woman. She was almost comically tiny, desperately frail and even shorter than Martha. More bone and skin than anything else, wispily ancient, a whisper of a person in a lovely orange saree. White hair reached her bum, kept in a single neat plait down her back; there was a small bindi upon her brow. She squinted out from thick, gleaming, bug-eyed spectacles, mostly blind behind them, and tapped along purposely with her wicker cane, seeming preternaturally serious. She had a silent, innate gravity about her – a presence in a room that rivalled the Time Lord's.
"You're watering the plants, yes?" she'd checked.
"Yes, ma'am," the Doctor had affirmed, saluting.
"But not too much," Martha added – for some reason feeling eager to please the woman.
Sufia merely nodded. She didn't seem particularly impressed by Martha – although, at her age, it was likely difficult to be impressed by much of anything.
Of course, the Doctor was always the exception to the rule.
They had some kind of unspoken understanding, the Doctor and Sufia; almost like kindred spirits. Mrs Chowdhury was closer in age to the Doctor than most humans ever scraped – and there seemed to be a bond of sorts between them, as a result.
Martha returned to the flat after her first day of training at Woolworths to Sufia parked in an armchair by the window, nursing a cup of tea, carrying on rather casually with the Doctor in Bengali. Her English was impeccable, but she clearly preferred her native tongue – and it shocked Martha more than it rightly should have, to hear the Doctor chattering away in his singular Doctorish way in a language other than English. He'd told her a million times that he knew millions of languages (every language, he claimed, though she took the liberty of doubting that) – and yet still, it was jarring, not having the TARDIS to translate.
She put her rucksack down, smiling a bit uncomfortably at the two of them.
"I shouldn't keep you," Sufia said to the Doctor in English, turning her shiny, buggy spectacles on Martha.
"You're welcome to stay," he offered, but the small woman was already gathering herself.
"Thank you for the tea, John."
"Oh, any time."
"And you'll see about the begonia…?"
"Yes, of course."
She'd very slowly tapped and shuffled her way to the door, pausing beside Martha.
"It is a shame," she said, looking the young woman over. She was in her red felt uniform: pencil skirt, button-down blouse, the awkwardly large collar and the little white neckerchief. "You're much too capable."
Martha felt herself flush unpleasantly, almost in shame – though she wasn't quite sure why, almost being a doctor. "Erm," she managed. "It's only temporary."
"Your husband mentioned. You'll be leaving soon. To travel."
"Yes."
"He is a very interesting man," Sufia said.
"He is that," Martha allowed, glancing sideways at the Doctor.
"But Martha?"
She looked at Sufia worriedly. The woman's tone had turned dire.
"Yes?"
"You must teach him to make a cup of tea."
Her lips thinned with the effort of holding back the laugh. "Yes, ma'am."
Sufia gave a meaningful nod, and excused herself from their flat.
"The begonia?" Martha wondered, toeing her secondhand Mary Janes from her feet.
The Doctor pointed to a plant on the kitchen worktop. "Root rot," he said. "Fortunately we've caught it early. What's wrong with my tea?" He leant over to frown into Sufia's barely-touched cup.
"Other than it being nine parts sugar, one part tea?"
He took a sip off the surface. "Tastes fine to me. How was your first day?"
"Oh," she said, putting on a chipper tone, "lovely, really. Jolly exciting. Only got called a single slur, so…"
The wind went out of his sails.
"Martha, I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," she sighed, tugging off the neckerchief – regretting having resorted to sarcasm. "It honestly could have been worse."
"Yeah?"
"My boss, he's nice enough."
"Good." He seemed uncomfortable. "That's good."
Martha padded into the flat and flung herself down in the armchair. "So, how's the detector?"
Rather than perk him up, his mood seemed to darken.
It wasn't going well. After the egg incident, he'd found himself stymied – to stabilise the device he needed some specific sort of insulation, materials that weren't easily obtainable (not in this backwards year, he'd groused), and he couldn't think himself out of the problem without using the word TARDIS.
"You'll figure it out," she told him later that night, after dinner, sitting at the end of the bed and combing her hair – in the soft, frilly white nightgown that had been her one exception to dressing like her grandmother, simply for how comfortable the garment was. "You always do."
The Doctor more or less just grunted at her. He was simmering over on the couch, unshaven, hunched in the lotus position with hideous posture. Poring over the flimsy instrument in his hands, those few scraps of soldered metal and messy wires which have so consumed him over the last several days.
She sighed and turned out the light by the bed.
And then it was the sixth day.
When Martha had first been possessed, it was one of the things which made the situation so very urgent – that they had far less time than it seemed. Death by cellular degradation was slow, the Doctor said; terribly slow. It took hours and hours. There was no cutting it fine, getting right down to the wire before handling the problem.
Martha was hyperaware, all the while that she was getting ready that morning, that when she came back in the evening they were going to have logistics to discuss.
She bit her lip as she stood in the mirror in the bathroom, assembling her outfit, righting her hair.
And it was juvenile, she decided, tiptoeing around it. Waiting to the last possible second to address the obvious, like it wasn't the elephant in the room, crushing the wind out her lungs in the wee hours while she listened to him tinker at night.
She took a deep breath, opened the bathroom door and said, "Doctor, we need to—"
"—I've been meaning to—"
They stopped, blinking at each other as they spoke in unison. He was standing awkwardly between the kitchenette and the little sitting area, sunlight at his back as he scratched his hair – clearly in the middle of a pace.
"Erm," Martha said, chuckling uncomfortably. "You go first."
"Right. I was just saying – I've been meaning to talk to you. The alien entity inside you's been mightily quiet, fortunately, but, well – you do know it's still there. Obviously."
"Yes," she said, swallowing. It felt like someone was squeezing her spine, forcing her to stand straighter and stiffer than was natural.
"It hasn't tried to possess or kill anyone else, and that's because… well, frankly, it knows it's got far better of a harvest to be had inhabiting you than anyone else. Now that I've gone and proved to it that I'm… well. Personally invested." He gestured broadly. "And I can give it more than any human being can."
She was blushing under her collar, but resolved to ignore it. "Right."
"Since the TARDIS scanned you it's been one-hundred and fifty seven hours and eleven minutes."
The precision was highly unsettling as always. "Okay," she said, bracing.
"Which, means, bit of arithmetic, we've got fifteenish hours until you're…" Again, he gestured in a way that was intentionally imprecise.
"Okay."
"So when you get back to the flat later, we'll have seven hours." He was leading her, his eyes intent and meaningful.
"I've got it, Doctor. I understand."
"Right," he said, taking a step back. "Good. What were – what were you going to say?" He extended a hand as though to give her the floor.
"Er. Same thing, really. Mine wasn't as good though."
He swallowed – she saw the rise and dip of his Adam's apple above his collar.
"I'm sorry, for what it's worth."
"What?" She frowned. "What for?"
"If I'd have finished the detector in time…"
"Doctor – don't even go there." She sighed. "Just because you finish the detector doesn't mean Billy Shipton turns up."
"He could already be here. We wouldn't know."
"Well, I doubt that," she said.
They lapsed into a brief, unsettled silence.
"I've made coffee," he stated, almost as a query.
"I can smell that, yeah."
"Do you want some?"
"So long as you haven't put any sugar in it."
He hadn't, and Martha had hers sitting uneasily at the table crammed in the tiny kitchen, one foot tucked under her bum in the rattan chair. She drank it from a chipped mug she found in the cupboard, black – they hadn't any milk in the fridge, nothing but takeaway. The Doctor drank his sitting on the edge of the worktop, beside an overflowing pot of greenery spilling partway into the sink and climbing the wall, sun-streaked leaves clinging to the dirty casement. The work of Sufia: right down to the stems cracking through the cheap plaster, paint peeled and buckled where the long arm of vinery fringed the kitchen window. Martha found herself equal parts unsettled and fascinated by the tenacity of the climber, stretching for the sun any way it could.
"We've done it before."
She almost banged her knee on the table.
"Sorry?" she coughed.
He'd spoken mostly into his cup the first time. Now, he pointedly lowered it and met her gaze. He looked a bit angelic, haloed by the rising sun. The image did not at all reconcile with the words ringing in her ears.
"I said, we've done it before. Yeah?"
Her mouth was dry. Suddenly the coffee had lost all flavour.
"Y-yeah," she stumbled, a bit stricken.
"And…" The Doctor crossed his feet at the ankles, glancing up at the ceiling and leaning back on one hand. "Wasn't so bad, was it?"
Martha stared at him, lips open – not quite sure how to comport herself, for a moment. She lost control of her features for a full second in shock.
His eyes flicked down briefly to hers in question.
"Was it?" he ventured. The eyebrow went up.
Fuck her. He was serious.
Why was he always doing this to her – dropping bloody napalm in her lap when she was trying to enjoy a beverage?
"Um." Her fingers tightened on the mug. "No, it wasn't… bad."
Her voice came out oddly meek, like a child. Like she feared he'd scold her for the admittance.
"Well, there we are," he said easily. "Doesn't have to be this great big looming thing, then."
"Okay," she hedged.
He was giving her permission to… what, exactly?
"Don't let it ruin your day."
As though the notion of going home to be shagged by the Doctor was less appealing than measuring limbs in the tailoring department and getting spoken down to for eight hours straight.
"I'll try," she returned evenly, keeping the sarcastic rancour buried as deep as she could.
He brought her knapsack to her and saw her off from the door of the flat – something he'd never done before. She'd been lucky if he acknowledged her existence, these last couple of days. At least the prospect of having to shag her imminently seemed more pressing than the matter of the detector in his brain – for now.
Time passed rather too quickly at the store.
She had an extraordinarily difficult time focussing on menial tasks. The second time she'd dropped something in the storeroom, one of the other shopgirls – a willowy, serial gum-chewer called Agnes – took notice.
"What's gotten into you, then?" she said.
It was more concerned than severe. Agnes was a decent sort, young enough to think for herself, much more of a hippie than one might expect to find manning a register in a starched uniform. She was big into the latest trends and the fashion mags – and was, as a result, just about the only person Martha had seen whose appearance screamed stereotypical sixties. From the flipped-up ends of her ponytail to the heavy, porcelain-thick cosmetics. Her hair was a rough dye job, glassily blonde up to starkly brunette roots. From first glance she looked like the sort of woman Martha would clash with – or at least develop a mild complex over.
But they were polite and friendly with each other; friendly enough for Martha not to take it the wrong way.
"Sorry," she exhaled, going to her knees to gather the spilled contents of a cardboard box. "Sorry. Just having a bit of a day."
"Mm," commiserated Agnes, as though she knew the feeling. Then: "That husband of yours?"
Martha started shaking her head – then she looked up, and saw the look Agnes was giving her. She favoured hooded liner and downturned lashes which always gave her eyes the impression of being sullenly unimpressed – they reminded Martha of a Basset Hound – but the come off it in her gaze was clear.
"Er, yeah, actually," she sighed, relenting. "Maybe a bit."
"What's he done?" Agnes said, bending herself to help her collect the fallen articles of clothing. When Martha considered her answer for a moment, she added, "You know, mine got high on grass and shagged my best friend at my birthday party."
"You're married?" Martha was surprised. The woman didn't strike her as the type.
"Goodness, no. My boyfriend. All's the same, though, innit?"
"I suppose it is. Sorry that happened to you, Agnes."
Agnes threw a blouse in the box and harrumphed. "Over it, love. And I say, kick him to the kerb. Especially if he's no good for you."
"That's just the problem," Martha sighed. "I was going to leave, I really was…"
"You're divorcing?"
"That's a way to put it. Thing is, though… I haven't told him."
"Ooh," said Agnes, with a bit of a wince. "That's heavy."
"I was meaning to. But for now, we're sort of… stuck. Living together. Until I can move out on my own, you know," she riffed.
"Oh, I see," Agnes said. "Sorry about that."
"Thanks."
"So what's he done today?"
Martha sighed all over again.
"That bad, hm?" said Agnes. She looked her over briefly. "You don't look hurt."
"No, he doesn't…" She shook her head. "He'd never hurt me. Not… intentionally."
The blonde looked curiously at the abrasion near Martha's eye. "Mr Ardley doesn't seem to think so."
"Mr Ardley's got a very active imagination, I'm afraid," Martha said.
"So if he didn't hurt you… what, you two row or something?"
"No, we didn't."
A rather sly look came over Agnes's face.
"You shagged," she deduced, popping her gum on the vowel.
Martha sighed for the third and gustiest time.
"Aw, what's the problem?" said Agnes. "Was it properly terrible?"
She almost laughed, though without humour. "Er, no."
"Hygiene?"
"Immaculate," she answered. "Strangely enough." She often fancied Time Lords didn't have the same glands, bacterial flora or natural oil excretions as humans – six days gone without a shower, in brutal summer heat, and he was still walking about smelling fresher than rosemary and thyme at sunrise. A bit offensive, truth be told.
"He treats you right?"
"Does his best, I suppose," Martha said softly.
"Then what's so terrible about shagging him? I mean, until you can leave for good – you might as well be getting something out of being stuck."
"If we keep…" Her lips pressed thin. "I mean, I had it all figured out, right? I knew I needed to leave him. But now I'm thinking, what if I spend too much time stuck with him, and I end up… changing my mind? You know…"
"Giving him a second chance?" Agnes filled in.
Martha had been mulling the word relapse and wondering if loving someone could be classed as an addiction – but she nodded anyway.
"Don't do that," said Agnes. "Cos people don't change, not really. You had it right the first time."
"I know," Martha lamented. "But I just look at him and I…" Her hands squeezed to fists like she wanted to strangle the air.
"Love him, then, eh?"
She put a shirt into the box with rather too much force.
"I get it," said Agnes, pushing to her feet. "And if you want my opinion – you're hopeless."
"Thanks," said Martha dryly.
"Just being honest. Love mucks everything up. Speaking from experience." The blonde shrugged. "Don't shag him again, if you can help it. Only makes it worse."
"Right."
"To the kerb, Martha."
"I hear you."
"World's changing. Women like us – we don't need a husband."
It was sage, level and surprisingly feminist advice, from a woman who resembled a slightly spottier Twiggy. Martha wished she could take it. Wished her problems could be solved in a way as cut and dry as dumping a no-good boyfriend.
But alas, they couldn't.
That evening it rained, humid and heavy. Halfway back to the flat, she was caught in it – and no amount of sheltering under her blouse could protect her or her uniform from the downpour.
She burst through the exterior door wringing wet, huffing indignantly. Her shoes squelched and squeaked up the steep, dingily lit stairwell, and she swore as she fumbled in her rucksack for her key.
The door to the flat opened itself, with a wedge of warm light and a great whiff of aromatic herbs. Her head shot up.
"Oh," said the Doctor, standing in the doorway with a whisk. "Oh, you're wet."
"Nothing gets by you," she groaned, squeezing past him into the flat.
"You got caught in that?" He closed the door and gestured to the window with his utensil, where it was nearly opaque, still chucking it down in streaks of grey. "Blimey. Didn't you think to take the bus?"
"No, Doctor, that never once occurred to me." She was shaking herself dry like a furious Maine Coon. The red felt blouse slopped heavily onto the floor, soaked through. "What is that… are you cooking?"
She squinted over at the hob, finding it occupied by several pots in various states of venting steam.
"Thought you might be getting tired of curry, is all. Amir's brilliant, but for all three squares, well…"
"You can cook?" She was a bit taken aback, trying in vain to fan her clinging undervest out. Couldn't imagine him standing still long enough to read to the end of a recipe, let alone cultivating any sort of culinary prowess. Far too much waiting in cooking; it was why Martha herself rarely made anything that couldn't be microwaved.
"Oh, knock about long enough, you're bound to pick up a thing or two. Nipped out to the market today anyhow." He wandered back to the stovetop to stir something. "It's almost done – why don't you go dry off?"
"Right." She was blinking slowly – trying to process the rather incongruous sight of the Doctor barefoot in the kitchen.
He was dressed down for the first time since they'd arrived. The pinstripe jacket was conspicuously flung over one of the dining chairs, and the sleeves of his dress shirt were at his elbows. His hair seemed flatter than usual; by no means combed, but rather calmer than the riot of spikes she was so used to.
She wondered if it was, at last, resignation to their current predicament – the dissolution of the full pinstriped ensemble signalling some sort of defeat.
Or, perhaps… he was just getting ready for later. For what they had to do tonight.
The thought settled like an anvil in the pit of her stomach.
She took refuge in the bathroom, wrapping in a towel to sop up the rainwater from her clothes as best she could. When she regarded herself in the mirror she could've wept. Her hair was soaked – utterly ruined. She'd been so careful to keep it dry in the shower, to meticulously comb it out and tie it back every night, prolonging her last flat iron for as long as she could. So much for that; she was going to look like a madwoman when it dried.
Sighing, resigning herself to buns from here on out, she breathed deep and said a calming mantra, staring squarely into her own eyes.
Sex with the Doctor – again.
The nervousness was inescapable. Even partially knowing what to expect this time didn't ease the knot in her chest, the tension riddling her body. The excitement, the guilt. All the usual insecurities pouring in.
They shared dinner to the traditional background noise of the curry house overflowing with life outside, as well as the Doctor's normal chattering, during which he casually claimed to have invented risotto and told her about a planet where grain was sentient and the fields sang. Martha said little other than to compliment the excellent food; her manner reserved and fraught with tangible nerves. The Doctor did more waffling than usual, filling the silence she left – and yet still said absolutely nothing on the one subject that was eating her alive.
She jumped to do the washing up, mainly for some way to occupy her jittery hands without biting her nails to bits.
The Doctor stood to close both sets of blinds and pull the drapes – an innocent action which distracted her so terribly she nicked herself on a sudsy knife, and had to use the tea towel to stifle the bleeding.
Fortunately, he took no notice. He was carrying on as though all was normal. Messing about with the plants at Sufia's behest, pruning the philodendron, rotating the irritating banana plant by the bed with a loud ceramic scrape so the other side could get sun in the morning. He rearranged the heap of scrap and wire on the rickety-legged coffee table into some sort of jumbled order that she reckoned must've made sense in that head of his, then took up his usual post, cross-legged on the sofa. Timey-wimey detector in one hand, sonic screwdriver in the other – the humid air in the flat full of its tinny, whirry buzz as he went to soldering.
She drew out the task of washing the dishes as long as she could: right up until it started to become obvious she was using it as a stalling tactic. There were only so many times one could take a sponge to a plate before it grew conspicuous.
At last, she dried her hands and said to him, voice a bit brittle, "Well, I'm going for a shower."
The Doctor looked up at her over the top of his glasses.
"Don't be long."
Gooseflesh spread over her bare arms like wildfire, heat spreading down and out from her stomach.
"I won't," she managed, voice cracking over the words.
And she'd barely held his eye a second before she was retreating to the bathroom as though pursued.
She leant back against the closed door and shut her eyes tight.
Well done, Martha. Terribly smooth.
She spent as long as she dared bathing, as long as she felt she could get away with. Took her time hanging her uniform to dry from the shower rod, flattening the wrinkles as best she could.
As she had the previous three nights, she dressed in the nightgown tossed on a towel hook. The garment billowed on her, about as formless as a pillowcase; it hung to her shins and puffed girlishly around her shoulders. Nothing about it had struck her as particularly risqué when she'd purchased it – it was much more retirement village than lingerie.
But something about the way the lace framed her slight breasts, the way the silky soft cotton felt against her bare skin tonight… it had her gulping at her reflection in the mirror.
Though perhaps it was just the thought that the Doctor would be coming into contact with the little nightie that was getting her quite so warm. The mental image of him lifting the long skirt up her thighs, easing the buttons at her bosom open…
Martha drew a shaky, unsteady breath. She hurriedly smoothed the nightgown, unconsciously drawing a hand across her loose hair.
Here she was, hiding out and fantasising pathetically – while the object of her fantasies awaited on the other side of the door. Ostensibly readying himself to fuck her.
She really was absurd.
Closing her eyes, she waited for her heart to stop aching in her chest. Then she mustered the courage to turn the doorknob.
The light in the kitchenette was off; the flat was in a warm semi-darkness, the only illumination radiating from the lamp by the bed. Watery streetlight slatted across the floor, cutting in through the broken roller blinds. Voices and laughter echoed from the street below – the curry house was bustling.
She took a few soft, padding steps forward. On the opposite side of the folding screen, the Doctor was sitting at the foot of the bed, staring idly out the window.
His furrowed attention turned to her, the low light glinting off his specs with the turn of his head. His eyes landed, shadowed in the dark, sharp as ever – and seemed to soak up the sight of her.
Martha could hear her own breath. She felt a certain pressure between her legs, a warmth and an ache and an inexorable moisture: all in stifling anticipation.
She'd felt a bit like that all day, and being in such unbearable proximity to relief now, so very close, her thighs trembled a little.
"Well," said the Doctor, with a bit of a sigh, pulling his tie loose. "You going to stand there all night?"