- 6 -

It was strange being back in Cardiff after 14 years away. The place had changed a little bit but it was still a beautiful city.

"A penny for them?" said my girlfriend Leah Markham, taking a drag on the post-coital cigarette we were sharing.

"Just nostalging," I replied, admiring the way her beautiful brown breasts looked in the sunlight streaming in through the window of our student accommodation.

Summer term had just ended and we weren't studying at Cardiff Uni, but our student union cards had secured us a couple of nights here. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

"I'd better get going, babe," I said. "I really shouldn't put this off any longer."

I'd been surprised when Mary reached out to me, and wary of returning to Cardiff. It was 1990 and I was now 19 years old. When Mary and I were one being, the energies the Rift gave off would wind the clock back and restore me to the 26 year old Mary had been when we first melded. Since Katy was 5 years old when she and I melded I didn't want to take a chance on the same thing happening. I'd risk a couple of days here, but no more than that.

When the taxi delivered me to the mansion on Sully Road I hadn't quite known what to expect, so finding a modest Victorian pile planted in the local landscape amid farm land wasn't a particular surprise. I was greeted at the door by a long-haired, middle-aged guy dressed in studded leather, his fingers festooned with rings and his stomach hanging over his belt.

"Ah, you must be Katy!" he said, beaming at me. "I'm Jez. Come in, come in. Mary's waiting for you in the drawing room."

With us no longer melded, Mary's body had begun to age normally again which meant she was now physically 40 years old and seeing her was a shock. When Jez led me into the drawing room she rose to greet me. Dressed in black leather pants and a Black Sabbath T-shirt, her fingers also festooned with rings and her hair longer and spikier than I used to wear it, she looked every day of those 40 years.

"You came," she said, her voice raspy, giving me a hug, "little Katy Farmer, all grown up. I wasn't sure if you would."

"Not Farmer," I said, "not anymore. Mum used her maiden name when you and we were together, but we reverted to my father's name after they got back together."

"Ah, of course."

Jez left us at a nod from Mary, and we settled down into twin armchairs. There was a tray of coffee and mugs on the low table between us, along with her cigarettes and a small wooden box.

"I'd offer you something stronger," she said, pouring the coffee, "but with my old man and me recovering alcoholics we don't keep booze in the house. I was sorry to hear when Fiona died two years ago. How have you and your father been coping, Katy?"

"He threw himself into his work at first," I said, "but he's dating again now, which is good. I'm in college, I have a girlfriend who loves me, and things are getting back on an even keel. You?"

"After your mother and I broke up I went a little crazy, had sex with lots of men and women, and got seriously into drugs and alcohol. Fourteen years," she said, shaking her head, "and so much of it is a lost decade I remember very little about. I got clean eventually, met Jez at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting a few years ago, and we've been together ever since. He's been good for my ego."

"How so?"

"When Fiona left me it really knocked my confidence. You'd been together months, yet within days of me taking over we broke up. It felt personal, like I'd done something wrong. I worried I might be unlovable, but Jez loves me."

She waved at the framed photos on the wall which showed Jez with some of the greatest rock musicians of the past twenty five years.

"We get lots of famous visitors," she said, "friends of Jez he's worked with over the years. I took the photos, which is why I'm not in most of them."

"So much for the pleasantries," I said, sipping my coffee. "Why did you ask me here, Mary?"

"Because in the past few years I've been clean I finally acknowledged to myself that I was using drugs and alcohol to try and fill a hole within me, the void created when you left. After almost two centuries I'm not complete without you. I want... I need you back."

I was momentarily stunned by this.

"Not possible," I said, "not without the gemstone."

She indicated the wooden box.

"Open it."

I did, and there it was: the gemstone.

"How...?"

"I palmed it after it transferred you to Katy," she said, "and slid it into the pocket of my jeans. After all our time melded I wanted to see what it would be like to be out in the world on my own again. It was selfish of me I know, and I planned on undoing the transfer after a month or two, but then Fiona and I split up and she whisked you off to London before I was ready."

"Thanks to you Katy never had a chance at a normal childhood!" I said, angrily.

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry," she said, sounding genuinely chastened, "truly I am, but what's done is done and Katy deserves her life back. The gemstone only transfers a 'rider' from one person to another. No rider and it's just a rock."

I stared at her for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

"No time like the present," she said, holding the gemstone out to me.

Perhaps I should've hesitated, considered all the ramifications, but instead I reached out. The moment I touched it there was a flash of light and I was once again thrown backwards. When my vision returned it was to see Katy glaring at me, her expression unreadable.

"What was that bright light!?" said Jez rushing into the room. "I didn't hear any thunder."

"Could you take me back to Cardiff, please Mr Stackhouse?" said Katy, her lip trembling. "I don't want to be here anymore."

Jez glanced across at me, but her distress was obvious so he nodded, and led her outside to his car. And that was the last I ever saw of her.

- 7 -

When Mary had finished her tale I sat there, a little stunned by these revelations and almost speechless.

"So you and Jez...," I said.

"I broke up with him soon after that since I'm not attracted to men and he would soon notice that I was getting younger again. I let him down as gently as I could, Toshiko. I owed him that much."

"So you have Mary's memories of her time with him... of her time away from you?"

"I do, but whereas I have perfect recall she didn't, so those memories are only what she could remember."

"And Katy? Melding with an adult is one thing, but with a child...?" I said, shaking my head. "And that really was the last time you saw her?"

"Sadly, yes. My attempts to reach out to her since then have all gone nowhere. We were melded for fourteen years, becoming to all intents and purposes a single being, and there's unfinished business between us."

"And you don't know what's happened to her since?"

"No, though I have my suspicions based on who her father is."

"Would I know him?"

"You would. Her father is Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT."

That was the revelation that actually did leave me speechless.

"I did tell you my life abounds with unlikely coincidences," said Mary, smiling ruefully.

*
The End
*