Meeting at the café was beginning to seem a familiar routine; almost comfortable, if it hadn’t been for the possibility of seeing Dennis or one of the others. I was fairly sure we would go on to Barbara’s flat after the first cup, and that seemed perfectly natural now. I did consider taking her to mine, but I wasn’t sure what Mrs Muller would make of it, and catering might be problematical.

I got there a little early; for once I was actually hoping to catch sight of Dennis, as I was curious to know how things had turned out between him and Sally. Not that I expected anything startling, but it’s hard to escape being intrigued by these things.

I wasn’t disappointed. Dennis came in on his own just after seven, and from the way he practically pounced he seemed to have been hoping to find me. He sat down without even trying to scrounge a coffee, and leaned forward. ‘I think she likes me.’

‘Yes?’ I said, as encouragingly as I could manage.

‘I got on the tube with her – she didn’t even ask whether it was out of my way. We walked all the way back to hers at the other end.’

‘And?’

‘Well…’

‘That was it, was it?’

‘It’s enough, innit? For a first date?’

‘First date? Dennis, are you sure you’re not—’

‘She leaned right up against me on the seat.’

‘Mmn.’ I had to concede that might indicate something. ‘Maybe she was cold.’

‘Oh, come on…’

The door opened again. It was Barbara. Dennis looked at her, then back at me, then shook his head. He got up. ‘You must be potty, with Caro all over you…’ He disappeared before I could make any protest, nodding to Barbara and catching the door before it had swung closed in her wake.

Barbara did not sit down. She leaned over slightly, looking at my coffee cup. ‘If you’ve nearly finished that, perhaps we should just go straight to mine.’

I drained the cup. ‘Fine with me.’

I found it difficult to think what to say to her, but on the bus she started to talk about the group, about Jimmy’s parents and how liberal they seemed. She was particularly struck by the fact that Mr Blake was so keen on the Beatles.

‘He works for EMI. Can’t remember what he does – something administrative – but he’s always bringing home new stuff.’

‘Jimmy’s very fortunate to have such…progressive parents.’

There was something wistful in her tone. ‘You weren’t so lucky?’ I ventured.

Her shoulders twitched. ‘I told you about my mother. We’ve always been quite close, although things were…difficult just after I got back. My father…’ She swallowed. ‘My father was a good man, but very strict. He was deeply religious – in fact he would have preferred me to be an RE teacher when it became clear that I wasn’t destined to be a nun. He was…impatient with the idea of history, with anything that he felt tended to glorify the achievements of mankind. We had some… heated discussions about John Robinson’s work.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know…Honest To God?’

‘Oh…yeah. He thought Robinson was too liberal, I guess?’

‘Put simply, yes.’

‘So in a way,’ I mused, ‘it’s quite surprising you stayed interested in religion. Your dad sounds like the ultimate turn-off in that department.’

Her face showed the faintest trace of a scowl. ‘He wasn’t that bad. And…and when you’ve been told something repeatedly throughout your childhood, it becomes a part of you. Even when you grow up and begin to question, some things stay with you. Somehow I never doubted that there was something, some force that stood behind the universe that we see. It wasn’t until I came across the Advaita teachings of Hinduism that I began to have a better idea of what it might be—’ She stopped herself. ‘Or rather, what it might not be.’

‘What d’you mean?’

You looked at me as if wondering whether she should say any more. ‘I mean…well, partly that the ultimate reality is beyond the capacity of any language to describe.’

For a moment I was somewhat appropriately lost for words. Then something clicked into place in my brain. ‘Sounds a bit like Eckhart.’

‘Meister Eckhart? I’m surprised you’ve heard of him.’

‘Well, Colin Wilson’s mentioned him a few times and he’s quoted in Year of Grace – you know, the Gollancz anthology. But actually, it was my landlady I was thinking of. She’s quite into these European mystics; Tauler, Boehme and so on.’

‘She sounds like someone I should talk to.’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe next time we could go back to mine.’

The rest of the ride was uneventful. I was conscious of an odd feeling; eager as I was to hear more about Barbara’s adventures, what she had done was starting to seem less important than who she was. I was finding myself increasingly interested in her as a person. At times the question of whether she had been into space seemed – absurdly – almost irrelevant.

When we got to hers we ran the usual gauntlet of the stare from the ground floor, and she busied herself in the kitchen while I went to have another rummage through her books. I had some idea of looking at the Hindu stuff again, since it seemed to mean so much to her, but I came across a copy of Wilson’s Religion and the Rebel, and couldn’t resist re-reading the autobiographical introduction. At its best Wilson’s writing always gives me the feeling that everyday life can be somehow grappled with and wrestled into something significant, and his personal experiences were particularly interesting in that respect. As I settled down to read it did occur to me to wonder whether Barbara had written another section of her account, but I decided that she would show it to me when she thought the time was ripe.

I quickly got lost in Wilson’s stories of his early life and the impact of The Outsider, and I was quite surprised to find Barbara standing over me with a steaming plate after what seemed an impossibly short time. I was reprimanded for not taking off my coat again, but when I did I noticed the flat was actually quite cold; until now we’d been lucky with the weather, but the winter was closing in. Barbara seemed to sense my discomfort; she went into her bedroom and returned half-dragging a heavy paraffin heater that looked like a shrunken black lighthouse.

‘I’m sorry. I get used to the cold; I tend to just throw on another sweater.’

I tried to protest that I was all right, but she lit the heater and we sat down to eat. She had prepared something that seemed a slight variation on the stew she had given me the first time, but it was hot and tasty and there was plenty of it.

As we were finishing she looked at the book splayed open face-down at my feet. ‘Did you want to borrow that? I won’t get to it for quite a while, I shouldn’t think.’

‘Thanks. I will.’ I picked it up again. She was about to go into the kitchen but she paused. ‘He’s wrong, you know, about the way to approach life.’

‘Is he?’ I was a little disappointed; it sounded as though she’d accepted the position of the critical backlash against Wilson. No one seemed to have taken him seriously for about ten years now.

‘He believes a little too much in the power of the rational faculty to grasp reality.’

‘Um…how else are we supposed to grasp it? Don’t you believe God gave us our brains for a reason?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’

‘I don’t. I was trying to look at it from your point of view.’

‘Oh. Yes…sorry.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Well…it’s quite a big subject. Shall I at least make some tea first?’

She went into the kitchen. I thought about picking up the Wilson again but there didn’t seem much point if I was going to be able to read it at home. I looked towards her books, wondering if there was something there that would give me a shortcut to understanding where she was coming from. In some ways it was the most baffling thing about her; how could someone so intelligent – and interested in science – be so steeped in this metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? I had to admit she spoke with a certain conviction, and she was certainly without the dogmatic intensity I associated with religious fanatics – but equally, nothing she had said so far on the subject had really made an impression on me.

I got up and went to the window. There was a light rain falling, showing up in the glow of the streetlights and in the sheen on the road. I watched a woman pause as her dog sniffed at the base of a wall. Then I pulled the curtains shut and turned back into the room. In a few minutes we would probably be discussing what life was like on the other side of the galaxy. I wondered again what Caro would make of all this. It was curious how much importance I already placed on her opinion.

Barbara came back with the tea. We sat down, facing one another, and for a few moments it seemed we were both equally at a loss for words.

‘Well, here we are again,’ she said eventually.

I glanced towards her desk. ‘Did you…write the next part of the story?’

‘I haven’t had a chance, being at work during the day, and obviously last night I was a bit busy…’

I nodded. ‘D’you think Sally’s really interested in Dennis?’ I shot, unable to resist it. Also, I was slightly concerned that Dennis might get bruised if he was serving as a temporary substitute for a vacillating boyfriend.

Barbara didn’t seem surprised by the question. She took a few seconds to consider, then shook her head slowly. ‘I doubt if she’s really sure herself at the moment, but I’d say not. I think at the moment she’s just enjoying being admired. Your friend should be careful.’

‘Well, I tried to cool him down today, but he’s already too far gone, I think.’

‘I don’t suppose it will kill him,’ remarked Barbara mildly. She compressed her lips together for a moment, then said: ‘Well, what should we do? Shall I…shall I tell you some more about what happened?’

‘Whatever you like.’ I sat back and waved an encouraging hand, but she said nothing for a few seconds. ‘You’d reached the end of the fight with the Daleks,’ I reminded her.

‘Yes.’ She stared into her mug. ‘I did say that the TARDIS seemed more like home after that ordeal, didn’t I? Well, after what happened next, staying with the Thals began to seem a more appealing prospect.’

I said nothing, watching her.

‘As I recall, there was some sort of explosion – not a detonation or a blast, but a kind of electrical shock-wave. It shook the ship and knocked us all out. I seemed to be the first to recover consciousness, and I found Ian and the Doctor in the console room. The Doctor had hit his head – he was bleeding – but I couldn’t tell how serious it was. There was some mental confusion, I remember – it was difficult to think. When Ian recovered he actually seemed to believe he was back at Coal Hill school for a minute or two. Gradually our minds cleared, and we remembered where we were, but something very strange was happening. The doors of the ship opened, which seemed impossible , since we were still in flight. Anyway, it sent Susan into a panic – she was hysterical. I got Ian to put her to bed. I think it was then that the Doctor awoke. He didn’t seem to remember what had happened. We tried to get him some water, but the food machine wasn’t working. And both he and Susan were acting very oddly. Ian told me later that when he was putting her to bed Susan attacked the furniture with a pair of scissors – and the Doctor was suddenly very cold and abrupt. He kept asking us pointed questions in a rhetorical kind of way, as if he wasn’t expecting an answer. We tried to work out what was happening – had something got inside the ship, or was it an outside influence – but we couldn’t come up with any answers. And all the time the Doctor was prowling around, looking at us suspiciously.’

She sighed slightly and lifted her mug, taking a swallow of the tea. Then she looked at me. ‘I went to see how Susan was. Her mood was very strange; chilling, hostile. I think it was the first time I thought about the fact that she was really an alien. I’d been used to treating her much like any other fifteen year old girl. Now she seemed like something…something quite literally unearthly. I wonder, now, if she was really only fifteen. Just as I wonder if the Doctor was sixty…or six hundred. I’m not sure the passage of the years meant quite the same thing to their people.’

She shook her head slightly. ‘It’s hard to remember clearly. The Doctor tried to do something on the console, and Susan went frantic, trying to stop him. It was the scanner, that’s right – he turned it on. But what we saw wasn’t what was outside – it was a series of images, earth and other planets, places the TARDIS had visited. It didn’t seem to make any sense.’

She took another mouthful of tea. ‘But the Doctor thought he knew what was going on. He decided that Ian and I were trying to take over the ship – that we had knocked him out and tried to operate the controls. Or something like that. He turned on us and accused of sabotage. I remember that clearly. I was furious – beside myself. After all the hardships we’d endured in primitive Britain and on Skaro…! I shouted and screamed at him, told him how ungrateful he was…I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life.’

She paused.

‘I can’t imagine you furious,’ I said. ‘You seem so…restrained – civilised.’

She smiled a little self-consciously. ‘There are times when it’s…well, almost necessary to lose control. It seems that if you’re too reasonable no one takes any notice.’

‘You’re saying that your fit of temper was calculated?’

‘Oh…no. Not really. But it was certainly the right reaction to that situation. My explosion seemed to sober the Doctor somewhat. He tried to make amends, brought us drinks – I’m not sure how, if the machine wasn’t working. But I didn’t care, I wasn’t interested in his attempts to mollify me. I was too shocked by the injustice of his accusations to think clearly. I went to bed. Susan tried to apologise for him, but I was still too angry even to acknowledge the gesture.’

‘I…seem to remember you saying that you came to…well, to love the Doctor.’

She nodded. ‘Bear with me for a minute.’ She closed her eyes, her forehead creasing. ‘Yes…while we were asleep, the Doctor tried the controls – and Ian went out and stopped him, to try to protect him because parts of the console were charged – dangerous. The Doctor mistook it for an attack, although Ian collapsed before either of them could be injured. The Doctor was outraged, wanted to throw us both off the ship there and then, but something happened…something happened that proved to him that we were not responsible for what was going on. There was some kind of alarm – that’s it, the fault locator. The Doctor had a device that could tell him when a part of the ship was malfunctioning – and this time, the whole of it was activated. There was something wrong with the entire TARDIS.’

‘So what was it? I assume you found out, or you wouldn’t be here now, right?’

She smiled faintly. ‘It took us a little longer to work it out. The Doctor now realised that Ian and I couldn’t be responsible for what was happening – but he didn’t exactly apologise, simply urged us all to work together. I came up with a theory – oh—‘ She sat forward. ‘I didn’t mention about the clocks, did I?’

I shook my head.

‘It was…it was after my outburst, I think. I suddenly saw a clock-face, horribly melted. It…I don’t know why it shocked me so profoundly. Perhaps it seemed like confirmation that the TARDIS had been invaded by some unknown force. But all the clocks were like that. Our measurement of time had been taken away. And…it was only when the fault locator alarm began to sound every fifteen seconds that I realised it. The alarm gave us back our sense of time…and time was running out.’

‘How did you find that out?’

‘It…it was instinctive. I just knew, somehow, that we hadn’t long to save ourselves.’ She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘I don’t know, I can’t recall clearly how it came to me. We opened the doors – there seemed to be nothing outside. What were we being warned against? The TARDIS was trying to tell us something…the clocks, the pictures on the screen…eventually the Doctor put it together. The screen had shown us our journey – and we were heading into a colossal cosmic explosion, the birth of a solar system. We’d gone back an unimaginable distance through time – and we were still going back.’

‘And,’ I ventured, ‘ you say the ship itself was trying to warn you?’

‘In a way,’ she nodded. ‘It was a remarkable vessel, the TARDIS. By a series of clues, it led us to the problem.’

‘Which was..?’

She laughed softly. ‘You won’t believe it. A switch had jammed. The Doctor called it the Fast Return Switch – it propelled the ship back in time. He’d used it to get us away from the Daleks and it had failed to release itself. We found it just in time and un-jammed it.’

‘And it was as simple as that?’

She nodded. ‘ "For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost".’ She leaned back in her chair, looking at me soberly. ‘You asked me a minute ago about my—about our feelings for the Doctor. I did find it very hard to forget what he’d said, how he’d behaved…but after a while I began to think there might be an explanation for it. I don’t know if this is correct; perhaps it’s just something I made up to comfort myself. But this is what I think might have happened.’ She sat forward again. ‘There was some kind of link, call it telepathic for want of a better word, between the TARDIS and the Doctor and Susan. I think even we were part of that link, in a limited way – how else could we have understood so many alien languages? I think that when the ship registered the danger it was in, it…it panicked, in a kind of mechanical way, and tried to send a warning through the telepathic link. But the warning was too loud, too strident – a kind of telepathic scream. We were all affected – memory loss, disorientation – but it seemed to hit the Doctor and Susan hardest. I told you about Susan’s strange behaviour. And the Doctor’s paranoia – well, he was a suspicious, solitary character at the time, but I think the shock brought out all his terror of strangers, of having his ship invaded and his lifestyle compromised. I think it temporarily unbalanced him – not sent him mad or anything like that, but just…just weakened the rational side of him…’ She let out a long breath. ‘He came to me afterwards and apologised properly – told me that my intuition had triumphed over his logic, that I had saved all our lives. It wasn’t enough. I was still smarting from the injustice of his accusations. I suppose I forgave him for Susan’s sake, at least initially. And after a little while it didn’t seem so important. Nothing does, in the long run.’ She pushed herself to her feet. ‘Do you want some more tea?’

I gave her my mug. ‘This theory of yours…about the Doctor’s behaviour…’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you have any evidence at all to support it?’

She shook her head. ‘Not a scrap. Perhaps I just hate thinking the worst of people.’

‘Even aliens.’

She smiled. ‘Actually, I think of all the souls I encountered, the Doctor’s was in some ways…the most human. The alien quality of someone, after all, is confined to physical characteristics or mental make-up. Love is the same everywhere.’

‘Are you Scott Mackenzie’s lyric writer?’

‘Don’t mock love,’ she said seriously. ‘In the end, it’s all we have.’ She turned and went into the kitchen.

I sank back in the chair. I was in the throes of a now-familiar dilemma. She had been telling me quite preposterous things in a totally matter-of-fact way. And I knew I believed her. I had for some time – since about the middle of her account of the Dalek adventure, I decided. So where did that leave me? Was I going to suggest that we try to market her memories as fiction? That wouldn’t help her with her main problem, although it might at least lift her out of the rut of poverty.

The central issue was belief. If I didn’t believe her, none of it mattered. Since I did, I was obliged to do something about it. But what? What could I do? What did she want me to do?

When she came back with the tea I stood up. Something in my demeanour must have alerted her; she stood stock still and looked into my eyes.

‘I want to say something.’

She nodded, a tiny movement of encouragement.

I stepped closer to her and took one of the mugs. Then with my free hand I reached down and took hold of her hand, raising it between us and allowing our fingers to interlock. She kept her eyes on my face.

‘I want to say: I believe you. I don’t know if that makes me crazy, but I believe in the Doctor and his stupid big-inside ship and Dalek machines and telepathic understanding of alien languages…I believe in it all.’

Her breath shuddered out of her. Suddenly, her eyes were glistening.

‘Do you know why I believe?’

She swallowed.

‘It’s because of you. When…once you get to know someone a bit, you can feel what kind of person they are. With some people it’s clearer than others. I think…I think you might be the most honest person I’ve ever met.’

Her fingers were trembling as they dug into my hand.

‘Maybe…maybe the sanest, too.’

For a moment she stood there, shaking slightly. Then her head bowed. She lifted our linked hands and brought my fingers to her lips. I moved a little closer, bringing my other arm awkwardly around her back as I tried to keep the mug away from her. She allowed her head to sink onto my shoulder.

‘Thank you.’

The words were barely audible.

‘Don’t thank me. You did it.’

She lifted her head. Her eyes were red, her cheeks were wet. ‘You…really mean…all that? You don’t have any doubts?’

‘I have no doubts.’ It was impossible, looking into her eyes.

There was a knocking on the door – a strident, insistent rapping.

Barbara sort-of jumped back from me, slopping some of her tea onto the faded carpet. She pulled her hand free from mine and rubbed at her eyes. She thrust her mug towards me and I took it. She went over to the door. The knocking came again before she got there.

She opened the door to reveal a thickset man of about forty, with receding dark hair and close-set, aggressive features. He stepped forward but Barbara held her ground, preventing him from entering the flat. His eyes went past her to stare at me. I felt more than a little intimidated by the look on his face, but I stared back, taking a slow sip on my tea, then went to sit down.

‘Mr. Spencer…’

‘Tony, Tony…my name’s Tony.’ He looked past her again. ‘Rosie said you were having trouble with your fridge.’

‘Oh…it turned out to be the plug. I sorted it out. I forgot to tell her – I’m sorry you were troubled.’ Barbara inched the door towards closing, but the man was not deterred.

‘It’s no trouble…you know that. You know how to reach me, if there’s any problems.’ He glanced towards me again, then coughed. ‘I was…I was going to go for a drink, on the corner. Thought p’raps you might want one.’

‘I have a guest.’ She half-glanced back at me, then said: ‘My…my nephew.’

He was silent for a moment, his face stony. ‘Looks old enough to sit in a pub. He could come.’

Barbara hesitated. ‘Not tonight. Sorry, Mr— Tony.’

He stood there for a moment, unspeaking. ‘Remember, if you’ve got any problems…’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.’

‘Maybe I’ll see you later in the week, then.’

‘Perhaps.’

He turned slowly and disappeared from sight. I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs as Barbara pushed the door shut. She turned and leaned back against it, rubbing at her eyes again. ‘Thank heavens the light’s not too good. If he noticed I’d been crying…’ She came towards me. ‘Well, nephew…that’s my reputation for honesty shot to pieces.’

I smiled and shrugged. ‘I dare say you had good reasons. Who is he?’

‘My landlady’s brother. He got divorced about three months ago, and he’s taken…shall we say, a protective interest in me ever since. I can’t afford to offend him, really, but I don’t think we have too much in common.’ She took her tea from me and sat down. ‘I’m sorry about the nephew thing – I just felt that he wouldn’t understand what’s really going on, even if I could have been bothered to explain.’

‘You do have brothers and sisters, I hope?’ I wasn’t really sure why I asked the question, except that I was concerned about how much her landlady might know about her family.

She seemed to sense my reason, and nodded. ‘One sister – her son’s only six.’

We sipped our tea in silence for a few moments. Barbara took a deep breath. ‘I wonder if you understand how much it means to me – what you just told me.’

‘I think I could see.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry…’ She ducked her head. ‘There’s nothing I can say that could possibly express…’

‘The only thing is…I don’t see how it helps you in a practical sense. I’m not in a position to convince anyone.’

She looked up. ‘Perhaps not. But it’s a start. You can’t imagine how much better it makes me feel.’

I felt my face flush a little. ‘Just...glad to have been of service.’

We looked at one another for a moment. She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s quite early yet. I don’t know if you’re ready for another adventure in detail – anyway, the next one could be quite a long story. Perhaps you have things to do at home – some writing.’

I felt a reluctance to leave; there were several reasons, but one concrete one in particular which it took me a moment to pin down. ‘Your friend might still be downstairs with his sister. If I go now, you’ve lost your excuse.’

‘Oh God, yes. I hadn’t thought of that.’

I was surprised at the immense feeling of relief that swept through me at her reaction. Had I been terrified that she was interested in him? Why was that? What was my interest in her? I seemed to be in a constant state of emotional flux; one minute I was only interested in her past, her stories, and the next…she was leaning towards me now and I could see the pale flesh below her collar bones as it disappeared into the v of her shirt.

‘So,’ she was saying, ‘what shall we do?’