Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Liz was halfway through calibrating a sensor when there was a knock on the open door. She glanced up. "Kate."

Kate wandered in, shutting the door behind her. "Have you got a minute?"

"For you? Always."

Kate perched on the corner of the visitor's chair without quite sitting properly.

Liz recognised the look immediately. It usually meant trouble. "What have you been thinking about?"

Kate looked at her seriously. "I think you should marry Dad."

Liz stared at her for a heartbeat. "...Good afternoon to you too."

Kate didn't smile. "I'm serious."

"I can see that." Liz put her screwdriver down. "Would you like to tell me why?"

Kate folded her arms. "Because Victoria doesn't like me."

Liz's expression changed. "What happened?"

"Nothing." Kate shrugged. "She just..." She searched for the words. "...acts like I'm in the way."

Liz waited.

"If Dad wants to take me somewhere, she suddenly has plans." Another shrug. "If he has a free weekend, she's already booked something." She looked down at her hands. "And when I do see him..." Her voice became quieter. "...I feel like she wishes I'd go home."

The laboratory was silent for a moment. Liz had noticed. Not all of it. Enough. "What does your father say?"

Kate shook her head. "He doesn't see it."

Liz wasn't entirely surprised. Alistair had always believed the best of people until the evidence became impossible to ignore.

Kate looked back up. "But you'd never do that."

"No."

"So you should marry him instead."

Liz couldn't help smiling. "Oh, Kate."

"You already know him."

"I do."

"You like him."

"Very much."

"You like me."

"I hope so."

Kate looked faintly exasperated. "Then it's obvious."

Liz laughed softly. "It really isn't."

Kate frowned. "I don't understand."

Liz was quiet for a moment. Then she pushed her chair back and came to sit on the edge of the bench beside Kate instead of remaining behind the desk. "When I first met your father..." She smiled to herself. "...we were both at university."

Kate's eyes widened slightly. "I've known him longer than almost anyone." Liz explained.

"You see?" Kate sounded encouraged. "That's why it would work."

Liz shook her head. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because somewhere along the way..." She thought about it. "...he stopped becoming someone I might fall in love with."

Kate looked puzzled. "What did he become?"

Liz smiled. "My brother."

Kate blinked. "He isn't."

"No."

"But that's how it feels." She rested her hands in her lap. "If your father rang me at three in the morning and said he needed me..."

"I'd expect you to go."

"I would."

"If I rang him..."

"He'd come."

"Immediately."

Kate nodded. "That's what married people do."

Liz smiled. "No. That's what family do."

Kate looked unconvinced.

Liz laughed quietly. "I know that's confusing."

"A bit."

"I've loved your father for nearly half my life."

Kate brightened. "So—"

Liz held up a finger. "But I've never once wanted to kiss him."

Kate stopped. "Oh."

"Not once." She smiled. "In fact, the thought is rather odd."

Kate pulled a face. "Eww."

"There you are." Liz bumped Kate's shoulder gently with her own. "Exactly."

Kate sat quietly for a while. "So..."

She sighed. "I still have the Victoria problem."

Liz's smile faded. "I'm afraid so."

Kate looked down. "I wish Dad could see it."

Liz did too. She reached over and squeezed Kate's hand. "Your father's a very good man."

"I know."

"Sometimes..." Liz chose her words carefully. "...very good people take a little longer to recognise when someone isn't being very kind."

Kate nodded slowly. "So I just wait?"

"For now."

"And hope?"

Liz smiled. "And keep being yourself."

Liz was making tea when there was a familiar knock against the open office door. "Come in."

Sarah stepped inside carrying a small paper bag. "I thought you might have forgotten lunch again."

Liz looked up from the kettle. "I hadn't."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You were about to."

"...Possibly."

Sarah smiled and set the bag beside the mugs. "The canteen had just put the scones out."

"Then you're forgiven."

She reached for a second mug before noticing Kate sitting quietly in the visitor's chair. "Hello, Tiger."

Kate managed a smile. "Hi."

Sarah frowned very slightly. "That won't do." She looked from Kate to Liz. "Why has she got such a long face?"

Liz poured the boiling water into the teapot before answering. "She was trying to persuade me that I ought to marry her father."

Sarah blinked, then laughed. "Oh dear."

Kate looked faintly defensive. "It made sense."

"So did the rumours."

Kate looked up. "What rumours?"

Sarah accepted the mug Liz handed her. "For years half of UNIT was convinced those two were secretly married."

Liz sighed. "We were not."

"I know that."

"I'm not entirely sure Benton did."

"It wasn't Benton." Sarah stirred her tea. "I think it started long before Benton."

Liz looked thoughtful. "It may actually have been Yates."

Sarah nodded. "I think you're right."

Kate frowned. "They really thought you were together?"

Sarah smiled over the rim of her mug. "You have to understand, your father and Liz disappeared into laboratories together for hours."

"Working," Liz said.

"Usually."

Liz gave her a look.

Sarah continued as though she hadn't noticed. "They argued."

"Scientifically."

"They solved alien invasions."

"They trusted each other." She shrugged. "People saw what they expected to see."

"And what they expected," Liz said dryly, "was apparently romance."

Sarah laughed. "I kept telling them that if your father ever looked at Liz romantically we'd all know something had possessed him."

Kate laughed. It wasn't much. But it was real.

Liz waited until Sarah took a sip of tea. "Of course..."

Sarah looked up immediately. "No."

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to."

Liz's expression became entirely innocent. "It occurs to me that if we're discussing suitable candidates..."

Sarah pointed at her with her teaspoon. "Liz."

"...Sarah would—"

"Oh no."

Kate's eyes had already widened.

Sarah recognised that look — the one that meant Kate had started assembling a plan. She held up a hand. "Before you recruit me into whatever conspiracy the two of you are inventing..."

Kate sighed dramatically.

Sarah smiled. "Tell me instead..." She settled back in her chair. "...what has Victoria been up to?"

Kate stared. "You know Victoria?"

Sarah looked surprised by the question. "Of course."

"How?"

"I've known your father for years." She smiled. "And I'm a journalist. Keeping track of who's spending time with whom is rather useful."

Kate hadn't thought of that.

Sarah's smile softened. "So. What has she been doing?"

Kate looked down at the mug Liz had made for her. "It isn't one thing."

Sarah waited.

"When it's Dad's weekend..." Kate traced a finger around the handle. "...there's always something more important."

"If we're supposed to go somewhere..."

"Victoria already has tickets for something."

"If we're meant to spend the afternoon together..."

"Dad suddenly has to meet somebody." She shrugged. "And she keeps saying Mum won't mind if I go home early."

The room became very quiet.

Kate looked up. "It's always my time with Dad."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Sarah had stopped smiling. "You only see him every other weekend."

Kate nodded. "So if I go home..." She shrugged again. "...that's just time I don't get back."

Sarah looked across at Liz. Liz gave the smallest nod. She'd heard all of this already.

She looked back at Kate. "That must be very lonely."

Kate tried to shrug it away. "I suppose."

Sarah knew that shrug. She'd done it often enough herself after her parents died. By the time she was Kate's age she'd already learned that pretending something didn't hurt was sometimes easier than admitting it did. If Aunt Lavinia hadn't taken her in... She pushed the thought away.

Sarah was quiet for a few moments.

Kate watched her. "You've thought of something."

Sarah looked up. "Possibly."

"What?"

Sarah smiled. "I'm not going to tell you."

Kate frowned. "Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't be fair."

"To who?"

"You."

Kate looked surprised. "And your mum."

Kate's shoulders slumped a little. "Oh."

Sarah set her mug down. "I don't know whether she'll think it's a good idea. If she doesn't..." She shook her head. "...then I'd rather you never knew what it was."

Kate frowned. "I don't understand."

Sarah was quiet for a moment, choosing her words. "If I tell you now... and then your mum says no..." She gave a small shrug. "...you'll be disappointed."

Kate nodded.

"And there's every chance you'll be cross with her."

"I wouldn't."

Sarah smiled gently. "You might."

Kate thought about it. "...Maybe."

"And that wouldn't be fair." Sarah rested her hands around her mug. "Your mum would only be doing what she thought was best for you. I don't ever want to be the reason the two of you argue."

The room was quiet. Kate looked down at the floor. After a moment she nodded. "I suppose that wouldn't be very nice."

"No." Sarah smiled. "So..." She picked up her tea again. "I'll have a chat with your mum. And if she likes my idea..." She smiled over the rim of her mug. "...then I'll tell you."

Kate looked at her for a long moment. "You promise?"

"I promise."

Kate smiled. "All right."

Sarah returned the smile. "Good."

Benton was writing up a report when Sarah appeared in the doorway. "Benton?"

He looked up.

"I need a favour."

"If I can."

"Have you got Fiona Campbell's telephone number?"

He looked at her for a moment. "What for?"

Sarah smiled. "I'm trying to sort Kate's long face."

That was evidently enough. He opened the top drawer of his desk, pulled out a battered address book and turned a few pages before copying a number onto the corner of a sheet of paper. "There you are."

Sarah took it. "Thank you."

"Good luck."

"I've a feeling I'll need it."

The office Sarah borrowed whenever she was at UNIT wasn't really hers. It just happened to be empty more often than not. She closed the door behind her, sat down beside the telephone and dialled the number Benton had given her.

It rang twice. "Hello?"

"Ms Campbell?"

"Speaking."

"My name's Sarah Jane Smith."

There was a pause. Then, "The journalist."

Sarah smiled. "I've been found out."

Kate had obviously been talking.

"What can I do for you?"

"I hope you don't mind me ringing."

"Not at all."

"I've spent a little time with Kate this afternoon."

Another pause. "Has something happened?"

Sarah rested one elbow on the desk. "Nothing dramatic." She chose her next words carefully. "I think she's finding things rather difficult at the moment. She feels she's losing time with her father."

The silence lasted just long enough for Sarah to know she hadn't said anything Fiona didn't already know.

"I see."

"I can't do anything about that."

"No."

"But I wondered if I might be able to make things a little easier."

"I'm listening."

"I always seem to have more work than I can sensibly manage during the school holidays." 

A quiet laugh came down the telephone. "I know the feeling." 

Sarah leaned against the desktop. "I wondered whether Kate might like to spend the summer helping me."

"Helping you?"

"I could give her some work experience. Research. Photography. The sort of jobs that are never quite as exciting as they sound."

Fiona laughed. "I'm not sure you'll convince a thirteen-year-old of that."

"I suspect not." Sarah smiled to herself. "If Alistair's busy at the weekend, she could come along with me instead of sitting around waiting. My aunt has a market garden."

"Dr Lavinia Smith. The virologist?"

"The very same."

"Kate would probably spend half the summer learning things neither of us intended."

There was another small laugh. "She'd like that." The line grew quiet again. "Can I ask why?"

Sarah looked at the window. Beyond the glass, someone hurried along the corridor carrying three files under one arm. "When I was about Kate's age..." She stopped herself. "No. I was younger. My parents died."

Nothing came back down the line.

"My aunt took me in. She never let me think that was the end of my story."

Sarah rubbed a thumb around the rim of the teacup beside the telephone. "She expected things of me. She trusted me. She made me believe I could do things that frightened me." She smiled. "I've only known Kate for a short time but she's bright. Curious. And she's reached that age where she'll start believing what people tell her about herself."

The silence stretched between them.

"I'd rather she believed the people who see what she can do."

When Fiona spoke again, her voice was softer. "Kate told me you were kind."

Sarah blinked. "I don't know about that."

"I do."

Another pause. "She'd love it."

Sarah let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. "You don't mind?"

"No. I think it would do her the world of good."

Sarah smiled. "I'll speak to Alistair."

"I've no objection to that."

"I'll tell Kate tonight."

"Thank you."

"No." Fiona laughed quietly. "Thank you."

Sarah replaced the receiver gently. For a moment she simply sat there looking at the telephone. Then she smiled. Now she could tell Kate.

Sarah found Alistair's office door ajar and didn't bother knocking properly, just pushed it open with two fingers and stepped inside. She'd meant to look for Kate first, but this was better. This she could do without an audience of one very determined thirteen-year-old hanging on every word.

Alistair looked up from a stack of requisition forms with the particular relief of a man interrupted from paperwork he didn't want to be doing. "Sarah Jane."

"Alistair." She was halfway to his desk before she registered the other occupant of the room, curled into the chair by the window with a magazine she wasn't reading. "Victoria."

"Sarah." Victoria's smile didn't reach anywhere near her eyes.

Sarah gave her exactly the nod the moment required and not one degree more, then turned back to Alistair as though the chair by the window were empty. She'd learned a long time ago that some people wilted faster under being ignored than being confronted, and she rather thought Victoria was one of them.

"I need five minutes," she said. "Possibly less."

Alistair set down his pen, already looking faintly grateful for the excuse. "Go on."

"I've a work experience position going spare." She perched on the corner of his desk, the way she always had, the way that used to make him roll his eyes and now didn't seem to register as anything but familiar. "More than I can manage on my own, and rather more than is sensible to leave until the last fortnight of the holidays."

"And you've someone in mind."

"I have a girl who's been lurking around UNIT for weeks with the distinct look of someone who wants to be doing something." Sarah tilted her head. "Sharp. Curious. Doesn't miss anything, which is either going to make her an excellent journalist or an excellent spy, and either way I'd rather have her working for me than wondering what she's doing instead."

Something in Alistair's face had already started to soften, the way it did whenever he saw exactly where a sentence was headed and liked where it was going. "Kate."

"Kate." Sarah spread her hands slightly, the way she did when she'd already decided something and was simply giving him the courtesy of a vote. "I'll pay her properly. Not pocket money — an actual wage, for actual work, because that's the only way anyone learns anything is worth doing. And if you're tied up some weekend, she can come along with me to Moreton Harwood instead of sitting about waiting for you to be free."

She let that settle for a moment before adding, more gently, "I already rang Fiona. She's happy about it. So you don't need to sort that part out — I've done it."

Alistair looked at her for a long moment, and Sarah recognised the particular quality of his silence: not hesitation, just a man working out how he'd nearly missed something that had been happening in front of him.

"You've thought about this."

"I have."

"Any objections I ought to be aware of?"

"None that I can think of." She smiled, only slightly wicked. "Unless you'd rather she stayed underfoot here, getting up to whatever mischief thirteen-year-olds with too much time and access to a military base can invent."

That got a short, tired laugh out of him, the tension he hadn't quite been carrying in his shoulders easing all at once. "No. No, I don't think I'd rather that at all." He sat back, and for a moment he looked less like the Brigadier and more like a man who'd been handed one problem fewer than he'd woken up with. "Thank you, Sarah."

"Don't thank me yet. She may decide it's beneath her by Wednesday."

"I doubt that very much."

"Good." Sarah slid off the edge of the desk, satisfied. "I rather think she's going to be good at this."

"I rather think you're right."

Sarah found Liz's door open, and Kate exactly where she'd left her — perched on the edge of the visitor's chair as though she'd been holding the same posture the whole time, willing the door to open again sooner than it had any right to. Liz looked up first, caught something in Sarah's face, and said nothing at all.

Kate was on her feet before Sarah had properly cleared the doorway.

"Well?"

"Well." Sarah let the word sit there a moment, entirely on purpose, and watched Kate's whole face strain against the effort of not asking again immediately.

"Sarah."

"I promised I'd tell you if your mum agreed." Sarah crossed the room and settled onto the arm of the chair beside her instead of taking the one Liz offered. "She did. So did your father, about ten minutes ago, though I don't think he needed much persuading."

Kate went very still. "Told me what?"

"That depends entirely on you." Sarah folded her hands in her lap, taking her time now that the hard part was done. "I've a job going, if you want it. Not helping out. Not a favour to your mother. An actual job."

Kate blinked. "A job."

"Research, mostly, to start. Digging through cuttings, chasing down names, learning to tell a good lead from a waste of an afternoon." Sarah ticked it off easily, the way she might have listed ingredients for a recipe she'd made a hundred times. "I'll teach you to use a camera properly — not just point and hope, actually use one, develop your own film, learn what makes a photograph worth printing and what belongs in the bin. Editing, eventually, if you've the patience for it, which I suspect you have more of than you think."

"And errands," she added, with the faint amusement of someone who remembered being thirteen and thinking errands were beneath her. "Which will feel like the least glamorous part of it and will also teach you more about how a newsroom actually runs than anything else I could tell you."

Kate hadn't moved, hadn't so much as blinked, clearly trying to hold onto all of it at once.

"And if your father's tied up some weekend," Sarah went on, "you'll come with me instead of sitting about waiting for him to be free. Either you'll be at Morton Harwood helping in the market garden — my aunt will have you weeding beds and telling you the Latin names of things whether you want them or not — or you'll be in her old lab being made to hand her things and label samples and generally learn that most of science is far less exciting than television makes it look."

She paused, watching that land, then added the part she suspected Kate hadn't even thought to ask about.

"And you'll be paid. Properly paid. Twenty-five pounds a week." Sarah let that settle. "Which, for the record, is a good deal more than most grown women doing far less interesting work are getting at the moment, so I'd suggest you not mention that too loudly around the office."

Kate's mouth opened. Nothing came out of it for a moment.

"You're serious."

"Entirely."

"You'd actually pay me."

"I don't employ people for free, Kate. That's not a job, that's charity, and you're not in need of my charity." Sarah tilted her head, something warmer creeping into her voice. "You're in need of something to do that isn't waiting around for other people to decide how your time gets spent. This is that."

Kate looked at Liz, as if to check this was real. Liz simply raised her eyebrows and said nothing, which Kate apparently took as confirmation enough.

"So," Sarah said. "Assistant to Sarah Jane Smith. Do you want the job or not?"

Kate didn't so much answer as launch straight past the question. "Yes. Obviously yes." She said it fast enough that the words nearly ran together, as though there were some danger the offer might be withdrawn if she took a moment to consider it properly. "When do I start?"

"Now, if you like." Sarah glanced at the clock above Liz's bench, then at Kate's face, which had gone from disbelief to something closer to barely-contained delight in the space of about four seconds. "Which reminds me — I skipped lunch, and I suspect Liz is only pretending she didn't."

"I wasn't pretending anything," Liz said mildly, not looking up from what she was doing.

"You were about to." Sarah reached into her bag, pulled out her purse, and held out a handful of coins to Kate without ceremony. "Canteen. Scones, if they've any left, and something more substantial than a scone for the rest of us. Sandwiches will do."

Kate looked at the money, then at Sarah. "That's my first job? Sandwiches?"

"Your first job is learning that nobody does good work on an empty stomach, least of all me." Sarah's mouth twitched. "Consider it training. You'll be doing far worse errands than this before the summer's out."

Kate took the coins, clearly torn between the indignity of being sent on a lunch run and the fact that she had, five minutes ago, agreed to a job and was therefore contractually obligated to do as she was told. In the end delight won out over indignity, the way it generally did with her.

"Right," she said, already moving for the door. "Scones. Sandwiches. Anything else, boss?"

"Don't call me boss."

"Too late." Kate was already gone, footsteps quick and light down the corridor.

Liz waited until the sound of them had faded before she spoke, not looking up from her work. "You do know you've just created a monster."

"I know." Sarah smiled, watching the empty doorway a moment longer than she needed to. "I'm rather looking forward to it."

The first place Sarah took Kate wasn't a council office. It was a terraced house on a street that had seen better decades, where the man who answered the door had one trouser leg pinned neatly above where his knee used to be and a way of standing that made it clear he'd learned to manage without complaint a long time ago.

"Mr. Ferris." Sarah held out her hand. "Sarah Jane Smith. I rang yesterday."

"You did." He shook her hand, then glanced past her to where Kate stood a step behind, camera already slung around her neck like she wasn't entirely sure yet whether she was allowed to touch it. "This your assistant?"

"Kate. She's learning."

"Well, come in then, both of you. Mind the step."

The front room was tidy in the particular way of people who'd had to make peace with very little space and had decided the only dignity left available to them was order. Sarah settled onto the sofa Ferris offered, and Kate hovered near the doorway, unsure where she was meant to be.

"Sit, Kate," Sarah said, without looking round. "You're not furniture."

Kate perched on the arm of a chair, notebook balanced on her knee, and Sarah turned her attention back to Ferris. "How long have you been waiting?"

"Two years this March." He said it flatly, the way a man says a number he's stopped being surprised by. "Applied the week I got out of hospital. Told them straight off what I needed — ground floor, wide enough doorways for the chair on the bad days. They said they understood. Said they'd see what they could do."

"And?"

"And I'm still climbing those stairs on the bad days." He nodded toward a narrow staircase visible through the doorway, steep enough that Sarah found herself wincing on his behalf. "Some mornings it takes me twenty minutes just to get down for my tea."

Sarah wrote nothing down yet. She'd learned a long time ago that the notebook coming out too early made people perform for it instead of simply talking, and what she wanted right now wasn't performance.

"What's that like?" she asked instead. "Not the housing — the mornings. What does a bad morning actually look like?"

Ferris considered the question longer than she'd expected. "Like being punished for something I didn't do," he said eventually. "I gave them a leg. Seemed like a fair trade would be a house I can get around in without it costing me an hour and half my dignity before breakfast."

Kate had gone very still on the arm of the chair, pen forgotten. Sarah didn't prompt her to write. She let the silence sit exactly as long as it needed to.

Later, once Ferris had gone through to put the kettle on, Sarah leaned toward Kate and kept her voice low. "You didn't write any of that down."

"I forgot." Kate looked stricken. "I was listening and I just — forgot."

"Good." Sarah's mouth curved. "That means it mattered. You can write it down after, while it's still fresh, and it'll be more honest than if you'd been scribbling the whole time and only half listening. Never let the notebook get between you and the person, Kate. The notebook can wait. The person can't."

Kate absorbed that the way she absorbed most things Sarah told her — carefully, like she meant to keep it somewhere permanent.

"What about the camera?" she asked. "Do I take his picture?"

Sarah glanced toward the staircase, then back at Kate. "Not of him. Not directly. Nobody wants to open the paper and see themselves looking pitiful over their tea, and it wouldn't be fair to him besides." She thought a moment. "Take the stairs. Just the stairs, empty, in whatever light's coming through that window. Let people look at them and imagine climbing them on a bad morning themselves. That does more work than his face ever could."

Kate looked at the staircase properly for the first time, then lifted the camera and studied it through the viewfinder, adjusting her angle twice before Sarah heard the shutter click.

"Better," Sarah said, without needing to see the result yet. "You're starting to see it."

The second house was smaller than the first, though Sarah hadn't thought that possible until she was standing inside it. One room did the work of four — a bed pushed against one wall, a table wedged into what space remained, washing strung across a line above the fireplace because there was nowhere else to dry it.

Mrs. Adeyemi held a sleeping toddler against her shoulder and spoke in the low, careful voice of someone used to keeping her children asleep through everything, including strangers with notebooks. Two older children sat on the bed, watching Kate's camera with open curiosity.

"We applied same time as everyone," she said. "Longer than some. My husband works nights, so when he comes in he needs the bed and the little ones are still up, and there's nowhere for them to be that isn't right there in the room with him trying to sleep." She rocked the toddler slightly, though he hadn't stirred. "Two years, and every letter says the same thing. Under review. Under review."

Sarah asked her about mornings too, and evenings, and what the children did for homework with no table that wasn't also the ironing board, the letter-writing desk, the place where dinner got made. She let Mrs. Adeyemi talk until the words ran out on their own rather than cutting her off with the next question, and only wrote once the woman had gone quiet and seemed to want the conversation finished.

Kate photographed the washing line strung across the mantelpiece. The single chair pulled up to a table meant for one person eating alone, not five. The two older children's schoolbooks stacked on the floor beside the bed because there was nowhere else for them to be stacked.

"You're getting good at this," Sarah murmured, once they were back out on the street and the door had shut behind them.

Kate looked pleased despite herself, then thoughtful. "It's sad."

"It is." Sarah didn't try to soften that. "That's rather the point. People need to feel it before they'll bother caring about it. Facts convince people's heads, Kate. Pictures and stories convince the rest of them. You need both, but you specifically need people first — always begin with the people. Readers care about people. They forget statistics by the time they've turned the page."

It was back in the newsroom, cross-referencing application dates against the borough's waiting list — a tedious, unglamorous hour that Kate spent copying figures into neat columns without complaint — that Sarah went quiet in a way Kate had learned to recognise.

"What?" Kate asked.

Sarah didn't answer immediately. She'd gone back through the list twice already, certain she'd misread something the first time, and the second read had told her she hadn't.

"This family." She tapped a name near the bottom of the list, then slid her finger up several lines to another, more recent date beside a different name entirely. "Applied eight months ago. And this one — applied two years before them, same as Mr. Ferris, same circumstances more or less." She sat back slowly. "The second family got their housing in March. The first one's still waiting."

Kate leaned over to look properly. "That doesn't make sense. Shouldn't the ones who waited longest go first?"

"That's rather what I thought too." Sarah's voice had gone quiet and very even, the tone Kate had learned meant she was thinking hard and enjoying it. "Which means either somebody's made a very ordinary sort of mistake..."

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. Kate was already looking at her with the particular expression of someone who suspected, correctly, that the easy article about waiting lists had just become something else entirely.

The dining table at Alistair's flat wasn't large, but it felt larger than usual that evening, the space between Kate's chair and her father's oddly wide for how close they actually were sitting.

"Well?" Alistair set down his fork, looking at Kate properly for the first time since they'd sat down. "First day. How was it?"

Kate was quiet for a moment, turning a piece of potato over with her fork without actually eating it. She was still somewhere back in that first front room, in the particular silence that had followed Mr. Ferris's answer about mornings, and it took her a second to find her way back to the table.

"Good," she said eventually. "It was good."

"Good how?" Alistair pressed, gently. "What did she have you doing?"

"Talking to people, mostly. And taking some photos." Kate speared the potato this time, if only to have something to do with her hands. "Learning what to write down and what not to."

"What sort of people?"

Kate hesitated, and in that hesitation Victoria set down her wine glass with a small, deliberate click. "Alistair, you promised Marjorie we'd ring before eight about Sunday." She said it lightly, the way she said most things that were actually instructions dressed up as reminders.

Alistair's attention went sideways, the way it always seemed to when Victoria wanted it to. "Did I? I don't recall—"

"You did. Last week." Victoria smiled at him, and it was a perfectly pleasant smile, the sort that didn't leave room for argument. "It's nearly seven now."

"Right. Yes." Alistair glanced at his watch, then back at Kate, already half turned toward the hallway and the telephone. "We'll talk more in a minute, Kate — I want to hear properly, not just the shape of it."

"It's fine, Dad." Kate said it easily enough, the words coming out smoother than anything she'd managed a moment before. "I've got notes to write up anyway. From today. I should probably do that while it's still fresh."

That, at least, was true. Sarah had told her as much herself.

Alistair paused at the edge of the table, something in him clearly wanting to stay and ask the questions Victoria's reminder had interrupted, but the moment had already closed itself the way moments did in that house lately. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure." Kate was already pushing her chair back. "Ring Marjorie. I'll tell you everything tomorrow."

She didn't look at Victoria on her way out, though she felt the other woman's eyes on her the whole length of the room, and she took the stairs two at a time rather than one, glad of an excuse to be moving.

Her room was quiet in the particular way a room is when a whole day is waiting to be unpacked inside it. Kate dropped onto the bed, pulled her notebook from her bag, and sat for a while simply looking at the two names near the bottom of the waiting list, not writing anything at all — turning the strangeness of it over the same way she'd turned the potato over at dinner, waiting for it to make sense before she tried to put it into words.

The housing office occupied the ground floor of a council building that had clearly been built for a smaller borough than the one it now served, all narrow corridors and a queue that spilled halfway out the door. Sarah didn't join it. She walked straight past the counter with its harried-looking clerk and the sign directing enquiries to window three, and found instead a side door marked ALLOCATIONS, propped open with a stack of files someone hadn't got round to putting away.

"Excuse me." She knocked lightly on the frame, smiling at the woman inside — thirties, cardigan, a desk buried under paperwork in the particular chaos of someone who was actually doing the work rather than managing people who did. "I wonder if you might spare me a few minutes."

The woman looked up, wary in the reflexive way of anyone whose job involved being shouted at by members of the public on a regular basis. "Are you on the list? You'll want window three—"

"I'm not here to complain, I promise." Sarah held up both hands slightly, disarming. "Sarah Jane Smith. I'm a journalist, but I'm not after anyone's job, and I'm certainly not after yours. I just want to understand how the list actually works. Properly, I mean — not the leaflet version."

That seemed to relax the woman by a degree or two. "Doreen," she offered, not quite committing to more than that yet. "What is it you want to know?"

"Everything, really. Starting with the basics." Sarah nodded toward the chair opposite, and settled into it uninvited but without any hurry, the way she settled into most spaces. Kate took the chair beside her, notebook already open on her knee.

"How is the list organised? Is it simply whoever's waited longest, or is there more to it than that?"

Doreen almost laughed, though there wasn't much humour in it. "Oh, there's more to it. Points system. Everyone gets scored — length of time on the list, number of children, condition of their current accommodation, that sort of thing."

"And medical priority?" Sarah asked. "If someone's disabled, say. Does that weigh more?"

"It's meant to." Doreen shuffled a folder toward her without quite seeming to notice she was doing it. "Medical priority's supposed to move you up regardless of points, if it's serious enough. Overcrowding's the same — number of people per room, that's meant to count for a lot."

Kate's pen moved steadily, keeping pace, and Sarah let a small silence sit before she asked the next thing, casual as anything.

"Who actually decides where someone lands on the list, in practice? Is that you?"

"Not entirely." Doreen's eyes flicked, just slightly, toward a closed door further down the corridor. "There's a panel that reviews anything borderline. Points get you close, but final placement — when there's a property actually free — that's signed off higher up."

"Whose signature?"

"Depends on the case." Doreen said it carefully now, the way people said things when they'd noticed, a beat too late, that they'd been talking rather freely. "Mr. Whitlock, usually, if it's anything complicated."

Sarah nodded, unhurried, as though the name meant nothing more to her than any other. She didn't write it down yet either — she'd learned that lesson long before she'd ever thought to teach it to anyone else. "That's very helpful. Thank you, Doreen. Truly."

Outside, back in the grey of the afternoon, Kate flipped her notebook shut and looked at Sarah properly for the first time since they'd left the office.

"You didn't ask her about the two families," she said. "The ones on the list. You didn't even mention them."

"No." Sarah's mouth curved, faintly satisfied. "Not yet."

"Why not? Isn't that the whole point?"

"It's exactly the point. But you don't get anywhere asking someone to explain an exception before you understand the rule." Sarah started walking, and Kate fell into step beside her. "If I'd gone in there waving those two names about, Doreen would've either clammed up because she thought I was accusing her of something, or she'd have made up an answer just to have one. Neither's any use to me."

"So we just... learn how it's supposed to work first."

"Exactly that." Sarah glanced sideways at her, something approving in it. "If you don't understand the rules, Kate, you can't possibly tell whether anyone's broken them. You'll just be guessing, and guessing isn't journalism. It's gossip with better shoes."

Kate almost smiled at that, then sobered, clearly turning something over. "So now we know the rules. Points, medical priority, overcrowding. And someone called Whitlock signs off on the complicated ones."

"We do." Sarah's tone stayed light, but there was something underneath it now, quiet and deliberate, the sound of a woman filing a name away somewhere she wouldn't forget it. "And now we go and find out exactly how complicated those two particular cases were."

Sarah found Kate in the little office at the back of the flat that had, over the course of one week, quietly become Kate's as much as anyone's — notebooks stacked by date, negatives drying on a line strung across the window, the housing office file squared neatly at the corner of the desk.

"Leave that a moment." Sarah nodded at the file. "We're going out."

Kate looked up, clearly expecting more of the same. "Back to the council? Or Doreen again?"

"Neither, today." Sarah was already pulling her coat from the hook, checking she had a fresh notebook of her own. "There's a Wing Commander in Surrey restoring a Spitfire in his barn. I'm meant to write him up for Thursday."

Kate blinked. "But we haven't finished the housing story."

"No, we haven't." Sarah said it easily, without any sense that this was a problem requiring explanation, though she could see from Kate's face that it did require exactly that. "That's rather the job, Kate. You don't get one story at a time and a nice quiet stretch to finish it before the next one starts. You're usually working on three or four at once, at different speeds, and you learn to hold them all without dropping any of them."

"How do you keep them straight?"

"Practice, mostly. And knowing which ones need to sit for a while." Sarah nodded toward the housing file. "That one needs to sit. We've asked our questions, we know how the list is meant to work, and now Doreen and everyone else in that office needs a few days to forget we were ever curious, so that when we come back and start asking about Whitlock specifically, nobody's had time to get their story straight. Rushing it now would only make people careful."

Kate considered that, turning it over. "So it's not that we're not working on it. It's resting."

"Exactly that." Sarah looked pleased at the phrasing, tucking it away for later use of her own. "Meanwhile, a man's spent six years rebuilding an aeroplane out of parts from a barn, and Thursday's deadline doesn't care that Whitlock's more interesting. The Spitfire piece is smaller, it's kinder, and readers rather need one of those now and then, between all the pieces that make them angry."

"Is it less important? The Spitfire one?"

"Not less important. Different." Sarah handed Kate her coat off the hook without being asked, already moving toward the door. "It matters that people read about a man keeping his friends' memory alive one rivet at a time, just as much as it matters that they read about a housing list that isn't behaving the way it's meant to. You'll learn the trick of carrying both kinds at once, Kate — the pieces that need patience and the ones that need heart. Today's a heart day."

Kate pulled her coat on, already reaching for her camera bag, some new shape of understanding settling into place behind her eyes.

"So we're never really doing just one thing."

"Never once." Sarah held the door for her. "Welcome to the job."

The hangar smelled of engine oil and old canvas, a scent that seemed to belong to another decade entirely, and the Spitfire itself sat in the middle of it looking less like a museum piece and more like something merely resting between flights.

"Wing Commander Priddy?" Sarah stepped through the open doors with her hand already extended. "Sarah Jane Smith. This is Kate, my assistant."

"Assistant." The old man — silver-haired, ramrod straight despite what had to be seventy-odd years on him — looked Kate over with open amusement. "Bit young for Fleet Street, aren't you?"

"I'm learning," Kate said, which seemed to satisfy him rather more than any actual credentials would have.

"Well. Learning's no bad thing." He gestured at the aircraft behind him, pride evident in every line of his posture. "This is Charlie. P for Priddy, if you want to know why she's called that."

"Priddy," Sarah repeated, glancing at Kate. "P-R-I-D-D-Y?"

"That's it."

Kate wrote it down immediately, underlined twice, the way Sarah had shown her the first day — get the names right before anything else, because nothing undermined a piece faster than a misspelled name, and nothing insulted a source more thoroughly either.

"How long have you been restoring her?" Sarah asked, notebook out now, pen moving easily.

"Six years." Priddy ran a hand along the fuselage the way another man might touch a horse he trusted. "Found her in a barn in Kent, if you can believe it. Bits of three different aircraft, really, once you got down to it. Took me the better part of two years just sourcing the right Merlin."

"The engine," Sarah clarified, half to herself, half for Kate's benefit, and Kate wrote that down too — Merlin, engine — without needing to be told.

Sarah asked the questions she always asked for pieces like this — how it started, what it cost him, whether his wife minded the hours, what it felt like the first time the engine turned over after all that work — and Priddy answered warmly, easily, clearly a man who'd been waiting years for someone to ask.

It was Kate, notebook balanced on her knee, camera round her neck forgotten for the moment, who asked the question that made him stop mid-sentence.

"Did you fly one? During the war, I mean. This exact kind."

Priddy went quiet just long enough that Sarah glanced up from her own notes.

"I did," he said, eventually. "612 Squadron. Nineteen forty-one." He looked at the aircraft rather than at either of them. "Lost three friends in the same three months I flew mine. Good men. Better pilots than me, some of them." He was quiet again, then added, softer, "Suppose that's rather why I'm doing this. Feels like keeping something of them going, somehow, even if that doesn't make much sense."

Sarah's pen had stopped moving. She let the silence hold exactly as long as it wanted to before she spoke again, gently. "That makes a great deal of sense, actually."

Kate, watching him, asked another question before Sarah had a chance to steer them anywhere else. "Do you ever fly her? Now that she's finished?"

"Twice a year. Airshows, mostly." Something in his face lifted again, the weight of a moment ago easing off him. "There's nothing else like it. Not after all this time. You'd think it might feel like just another aircraft, but she doesn't. Never has."

"What does she feel like?" Kate asked, and Sarah found herself glancing sideways at her, faintly surprised, because it was exactly the question she'd have asked herself, and she hadn't got there first.

Priddy considered it properly, the way a man considers something he's never quite had cause to put into words before. "Like being twenty-two again," he said finally. "For about forty minutes at a time. Which is rather more than most people my age get to say."

Kate wrote that down word for word, then lifted the camera and took the photograph without being asked — Priddy's hand resting against the Spitfire's flank, his face turned slightly away, the whole shape of the man and the machine caught together in the grey hangar light.

Later, once they were back outside and Priddy had gone to close up the hangar, Sarah looked at Kate for a long moment before she said anything.

"That question," she said. "About what she feels like."

Kate looked up from her notebook, uncertain whether she'd done something wrong. "Was that all right to ask?"

"It was rather better than all right." Sarah's mouth curved slowly. "I was about to ask him whether she was difficult to fly. You asked him something worth printing." She studied Kate a moment longer, something recalibrating behind her eyes. "Where did you learn to ask a question like that?"

Kate shrugged, a little self-conscious under the scrutiny. "I don't know. I just wanted to know what it actually felt like. Not the technical bit. The real bit."

"That," Sarah said, "is precisely the instinct that can't be taught, and I've been trying to teach it to grown men for fifteen years." She shook her head slightly, more to herself than to Kate, and started walking toward the car. "I rather think I may have taken on more than a work experience girl."

Kate had the phone cord stretched as far as it would go, curled into the corner of the hallway with her knees drawn up, voice pitched low and quick the way it only got when she had something she was properly excited about.

"—and he's spent six years on it, Mum, six years, out of pieces from three different aeroplanes, and he let me touch the wing, and then Sarah asked him all these questions about the engine and how much it cost and I thought that was it, but then I asked him what it felt like to fly her now, after all that time, and he went all quiet for a second and then he said it felt like being twenty-two again, and Sarah looked at me like—" Kate paused for breath, delighted all over again just retelling it. "She said I asked something worth printing. She said that's an instinct she's been trying to teach grown men for fifteen years."

Fiona's laugh came warm down the line. "Did she, now."

"She did. She actually said it." Kate grinned at nobody, entirely alone with the feeling of it. "I didn't even think about it being a good question, I just wanted to know the real answer, not the boring bit, and Sarah said that's exactly the thing you can't teach someone—"

The front door opened behind her, and she heard her father's voice before she turned round, Victoria's lighter tone following just behind it.

"—so I told him Thursday would suit us both, and he seemed perfectly happy with—" Alistair stopped mid-sentence in the hallway, catching the tail end of Kate's voice, the particular brightness of it. He lingered by the coat hooks, not quite interrupting, clearly listening despite himself.

Kate didn't notice him at first. "—and honestly, Mum, I didn't think a Spitfire story would be the interesting one, I thought it'd just be the housing thing, but he was properly telling me things nobody else has probably ever asked him, and I got a photograph of him with his hand on the fuselage, and Sarah said it might even be the one they use—"

"Kate." Fiona's voice, still warm, cut gently through the flow. "I should let you go, love, I can hear your dad's home."

Kate finally registered the sound of the front door properly and glanced round to find Alistair standing there, coat half off, watching her with open curiosity, Victoria a step behind him already heading for the sitting room.

"I'll ring you tomorrow," Kate said quickly into the phone. "Love you, Mum."

She set the receiver back in its cradle and looked up to find her father still watching her, something amused and interested in his expression.

"Sounds like quite an afternoon," he said.

"It was all right." Kate was already reaching for her bag, tucking her notebook away, the brightness from a moment ago folding itself down smaller without her quite deciding to do it. "Just a human interest piece. Nothing important."

"Didn't sound like nothing, the way you were telling it."

"It's not really your sort of thing, though. A Spitfire and an old pilot talking about his wing." Kate shrugged, already moving past him toward the stairs, aware of Victoria somewhere just out of sight in the next room. "You've got enough on. I'll just make sure I get you a copy when Sarah gets it in the paper. You can read it properly then."

Alistair looked at her a moment longer, something in his face that suggested he wasn't entirely convinced by the size of the shrug, but he let it go, the way he'd been letting a number of things go lately without quite noticing he was doing it.

"I'd like that," he said. "Very much."

"Right." Kate was already halfway up the stairs. "I'll get my notes sorted."

The telephone rang in the little office just as Sarah was labelling the last of Kate's negatives from the Spitfire shoot, and she nearly let it go to the machine before something made her pick it up instead.

"Sarah Jane Smith."

"Sarah, it's Fiona." A small, warm laugh followed the name, the sound of someone who'd been smiling before she'd even dialled. "I hope you don't mind me ringing again so soon."

"Not at all." Sarah set down the loupe she'd been using, giving the call her full attention. "How are you?"

"Rather better than I have been in weeks, if I'm honest, and it's entirely your doing." Fiona's voice had a lightness to it that hadn't been there on their first call. "Kate rang me tonight and I don't think I've heard her talk that fast since she was seven and discovered dinosaurs. A Spitfire, apparently. And some pilot who told her things she says nobody's ever asked him before."

Sarah smiled at that, unseen down the line. "She asked a very good question. Rather better than the one I was about to ask myself."

"She said that too. Word for word, I think." Fiona laughed again, softer this time. "Thank you, Sarah. Truly. I don't think I've heard her sound like herself in rather a long time, and it's only been a week."

"She's easy to give a chance to. She simply hadn't had one lately." Sarah leaned back in her chair, and there was a small pause on the line, the particular kind that meant more was coming, and she waited for it rather than filling it.

"Can I ask you something," Fiona said eventually, "that has absolutely nothing to do with Kate?"

"Of course."

"Victoria." Fiona said the name carefully, the way people said names they'd only ever encountered secondhand. "Kate mentions her sometimes. I don't know very much about her at all, other than that she exists and Kate doesn't much care for her. What is she like? Do you know her?"

"I know rather more about her than I probably ought to." Sarah's voice took on the particular mild dryness it got when she was about to enjoy herself slightly. "Victoria Ashcombe. Assistant Under-Secretary, if you want the official version. Career civil servant — she's spent the better part of twenty years being the person who sits between departments and makes certain they actually speak to each other."

"That sounds terribly dull."

"It sounds dull precisely because nobody's meant to notice how much power sits in that chair." Sarah's tone sharpened just slightly, the way it did when she was talking about something she found genuinely interesting. "She knows ministers personally. She sits on committees that decide budgets Alistair has to live within. She understands exactly how government actually works, which is a rather different thing from understanding how it's supposed to work."

There was a silence on the other end that told Sarah she'd landed somewhere unexpected.

"That's not a coincidence, is it," Fiona said slowly. "Him choosing her."

Sarah chose her next words carefully, not unkindly. "Funny thing... I don't think choosing Victoria is entirely separate from having been married to you. Whether he'd ever admit it or not."

Fiona was quiet a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its earlier brightness. "I always thought he was having an affair, you know. Near the end. Not with a person — I never once suspected that, whatever else I thought of him — but with UNIT itself. All the things he couldn't tell me. All those evenings where I'd ask how his day had gone and get 'fine, dear' and nothing else, for years." She sighed, and Sarah could hear decades of that particular exhaustion folded into the sound. "I used to lie awake wondering what on earth was so important that he couldn't share the smallest piece of it with his own wife."

"I wish we'd known each other then," Sarah said, gently. "I could at least have told you that wasn't it. Whatever else was wrong, it was never that he didn't trust you. He simply couldn't tell you, and there's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one from the other side of it."

"Could you have convinced me of that at the time?" There was a faint, rueful laugh underneath the question. "I'm not sure I'd have believed anyone."

"Oh, I'm very good at convincing people." Sarah's own smile came through clearly now, warm and a little wicked. "It's rather my job. Though I should say, all of this was well before I started darkening UNIT's doorstep on a regular basis and stealing notes off his desk when he wasn't looking."

That got a proper laugh out of Fiona, unguarded, the sound of someone who hadn't expected to laugh quite so easily about any of it. "I believe that entirely."

"He never did work out how much of his paperwork ended up in one of my articles," Sarah added, clearly enjoying the memory. "Used to blame Yates for the leaks. Poor man never stood a chance."

"Well," Fiona said, still smiling audibly, "I'm glad someone finally explained it to me, even twenty years late."

"Better late than never." Sarah's voice softened again. "For what it's worth, Fiona — I don't think it was ever about you not being enough. I think it was simply a job that asked more secrecy of him than any marriage should have had to survive. You weren't wrong to be hurt by it. You just weren't wrong about the wrong thing."

There was a pause, and then, quietly, "Thank you for saying that."

"Anytime." Sarah glanced toward the window, where the last of the evening light was fading over the negatives still drying on their line. "Now. Tell me — did Kate mention whether the pilot let her sit in the cockpit, because she conveniently left that detail out of the version she gave me."