Just over a week till the shortest day, but all the flowers were in bloom. The sweet spring smell of cherry blossom spun Sarah to warmer times even as she picked her way through the snow, lantern turning the white to a dull orange at her feet.
It would be years - she didn't know how many, just that it hadn't happened yet - before there was significant reform in this area. She didn't know if this asylum would be like the Victorian hospitals of her imagination: strait-jackets and wailing men and warders who didn't care, but she expected it. They used to lock unmarried mothers up, didn't they? Poor ones, anyway. You went in, sane but ignorant or stupid, and fifty years later they realised you were still there, hopeless, despairing, and utterly mad. Like going to the doctor's for a check-up and catching flu in the waiting room, only a million million times worse.
Knocking on the door, she felt a dip in her heart. She was a child again, expecting a terrifying and towering grown-up to fling it open and roar at her. But the man who peered through the shutter and slid the bolts back was the same height as her, quiet and bald. She'd been right about the wailing, though. Screams and sobs came from every side, and she had to fight to keep the adult journalist on top and not the scared child. There was no electricity here and the gas lamps were turned low - light wasn't considered a fundamental human right, obviously. What did these people have to look at, anyway? Perhaps in the dark they could imagine themselves in a better place.
She'd unconsciously been expecting a prison visitor's room: plastic chairs or perspex screens and warders all around. But before she could protest, she was inside his room and the door bolted behind her. Just her and him. Her and the lunatic. Was the gleam in his eye because he'd worked out how to untie his bonds, was he waiting for the footsteps to recede before making his move?
She took a deep breath and hunkered down on the floor, bringing herself down to his eyeline therefore less imposing and more inviting of confidences. The warder had said he made no sense, but she had to get him to talk to her. She had to get him to tell her how Harry Sullivan had died.
***
There had been just Sarah and Harry.
'I think it's the middle of the night,' he'd said. 'It looks cold out there.'
'It's always cold in Scotland,' she'd said. 'I'm going to get a jumper. You should wrap up too.'
'I'll be fine,' he'd said. 'I've got a coat.'
But she'd grabbed the enormous scarf from the coat rack and wound it round his neck anyway. It went round twice and still trailed on the floor. 'There you go,' she'd said. 'That'll keep you warm. Now, I won't be a minute.'
'I might have a look around while I'm waiting,' he'd said.
'Well, don't go far,' she'd said. 'I won't believe we're where we're supposed to be until he proves it to me.'
And they hadn't been where they were supposed to be. She still wasn't sure exactly what had happened, and she knew the Doctor had no idea either, because they'd been answering a distress call and the ship should have taken them to where they were needed. Her home time, and more or less her home place. Hers and Harry's.
Sarah wandered back into the control room, twisting a floppy brown hat first this way then that way on her head. Luckily her hair was so thick it bounced back into shape whatever she wore on top. The Doctor was leaning over the controls, checking a dial. He was wearing a bright red tartan tam o'shanter and matching scarf, and Sarah grinned. Then she noticed the door was closed.
'Is Harry back?' she said. 'What did he find? Where's he gone?'
The Doctor didn't look up. 'We haven't landed yet,' he said.
She thought he was joking. 'Yes, very funny, where's Harry?'
Then she saw that the central column, the clumpy clear plastic thing in the middle of the console, was juddering up and down. That meant that the TARDIS was in flight. But it couldn't be. She was still, at that stage, puzzled rather than worried.
'Were we in the wrong place? Is that why you've taken off again?'
He spun round then. 'Sarah, what are you talking about?'
Now worry was beginning. She spelled it out so there could be no mistake.
'We landed. In Scotland. Well, it might not have been Scotland. But it looked like Earth, anyway. A wood. Winter. Bare trees. You were off somewhere - getting that -' she pointed at the jaunty tam o'shanter - 'and Harry went to look around.' A pause. 'Harry is here somewhere, isn't he? He's in the TARDIS.'
The Doctor had turned back to the controls, poring over meters and readouts.
'Doctor?'
Again, he didn't face her. 'We landed, Sarah.' A flick of a switch. 'Dragged off course, just for a few minutes. Then the clever thing righted herself, didn't you, old girl?'
'But Harry...'
'Ah, the not so clever thing.'
That wasn't funny. And the Doctor knew it, because he carried on without laughing. 'Harry's still out there,' he said. Wherever 'there' was.
***
Sarah had been right, it was cold. A nip in the air, Harry thought to himself, which was an understatement. He was all right, in his duffel coat and with the Doctor's scarf, but Sarah might want more than a jumper. Perhaps he should go back and tell her. In a minute. Best have a recce first.
It had been spring when he left Earth with the Doctor, and it was clearly winter now. That seemed about right, although time travel probably didn't work like that. Sarah would know. Hopefully there would be a roaring fire waiting for them when they found wherever it was that the Brigadier was having his crisis. Presumably UNIT would have set up a base somewhere near civilisation, not in the middle of a godforsaken wood.
Harry turned back towards the TARDIS, rotting leaves threatening to slide his feet from under him with each step. Even a sailor's balance wasn't proof against the perils of the British countryside; he was even worse in icy weather. The light from the ship's open doorway had been illuminating the area: not much, but he realised how dependent his eyes had been on it as the door suddenly swung shut. He didn't panic. After all, why would he panic? The TARDIS wouldn't leave without him. The Doctor was unpredictable, but not senselessly unkind. The door had just shut, that was all. No reason to panic, no reason at all.
The TARDIS wouldn't leave without him.
