Free Doctor Who: Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones Page A

the glass obscured their words.
    Suddenly, the rooftop was plunged into darkness. For a second Jack was disorientated and scared. Had they been discovered? But it was only that the two men had left the room below, turning the light off after them.
    ‘Are you up for a bit of breaking and entering?’ the Doctor asked.
    Jack stared at him. ‘You’re not serious?’
    40
     
    The Doctor took a small Swiss Army knife out of one of his jacket pockets and slipped it between the skylight and the frame.
    Oh blimey, Jack thought. He is serious.
    ‘Ah,’ the Doctor breathed with satisfaction. He pushed the skylight, and it swung quietly open. ‘We’re in.’
    Against his better judgment Chris had allowed himself to be dragged back into the Tropics. Tilda had insisted that he needed to rest after all the excitement, and had demanded that he allow her to offer him a bottle of her finest Italian wine. ‘It’s the absolute least I can do after you saved my dearest and favourite friend,’ she had exclaimed. ‘Patsy is like a daughter to me.’
    Chris would have preferred an orange juice, but when he had requested one Tilda had thrown back her head and burst out laughing, asking him if the accident hadn’t done some permanent damage to his brain. And so, Chris had found himself sitting in a corner of the Tropics surrounded by Patsy, Tilda and a few of her extremely drunk customers, drinking more wine than he would have usually cared to.
    In other circumstances he would have probably entered into the spirit of the evening. But his grief had left him with little of the energy necessary to socialize and make new friends. Chris quietly began to regret not having returned to the TARDIS with the Doctor. His companion was probably fast asleep by now, or whatever Time Lords did when the rest of the Universe tucked itself up in bed.
    The Tropics was heaving with people, voices raised in laughter and conversation. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, irritating Chris’s throat and reminding him inevitably of Roz, whose smoking had been the cause of much friction between them. Before he was plunged into that particular train of thought, he was distracted by Tilda trying to enlist his aid in convincing Patsy to take a turn at the piano.
    ‘She’s an absolute star, Christopher. Tell her that you want to hear her sing.’
    Chris found himself being stared at expectantly by Patsy. He’d been trying to minimize his contact with the young woman. She’d been flirting rather ostentatiously with him ever since he’d saved her outside the club. Despite her good looks, he didn’t find her remotely attractive. There was something flat about her. That was it, Chris realized: she lacked any depth whatsoever, as if she were made of only two dimensions instead of three.
    She leant over and whispered, ‘I’d love to sing a song for you.’
    ‘I’d. . . be delighted,’ Chris managed.
    ‘Good,’ Tilda barked, ‘that’s settled then.’ She gestured over to Andrew, who had replaced Saeed behind the bar. He stepped out from behind the makeshift 41
     
    table and walked directly over to the piano, casually abandoning several customers who were still waiting to be served. As he played the first few bars of a song, a hush fell over the Tropics. The queue at the bar dissolved as the customers hurried back to their friends. The crowd turned to the makeshift stage, and waited expectantly. Tilda dimmed the already low lighting, adjusting a single desk lamp so it became an impromptu spotlight over the piano.
    Patsy took a moment to reapply her lipstick, and then took up her place at the pianist’s side. She looked almost bleached out in the harsh light of the lamp. Quietly, stumbling over some of the words, and always slightly out of time with the piano, she began to sing.
    Not a day
    I wouldn’t last a single day
    Without your tender love
    My dear
    Chris felt himself flush as she directed the sentiment of the song over to the corner of the room where he