‘Well,’ said Graham. ‘It didn’t do any harm, did it?’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ said the Doctor darkly. ‘Since I got the TARDIS back, and while I was waiting for you lot, she’s been sweating a bit. Like something’s not quite right with the web of time.’

  ‘Do NOT mention webs.’ Ryan shuddered.

  ‘Calling that phone like we did, the TARDIS tapped into its transmissions … and she is not happy. Things might be a little bit awry. I might have caused all kinds of damage to the timelines. I could be a bit daft and reckless in my earlier lives, you know?’

  ‘Anyway,’ Ryan shrugged. ‘It never did Elvis any harm. He’s still doing pretty well. How old’s he now? Eighty-two or something?’

  The Doctor froze. ‘Hang on. What did you say? Elvis is still alive?’

  ‘Of course!’ Ryan said. ‘He’s never left the house in years. Graceland, is that where he lives? He’s retired and that. But he’s still alive. We’d have heard about it if the King of Rock and Roll had died, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘He did! August 1977! The whole world’s supposed to know about it!’ The Doctor started leaping and dashing around the console, turning dials and jabbing at buttons. ‘Oh no no no no no no! It can’t be true …! It just can’t …!’

  But it was. Elvis Aaron Presley was still alive and well in the year 2018. His luxurious estate Graceland had become a kind of fortress, and the King carried on living a secluded life, away from the world’s media and any other prying eyes. Only the very trusted inner circle of employees got to visit the deepest recesses of Graceland, where Elvis dwelled, looking fit and healthy and slim in his trademark jumpsuits in various pastel shades.

  He ate vegan burgers and drank vegetable smoothies. He was the healthiest 82-year-old on the planet.

  He spent most of his time reliving past glories: watching his old movies and recordings of his concerts played back on a wall of television screens in his bedroom. Sometimes he toyed with the idea of making a comeback. Surprising the whole world. He was the world’s very first rock and roll star. Who was to say he couldn’t come blazing back with a new album even at this advanced age?

  Mostly, though, he preferred to sit at home and eat healthy food and think back over past glories, and remember all the people he had loved and lost.

  Really, he felt pretty lonely.

  Even talking on the phone to his mama didn’t help. Hearing her voice echoing through that little old device of his: it just sounded so far away in both time and space. He was eking out the few minutes they had left. He knew that this magical connection between them couldn’t last forever. The display on the phone was growing slightly fainter – he knew it – day by day. It was a miracle, really, that it had lasted this long.

  So his thoughts were running along these lines – almost psychically – on the morning that the TARDIS materialised within the hallowed, ultra-high security fences of Graceland. Upstairs, watching his 1968 TV special for the millionth time, Elvis was vaguely aware of an unfamiliar vworping noise coming from outside. His staff would sort that out, whatever it was. He didn’t feel like getting up to investigate. For some reason, he was feeling blue and dissatisfied today. Even his brunch wasn’t up to scratch. Perhaps what he really fancied was a real, juicy, proper hamburger made of meat? And a really sugary milkshake? Or a fried bacon, peanut butter and banana sandwich? Oh, but these were bad thoughts from the dark times. His mama had taught him to eat better than that.

  There was some noise just then, from the corridor outside his vast bedroom. His bodyguards were yelling. Something was wrong. There were intruders!

  The bedroom door flew open and four very unusual figures came striding across his fluffy white carpet. Three of the figures were perfectly ordinary looking. They were like tourists, eyes all agog at seeing the King’s luxurious inner sanctum. They were led by a determined-looking blonde woman with high cheekbones and what looked like clown’s pants held up by suspenders and also a long blue coat that flared out behind her. She looked like she meant business as she marched fearlessly up to the King of Graceland.

  ‘Elvis!’ she grinned, and her face lit up at the sight of him. ‘Oh, you would never recognise me. But you met … ah, my colleagues in the past. Some of them. I’m the Doctor, and this is Yaz, Graham and Ryan. We’re all huge fans.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Ryan said.

  Graham just beamed at him. Yaz was looking nervously behind them, worrying about the security guards that the Doctor had knocked out with that weird Venusian aikido of hers.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this, Elvis,’ said the Doctor, ‘but you’re living on borrowed time. Well, pinched time, really. This can’t go on.’

  ‘Huh?’ he said tetchily. This young woman was making no sense.

  ‘Give me the phone,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve still got it.’

  ‘The phone?’ he gasped, holding it tightly in his hand and pressing it to his chest.

  ‘You know!’ she said insistently. ‘The souped-up Drahvin communicator devices!’

  Elvis’s mouth fell open in astonishment.

  ‘I hate to tell you this, but those walkie-talkies are causing all kinds of wobbles in the web of time. The wrong singles are getting to the top of the Billboard charts, and there’s a war broken out in a country that shouldn’t even exist. See? Big and small stuff radiating out through the … erm … damage that’s already been caused …’ The Doctor was gabbling and looking worried. ‘Nothing is exactly apocalyptic. Well, not yet. But nevertheless, I’ve got to sort it out. And you’re going to help me. Show me the phone.’

  He looked so old! The Doctor could hardly believe it. In the true timeline, Elvis had become overweight and had died when he was still relatively young. This Elvis was lean and weathered like a piece of old driftwood. His quiffed hair was stark white. Slowly, he opened his palm to reveal the communicator.

  ‘There it is.’ She waved his protests away. ‘You’ve got to come with us, Elvis.’

  Graham let out a squeak of excitement. ‘We’re taking Elvis with us?’

  The Doctor nodded and offered Elvis a hand up from his Pilates ball. ‘Into time and space, yep. It’s the only way.’

  Elvis stared at them. ‘But I can’t leave Graceland! I haven’t been in the world out there for years …!’

  The Doctor took his hand. ‘Then maybe it’s time you did …?’

  Graham watched Yaz and Ryan as they looked after their guest as best they could: finding somewhere comfortable for him to sit, and watching as he coped with the amazing sight of the ship’s impossible interior. If only Grace were here! She would be amazed at how blasé those two kids were being about meeting the King. ‘You can see that he’s like … iconic, can’t you?’ Graham said, almost to himself. ‘There’s like a kind of shimmering light about him …’ He frowned and stared harder. There was definitely a glimmering light playing around the old man’s jumpsuit.

  ‘That’s not stardust. That’s part of the problem …’ The Doctor frowned worriedly. ‘I told you, Elvis was supposed to die in 1977.’

  ‘But he’s always taken such care of himself!’

  ‘It wasn’t always like that. And now that we’ve taken him out of your timeline …’ She was flipping switches and studying readings. ‘Everything’s started to go a bit wonky.’

  ‘Wonky?’ Graham asked.

  ‘I’m not sure how long we’ve got,’ she said, biting her lip.

  It took some persuading, but eventually Elvis surrendered his precious mobile phone to the Doctor. He was drinking a glass of water in an alcove with Ryan and Yaz, and telling them tales of his past glories. ‘You will … uh, give me it back, won’t you?’

  The Doctor promised she would. The device looked ancient now. The symbols on its buttons were almost worn smooth by time and use.

  She took it with due reverence over to the console and placed it carefully on the sensors of the telepathic circuits. Then she stretched out her arm and trained the sonic on it. There was a shower of sparks and a babble of human voices, suddenly filling the air of the TARDIS. Everyone jumped, and she hurriedly turned down the volume. ‘Sorry …!’

  A wispy, blue pattern of light appeared above the console: a kind of three-dimensional call history emanating from the futuristic phone. The Doctor’s eyebrows went up. The device was absolutely covered in traces of Artron energy, just as she suspected.

  ‘Erm, Elvis,’ she said, calling him over. ‘Are you still calling your mum up on this phone?’

  He grinned and loped over, and then looked alarmed when he saw all that crazy blue light coming out of his phone. But something – he wasn’t sure what – made him trust this Doctor. ‘Why, yes, ma’am,’ he answered. ‘Of course I do. Even at my age.’

  ‘Eighty-two!’ Graham said. ‘How old does that make your mum, then?’

  Elvis looked away. ‘Why, the same age as ever.’

  Yaz and Ryan had rejoined them at the console, looking just as confused as Graham.

  The Doctor put things very simply for them: ‘Elvis, tell them the truth. That your mother passed away from kidney failure and heart disease in 1958, while you were in the army.’

  Elvis’s face went dark and haunted-looking. Like he had no idea what to say.

  ‘But how?’ Ryan asked bluntly. ‘How’s he been able to carry on talking to her?’

  Gladys Presley spent her last day on Earth in her dressing gown and nightie. She kept her rollers in for most of the day. Maybe this afternoon she’d set her hair nicely. Maybe doll herself up a little. Just on the off-chance her boy would turn up. She’d want to be looking her best for him.

  She was a practical woman. She wasn’t a sentimental fool. She knew she didn’t have long left in this world. She felt weary, and it took all her energy just moving from room to room round the house her son had bought for her. Each day saw her winding down a little more, like a clockwork toy, and today really felt like the worst yet.

  But there was something special about today. It was her red letter day. It felt, really, more like a birthday than a death day.

  Somehow, maybe magically, she was getting a lot of attention today. Her phone just never stopped ringing. Every few minutes, it seemed like. That funny little phone – so small, it was kind of like a child’s toy – it would ring shrilly and she’d hurry over to her comfy chair and bleep it open.

  ‘Elvis …?’

  Her voice was hopeful and girlish-sounding. She marvelled that she could sound so happy and pain-free. It was important to her not to give away how rotten she felt, what with him being so far away.

  That last day went by, hour by hour. A warm, sunny day with the windows open and the curtains rustling. Coffee percolating on the stove. Her boy talking to her on the phone.

  First, in the morning, he was bright and cheery and excited. He was here, there and everywhere. Playing concerts in different towns and states. Travelling everywhere with the Colonel. Swanking about in his vast pink car. He laughed so much when he talked about the way the girls screamed at his antics. How he shook his legs when he sang and it only started out because he was so scared. Oh, but they screamed at the sight of him and loved the way he moved, so he had to keep it in the act …

  He didn’t just tell her about his successes. He asked for her advice, too. These films his manager wanted him to star in. Should he go all the way to Hollywood and live there for months? If he was going to act, he wanted to do it properly. If he was really going to be a star, he was going to throw his whole self into it …

  And that meant being away from home even more. Even longer stretches of time. Years and years …

  And the army. Selective Service. It would look good to the public if he went and served his time. He shaved his head. They filmed him having all his hair shaved off at the barbers. He went to Germany and said he wanted to be treated like all the rest.

  But he wasn’t like all the rest. He was her Elvis, and he was too far away from her. Especially now, on what felt to Gladys like the last day of her life.

  She had a very strong feeling, about lunchtime on that day, as she fixed herself a sandwich in that brand new kitchen of hers: she had a dreadful feeling that she was never going to see that boy of hers again. Not in the actual flesh. Time was running out …

  But then, that afternoon in 1958, the phone calls simply carried on coming. The first one after lunch came from a date in 1958 she had never lived to see. And soon both mother and son realised that something miraculous was occurring.

  The crowd was vast and noisy. The whole stadium was shaking with their cheering and stamping, so much that no one noticed the battered blue Police Box materialising in one of the concrete stairwells.

  ‘Are we at a footie match?’ Ryan asked as Team TARDIS emerged with elderly Elvis in tow.

  ‘Hmm,’ the Doctor thought. ‘Our geriatric rock star is really starting to glimmer and glow around the edges by now. I wonder how much time we’ve got left?’

  Graham was grinning. ‘It’s not the footie, Ryan. That’s not a football chant they’re singing out there …’

  ‘It’s “Suspicious Minds”,’ Yaz said. ‘My nani loves that song. She said it was like her and my granddad’s whole story but she’s never explained why …’

  ‘We must be at Wembley Stadium …’ Elvis said quietly. ‘1983. The biggest show I ever played, even bigger than Michigan …’ He looked even more ashen than seconds before as he turned to the Doctor. ‘But ma’am … how can that be? Can you really carry us back in time?’

  The Doctor shrugged happily. ‘Backwards, forwards, diagonally … just about anywhere, really. Even into hypothetical realities and dimensions where things have gone slightly wrong …’

  But Elvis had already turned away, and was tottering off up the stairwell that led into the stadium.

  ‘Better get after him!’ the Doctor urged. ‘We don’t want to lose him here in 1983 … And we’d best get him before anyone notices him …’

  ‘How come he’s glowing round the edges?’ Ryan threw back the question as he dashed up the steps.

  ‘Sequins,’ the Doctor said. ‘He had them sewn into everything.’

  Yaz gave her a funny look, discerning the Time Lord’s real mood under her flippancy. ‘You’re really worried about this.’

  ‘I keep saying, he really shouldn’t be here, Yaz. Time is out of joint, and it’s all my fault, and that glowing isn’t just sequins … it’s a kind of danger sign …’

  Graham patted her on the shoulder. ‘Then we’d better get after him’

  They found him standing on the terraces, in the thick of the crowd, and mercifully no one was taking very much notice. They were all staring at the pulsating lightshow at the other end of the stadium, and the gigantic screens that showed an Elvis in his middle years, giving it his all in a high-collared jumpsuit not unlike the one his older self was wearing.

  ‘I … was fantastic … !’ the old man said, barely audible under the screaming of the crowd. He stood there in raptures, mouthing along with the words. The Doctor was just glad no one had noticed him there but, as she glanced around the crowd, she noticed quite a few fans in Elvis cosplay. Of course no one would pay any attention to yet another, particularly a wizened old man.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said, turning to her.

  She didn’t look at him, eyes closed like she was concentrating on something hard to catch, beyond the music. ‘I’ve been hoping there was one certain event that triggered the worst of the divergence. One thing that we could avoid so …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I wouldn’t have to take all this away. From you, from everyone.’ She looked at him, so sad. ‘A world with Elvis in it is a better world. But it’s too much, the ripples of your being here have put too much out of true.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ said Elvis. ‘I’m not meant to be here?’

  ‘We have to keep moving backwards,’ the Doctor said. ‘I just need to find the point at which this time stream deviates from the real one … Maybe we should try ten years ago in Las Vegas … see what we can do there to protect the real time stream …’

  ‘What do you mean, the “real time stream”?’ Elvis gestured around at that heaving stadium, and all the singing, joyous people. Eighty thousand people singing along with him. ‘Isn’t this real?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘This is England, Elvis. You never toured here. You never toured the world.’

  ‘But I did!’ he burst out, looking almost feverish as he yelled out over the noise his other self was making. ‘We toured Japan and Australia and all of Europe. We were on tour for the whole of the 1980s and 1990s! Are you saying that I imagined all of that …?’ He laughed at her, shaking his head.

  ‘Yes! No! I mean …’ She couldn’t get it through to him. How could she tell him that he never toured because Colonel Tom Parker wouldn’t let him go further than Hawaii? That he spent his later years in Las Vegas, never leaving his glitzy hotel, playing shows night after night, dreaming of travelling the world? There was no kind way of telling him all of that … or that he never actually lived past 1977.

  ‘Come on, Elv,’ she said. ‘We’d best get back to the TARDIS.’

  Ryan had reappeared from the burger van with snacks for everyone. ‘Sorry, I only eat macrobiotic food,’ Elvis told him politely.

  Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor was studying the vaporous trails of light that were emanating from Elvis’s mobile phone and the console. She nodded as she followed the patterns, and shook her head as she realised what they meant.

  ‘Tell me again what we’re looking at here,’ Elvis said. His keenness to understand and to learn touched the Doctor’s hearts. Most other people would be frustrated and angry at being dragged from their home and being confronted by things that seemed impossible. Not Elvis. ‘Oh, I read books,’ he told her. ‘I got turned on to philosophy and metaphysics and the mysteries of life in the 1960s by my hairdresser. I find all this stuff fascinating. And I believe that there is something bigger than us, guiding us, and making sure we do things in a certain way … I believe we have to listen to their messages and their guidance …’