Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [98]
Though I do keep thinking that I should have tried harder to save you, or stayed and died with you; though I know that the first was impossible and the second illogical.
Ha! Me and logic! BEING LOGICAL DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT!
Repeat till you’ve learned it.
I wish I believed in reincarnation. It’s one of those things that you’re brought up with, and although once you have outside experiences your rational mind dismisses such theories as illogical, you still have it hanging in the very back of your mind. I wonder what you’d come back as. You were a good person. What’s a step up from a man?
(XY chromosome that is, none of this ‘mankind’ stuff, women are definitely a step down officially.) Perhaps you’d come back as an alien. You’d probably like that.
Distractions, distractions. Because there’s something else I have to confess. Something else that’s awful. Really, really awful, not pretend oh-no-I’m-such-a-bitch. I wouldn’t tell you this if you were alive. Your death has given me power over others, and this horrible, deeply hidden bit of me secretly likes the drama. I hate knowing I have that in myself. It’s not happened much: a few times Fitz has caught himself saying something about relationships, and stopped, because it might upset me. Someone said something about my boyfriend, something like that, and I quite calmly said he’d been 178
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killed recently. Their expression! I’m using your death to get attention. It’s quite the most loathsome thing I’ve ever done. The only person that doesn’t happen with is the Doctor. He seems to understand everything; to know exactly the right things to say. I think, with the Doctor’s help, I may be able to grieve properly.
That’s not to say you have to worry. I don’t fancy him. He’s the sort of man I might have said ‘He’s gorgeous!’ about to tease you, if he’d been on TV, but you’d know I didn’t mean anything by it. And, you know, of all the bad things I might be, I’m not rebound woman.
And anyway – amazing eyes, gorgeous smile, but several thousand years older than me. That was one of the fun things we had – OK, so you went to Sunday school, not temple, and drama school, not university, but we both remembered Spangles and Space Hoppers and The Adventure Game on telly, and did GCSEs and bought albums by ABBA and Nik Kershaw, and the first Bond either of us saw on the big screen was Timothy Dalton, and we could argue about whether he was better or worse than Sean Connery. Shared experiences. How am I going to relate to people with whom I don’t have those little cultural touchstones? People for whom things like e-mail and Professor X aren’t everyday currency. You remember how, to start with, I had to keep explaining to you what I meant when I said ordinary things like bhangra or chakra. Well, England 2001
has suddenly become the biggest in-joke in the universe.
I’m talking about me again. I think it’s because as soon as I start thinking of you, I have to either hate myself or cry. I love you, Dave. I really, really love you.
All my love
Anji xxxxx
Send now/send later: send now
Unable to send: fatal error
Anji reached the door to her room and went in, shutting it behind her. She sat down on what was now her bed, and kicked off her shoes. But she wasn’t really there.
The door opened, and Dave came in.
Dear TARDIS...
179
He’d been in all day, of course, and Anji’d been in the office till seven, but he hadn’t got them any tea. ‘Been too busy,’ he’d said, although she knew that that meant sitting in front of the TV and occasionally flicking through the HELP
WANTED ads. But he’d taken off her shoes and rubbed her feet, ignoring the smell, and kissed her legs all the way up to the hem of her skirt. Then he’d grinned