Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [2]
This story is set in the last century. In those days, the Prime Minister was a woman, and there were no euros or pound coins, only pound notes. The Lords sat in the House of Lords, coal miners worked in coal mines, and ships were built on the Tyne. There were vinyl long-playing records, not compact discs, the space shuttle was shiny and new, there were only three television stations, and computers – hard to believe, I know – were black-and‐white back then.
It begins with a teacher, a primary-school teacher, driving a tan Ford Cortina through a blizzard in the dark.
The teacher’s name is Mrs Deborah Castle, and she hated to see the snow falling.
She remembered a story as she drove, and it made her cry...
* * *
Once upon a time there was a girl called Debbie Gordon who used to love to see snow fall. Debbie Gordon had long, long hair, which was as black as coal. Every winter, as soon as she saw it was snowing, she would press herself against the cold pane of the dining-room window, watching the flakes drifting down into the back garden, making her eyes go funny. The first snow didn’t settle, although she never remembered that. The air was so cold she could see it in front of her when she breathed out, but the ground was still too warm for snow to stick. However much snow fell, it vanished as soon as it hit the grass and paving stones. But despite that the first snow was never a disappointment.
Snow comes early in Greyfrith, high in the Pennines in the Northwest of England. The first snow can be at the end of September, while the rest of England has its first frosts. The children of Greyfrith don’t understand the fuss everyone else makes about a white Christmas – every Christmas Day, without fail, there’s snow on the ground. Not only does the snow come early, but you can never be sure it’s gone. At the train station there’s an old black-and‐white photograph of a cricket pitch, covered in white. The scoreboard reads SNOW STOPPED PLAY – the only time that’s happened to a county cricket match, anywhere in the world. June it was, the woman who runs the café at the railway station will tell you, if you ask – and often even if you don’t. She’s in that old photograph, but you wouldn’t recognise her now, not unless you knew her granddaughter. It’s not snowed in June since, but there’ll be snow until April, most years.
Mrs Castle lived in Greyfrith, so it was a shame she hated it to snow.
Debbie Gordon and Deborah Castle sound like completely different people, and in some ways they are. Debbie Gordon had a big doll’s house in her bedroom, a little cat, and a love of falling snow. Mrs Castle had none of the things that Debbie Gordon had, not any more, except the puppy fat. Once upon a time, not even twenty years ago, she did because – as you’ve already guessed – Debbie Gordon is what Mrs Castle was called before she became a grown-up. She got a new name on her wedding day. Gordon was a funny name, because ‘Gordon’ is usually a man’s first name, but Castle was an even stranger name to have, and it made her think of medieval fortresses. For months afterwards she kept signing her old name by mistake – annoying her husband every time she did so.
* * *
Five years after her wedding day, when our story starts, she was used to being Mrs Castle, it didn’t seem odd at all. Her pupils stood up and chanted the name every morning when she came into the classroom, it appeared on her pay-slips and phone bills. She’d forgotten what it was like to be Debbie Gordon; she’d all but forgotten that she once loved the snow.
Mrs Castle ignored the tears in her eyes, and tried to concentrate on the road in front of her instead of listening to her own silly stories. Past the windscreen wipers and their battle with the snow, a mushy orange glow peeking over the hilltops marked her way. Those were the Greyfrith street lights. The road ahead was empty and unlit, all the way home. Mrs Castle’s car radio was tuned to long wave and pop music was playing. Mrs Castle knew the people singing were a group called Adam and the Ants, because it was a new