Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [7]
Deborah Castle looked down over the valley, and saw the air full of snow, and realised how much better life had been when she had been Debbie Gordon, and she cried.
You may feel like that, one day. I just hope that day doesn’t come soon.
* * *
Chapter Two
The Doctor
Mrs Castle knew three miles was too far to walk in the dark, in this weather, on her own. There may be a late bus – in the early 1980s such things existed in England – but she couldn’t depend on it. So that meant she knew she had to find someone nearby with a phone.
It didn’t take her long to see a farmhouse in the valley below, a single light on downstairs, and smoke coming from one of the chimneys. It was about two hundred yards away, nestled among some dark trees. The path down wasn’t obvious, but neither did it seem hazardous. She turned back to her car to tell Arnold that she would go down there and ask the owner if she could use his phone. Arnold agreed to stay put, and warned her to be on her guard.
Mrs Castle climbed over the locked iron gate. The snow had started to settle, it was quite a steep slope, and the ground was icy. Mrs Castle had lived in Greyfrith for most of her life, though, and she was more than capable of getting down to the farmhouse without injury.
From the road, the building had looked like every other farmhouse around here – a solid box with a high vaulted roof. There was a small barn to one side, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of farming activity – no tractors or bales of hay. This was a house, not a working farm, and the barn was probably a garage now, or perhaps an artist’s studio.
Between the barn and the house was an odd thing – a shed or... some kind of telephone box. It was dark blue, probably (it was difficult to say in this light, it could have been green or grey). It was a hut, with a stacked roof and little windows.
The sign over the doors said it was a police box.
What on earth was a police box?
There was a notice on one of the door panels:
POLICE TELEPHONE
FREE
FOR USE OF
PUBLIC
ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE
OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY
OFFICERS AND CARS
RESPOND TO
URGENT CALLS
PULL TO OPEN
This was just what she needed! It was a dream come true.
Mrs Castle pulled the handle, as the sign told her to, but the panel didn’t budge. She could see that it was meant to. This was meant to be a little door, and behind it there would be a telephone and she’d pick it up and a policeman would come and sort everything out. He’d get Arnold to a hospital and take her home and arrange for the car to be towed to her house and everything would be all right.
But the little hatch didn’t open, it was jammed shut. She tried pulling and pushing at the big door, trying to get inside, but that didn’t budge either.
She put her head against the door and began crying again.
Mrs Castle didn’t cry very often. Mrs Castle was brave, resourceful and intelligent: she knew that the problems in life weren’t solved by men on white horses, or being swept away by the wind, or with a quick phone call. She knew she would have to solve her problems for herself. But knowing that isn’t the same as having the solution. Knowing there was a way out, somewhere, only made her failure to find it more frustrating, and so sometimes, when no one else was looking, when it all got too much, she cried.
It was cold, and crying wouldn’t change that. Mrs Castle pulled herself up and wiped her eyes. There was almost certainly a telephone in the house – that was why she had come down here. Now she looked, she couldn’t see a telephone line leading down into the farmhouse. But they were bound to have one, living so far out here. She would knock on the door and ask to use the phone.
She walked up to the front door of the farmhouse and knocked on it. It was eight on a Saturday night, so she knew they may be out.