Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [77]
‘Lager?’ Bob asked.
Miranda shook her head. ‘Alcohol doesn’t affect me,’ she said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bob said drunkenly.
‘It’s true, I just don’t metabolise it.’
Dinah was talking to Ferdy, who had been sitting all on his own nursing a fruit juice. Alex was at Dinah’s side, impatient.
When Phil Collins came on and started singing about his two hearts, it reminded Bob of something.
‘Dinah says you’ve got two hearts.’
Miranda glared over at Dinah, but she was still too busy with Ferdy. ‘It’s meant to be a secret. Dinah only found out accidentally.’
‘It’s true? I thought it was a joke.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Nah. Prove it.’
There was a discreet way she could have done so – if he’d touched her wrist, Bob would have felt a double pulse. But she’d thought of a better way.
Miranda gently led Bob out of the back door, into the garden, round the side of the house where no one could see them.
‘It’s cold,’ he noted.
Miranda leaned against the wall, pulled her shirt up and took Bob’s hands in hers.
‘Here,’ she said, guiding him up beneath her shirt. She let go of his wrists.
‘Put your hands on my ribcage – and I mean my ribcage,’ she warned him.
Bob gulped, his hands sliding up her stomach. They were warm, a little ticklish. He stopped with his first fingers brushing the base of her bra, his thumbs between her breasts. He was trying his luck just a little. It was a nice sensation, so Miranda let it pass.
Bob was grinning like a kid with a new toy. ‘Two hearts!’ he whispered. And, gentleman that he was, he withdrew his hands, slipped them easily into place around her waist.
The moment where Miranda realised they were about to kiss elided with the kiss itself.
Her first kiss, not his. Miranda was surprised how pleasant she found an experience she’d had down as just another thing she ought to have done by her age.
Confident now, Bob slid his hands up a little, under her shirt, and was stroking bare skin at the small of her back. She put her arms around his neck, stroking it. They were still kissing, and Miranda felt strange: not entirely in control of herself. She brought her heartsrate back under control, started tinkering with her hormone and pheromone production.
‘What’s wrong?’ Bob asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You tensed up a bit. Was that your first kiss?’
‘You could tell?’
‘Well, yes, you know, I’m not the world expert, but I could tell.’ She must have looked distraught, because he immediately continued. ‘It was great. It’s just, y’know, the first time’s always going to be a bit awkward.’
There was silence, broken only by the Communards.
Bob stroked Miranda’s face, but the spell was broken. It was a cold night, and Bob was a drunk sixteen-year‐old lad with too much of his dad’s aftershave on.
‘I’m sorry it wasn’t what you were expecting.’ She wondered about his first kiss. Had it been Dinah? She couldn’t remember what her friend had told her.
‘Miranda,’ Bob pleaded.
She toyed with the idea of raising her pulse and the supply of blood to the skin surface, and wondered if it would be cheating. Judging by his blushes, Bob’s blood supply was working without conscious help. She looked at him. She was different. He had only one heart, he was beginning to get tired, he was shivering a little in the spring night air.
It all seemed so unreal.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Urban Regeneration
‘The door’s been barricaded!’ Joel said as they reached the ground floor.
Their way was blocked. Rose blossom was drifting down. Above them it sounded as if a tidal wave was about to break. Debbie saw the Doctor glance up nervously, knowing they hadn’t got long before the transmutation wave caught up with them.
The Doctor kicked the plywood board down, grabbed Debbie’s hand and pulled her after him, out into the night. Joel and Kirst were right behind.
‘Keep going!’ he shouted.
It was dangerous ground to run over, tiny potholes and fragments threatening unwary feet and ankles. Behind them, there was a sound unlike anything Debbie had ever heard – a cracking and rustling, getting louder