Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [18]
April’, but it didn’t say which year. She hadn’t asked him for any milk. The container was icy cold. Benny sat up to take it from him.
‘The door was bolted,’ she noted.
The Doctor was examining the leaves of a house plant which sat on the window sill. ‘Um?’
Three months ago, she’d found this aspect of his behaviour infuriating, now it seemed almost endearing. He was also the only person she’d ever known who didn’t notice when she was naked.
‘I could have killed you. I had a gun under my pillow. I might have flunked the odd class during my military training, but even I could blow your head off at point-blank range.’
‘If you did that, I’d just grow a new one,’ the Doctor joked.
At least Benny assumed it was a joke.
‘Pick a less bendy one next time. One whose eyebrows occasionally stay in the same place for more than two seconds.’
The Doctor deliberately contorted his face. Benny laughed. She leant over and hugged him. It was so good to see him.
The Doctor seemed embarrassed. ‘Please, Professor Summerfield, put some clothes on, I have a reputation to maintain. You’ll get me struck off.’
The Doctor extricated himself and sat on a small wooden chair, hands clasped over his umbrella. Benny looked at him.
He hadn’t changed in the last three months of course. Unlike her, he hadn’t aged a bit. A decade from now, they’d look the same age. A decade after that and everyone would assume that the Doctor was her son. She had always known that he was an alien, an immortal being who resembled a scruffy little middle-aged man, but most of the time the knowledge sat at the back of her mind and she didn’t let it bother her. Once, just once, in the last three months, she had questioned his motives, wondering why he should leave her totally alone for so long. For a little while she had even wondered whether he had abandoned her to die in this time, for some inscrutable alien reason of his own. Perhaps she was turning into a racist. Or alienist. Whatever Roz was. As Benny watched him, the Doctor glanced down at the floor, then poked at something with the point of his umbrella.
He broke into a grin. ‘Nice dress.’
Benny pulled herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Check the pocket.’
‘You know, I’d forgotten how ratty you were first thing in the morning. Ah, this is interesting.’
The Doctor turned the knobbly piece of metal he’d found in the dress pocket over and over in his hand. Benny stood stretching, and stepped over to the dresser. She caught a reflection of her gaunt face, her dead eyes and her skinny arms. The Doctor hadn’t looked up.
‘Just a guess, Doctor, but I bet that Chris and Roz have had a better three months than me.’
‘They’re in London, with the TARDIS. And they’ve only been there a week. We had to attend to the political situation on Troxos 4. I’ll tell you about it one day, or better still I’ll show you. Er, won’t you get cold like that?’
Benny shrugged indifferently. After a second, she looked up from her clothes drawer.
‘The TARDIS is in London? How did you get over here then?’
The Doctor smiled enigmatically, and she decided not to press the point.
‘I’ll meet you downstairs when you’re dressed.’
The Doctor lifted himself up and left the room. Benny reached over to bolt the door, but it was already bolted.
Rather than think about it, she reached for the holowig, and brushed the filament into her hair. She stood back, watching herself in the mirror as her hair lightened. Naturally brunette, she still wasn’t used to seeing herself as a peroxided blonde.
She’d tried to bleach her hair when she was twelve, an act of defiance that had gone very very wrong, so badly wrong that she’d worn a plastifez until it grew out. She’d been blonde a couple of times since, over the years, but it had never really suited her. The holowig was less fuss, a gadget from a short-lived late-twentyfirst-century craze that used fibre optics and a simple holographic projector. Her hair was naturally longer now than she would normally wear it, shoulder-length. Benny remembered writing a paper on fashions in the