Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [16]
and Victorian additions. Look at the crenellations!’
Suddenly feeling a fool, she pulled her hand away and Ace grimaced. She couldn’t stand it when he became walked off down the corridor.
enthusiastic.
A pair of football socks, stiff with sweat, lay discarded on
‘Didn’t you say something about breakfast?’
the carpet like mummified earthworms. Betty picked them up and rolled them into a ball. She continued down the 46
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The Doctor sighed and turned away from the church. He Robin apologised again and then pedalled away like a spun his umbrella round like a water-dowser and pointed madman. Ace watched him go all the way.
towards The Shepherd’s Cross.
‘Ace?’
‘Bit early in the day, isn’t it?’
Robin’s slim form vanished around the corner and on to The Doctor grinned. ‘Mmm, with the sun not even the moor track.
remotely over the yardarm! ... Actually, I was thinking they
‘Ace!’
might be serving refreshment of some sort. The TARDIS
‘Hmm?’
food-dispensers are all very well but sometimes you just
‘If you’re still interested in breakfast ...?’
can’t beat a decent British cuppa.’
Ace shook her head as if to clear it and smiled. ‘Yeah, of There was an upstairs light on but no sign of life.
course.’
Suddenly, in a flurry of scarf, coat and bicycle, a young man The Doctor set off towards a flickering neon café sign came hurtling around the side of the pub, almost running about a hundred yards away. Ace followed close behind the Doctor down.
him, her head sunk thoughtfully on her breast.
‘God, sorry. Are you OK? I’m a bit late for work. Are you
‘I wonder if we’re anywhere near Durham. Have you ever sure you’re all right?’
seen the cathedral?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I’ll live,’ said the Doctor, brushing himself down.
‘No,’ said Ace distantly.
Robin jumped back on to his bike and grinned at Ace.
‘You should, you know, you really should. Of course I
‘I wonder if you can help us, young man?’
remember the day it was finished ...’
‘Surely.’
Ace looked up from her thoughts and smiled. She never
‘We’d like to know whether this fine establishment is knew whether the Doctor’s tales were serious or not. At any open for some breakfast just yet?’
rate, he certainly seemed to have snapped out of his Ace found that she was staring at Robin as he spoke to the depression. If anything, he now seemed a little too chatty.
Doctor. There were disconcerting but very nice tinglings Almost as if he were trying to hide something...
moving through her body.
Ace frowned.
‘Fraid not,’ said Robin. ‘Mum’s just up but the pub doesn’t open till eleven.’
Edmund Trevithick blinked into wakefulness. There was a He was tall and slim with thick black hair and skin as band of cold winter sunlight streaming across his bed. He smooth as soapstone. His eyes were an extraordinary green blinked again. For a moment he couldn’t remember where and his smile broad and cheeky.
he was. There was some fugitive memory prodding at his
‘Try the café up the road,’ he advised. ‘Cheap and subconscious.
cheerful but it does the job.’
Lying there in the bed by the window, Trevithick began to
‘Thank you very much,’ said the Doctor.
think of his childhood. He remembered seeing the intense, 48
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thrilling white reflection off newly fallen snow as it peeked abstraction by the orange light of the fire. His father helped through the chinks in the curtains. And the joy of throwing him write out his list for Santa Claus and then tossed the back the heavy drapes to expose the acres and acres of land small square of paper on to the fused knot of red hot coal. It behind his father’s parsonage, knee deep in wonderful snow.
spun briefly in the column of hot air, became temporarily His father (a completely different sort of chap out of transparent - he could see writing on both sides at once -
church) would get into his ‘civvies’ and root out the old and vanished up the chimney.
wooden sled from the outhouse. Then they would be off, Then there