Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [49]
warm pressure of his body. Now he seemed to have gone Holly had graduated with honours from Cambridge and again but Holly couldn’t be sure. She was dreaming or was considering a research post at a physics lab in Scotland.
remembering or both.
James, ever the optimist, was using his English degree to Uncle Louis was there, his face stern, his arms folded.
bludgeon his way into a position as junior reporter on a Holly was grinning sheepishly, James by her side. They Northumbrian paper. They were scouting for a house on the were both seventeen.
Scottish border and it looked as if they would see each other There had been some sort of fuss about them going off most weekends and alternate Wednesdays for the first few together, James’s mum ringing up Louis to enquire where months. Holly had just arrived in Scotland when she got the the ‘young lovers’ had got to. James, she explained, had his call from Louis. She was so pleased to hear his voice that she exams to worry about and couldn’t waste his time dallying babbled on for a full minute before registering the heavy with girls.
silence at his end. Then it came. A simple, leaden sentence.
In truth, they had been down by the brook, enjoying the
‘Listen, love. I’ve got some bad news. I’m sorry. I don’t forbidden thrill of first kisses. The air was summer sweet.
know how to say this. It’s James. There’s been an accident...’
Holly had let James’s fingers trace the outline of her eyes, She knew at once that he was dead and felt numbness lips and slim neck. They were young, in love, and, that night, rising through her. There were no tears, not then, just a hot, in trouble.
dry emptiness. The phone had hung limply in her hand for Louis had shouted at her, worried about local gossip and hours as the room darkened around her.
how a young girl could get herself a reputation. It might be Well, that was over now. Six years gone. She had 1957 but there were still standards to maintain. Adolescent managed to continue at the lab. Pushed herself into her anger boiled within her, pouting her lips, quickening her work. Done well. Very brave. Everyone had said so.
breathing.
In the last year or so, she had finally started to relax again, But, against all the odds, it had worked out. Holly and making new friends and generally enjoying the loosening James went on seeing each other all through the summer.
up of society which the decade was bringing. Now there The months lengthened to years. University and separation was the tracking station. And Vijay...
seemed only to deepen their affection. She felt incomplete She did love him, she knew that. But it was a different sort without him.
of love than the sort she’d felt for James. Perhaps a little Holidays became times of unadulterated joy, brimming more spiky. A little less sure. But different...
over with silly talk, passion and the indefinable pleasure of Something tugged at her foot.
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
Holly blended it into her dream and imagined herself tripping over a paving stone. She jumped and was awake.
The room was overwhelmingly dark. No light peeked under the door from the corridor beyond and the heavy curtains were tightly drawn. She glanced at the luminous Chapter Six
hands of her alarm clock. A quarter to eleven. There was some pressure on her feet. She stirred her legs under the blankets, thinking, for a moment, that a cat must be lying there. But there were no cats in the station. And the weight was too heavy. She felt her heart rate increase. The pressure on her feet shifted slightly.
If only she could make out something in the darkness. Her Billy Coote was snoring loudly, an old grey army blanket mouth went dry. She swallowed.
slung over his skinny form. The monk’s cell in which he lay There was a sound, very close by, as if someone were was bare and functional, although someone had once had breathing in her ear. Or stirring fallen leaves. Holly reached the presence of mind to install a radiator