Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [28]
A tiny cloud on the horizon in the morning, a storm at night. Now, sometimes, when they had a bit of bad luck, Isaac wondered if someday he would look back on this tiny caveat.
There was a footstep on the stairs. Isaac looked up from his reverie, realized he was holding a teacup, put it carefully back into the cupboard.
‘What were you thinking about?’ asked Bernice.
‘A storm in a teacup,’ he said, with a small smile.
‘Couldn’t You sleep?’
She leant on the counter. God, she looked like Claire.
But in the warm light, her eyes were a hundred years old.
What had she been through? What had he done to her?
‘Do you really think you’re going to have to pack up and leave?’ she said.
Isaac frowned. He got out a cloth and wiped down the counter again. Benny stood back.
‘We can’t know unless we find Ia Jareshth,’ he said. ‘Or something else happens. Rashly deciding to leave could be worse than staying put.’
‘It would be terrible if you had to leave after all this time,’
said Benny. Well, how could he reply to that? ‘Listen...’
He yawned, loudly. ‘That’s enough for one night,’ he said. ‘We can’t do anything until the morning, and we’ll be no use to anyone if we’re not rested.’
‘You haven’t asked me once about Mum,’ she said.
Isaac closed his eyes. His fingers curled around the damp cloth. ‘Your mother also had a very direct way of speaking.’
There was a long silence. He could hear the soft sound of the dishwasher, the drumming of the rain. Benny took a breath as though to say something more.
‘There is a reason,’ he said.
She was looking at him with big, frightened eyes, teeth pressed into her lower lip. Suddenly she was seven years old, afraid to tell him that she’d broken his favourite mug, not so much because she might be punished but because she couldn’t stand the idea of his being upset.
But she had asked him point blank, and he was going to have to tell her.
‘I haven’t asked because I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know whether she’s alive or dead, because if she is alive I’ll want to go back to her and if she’s dead I’ll want to go back and save her.’
He continued before she could say anything. ‘You might be thinking, “He doesn’t want to damage the timelines,” which would of course be very noble. No. Claire is not going to be a bargaining chip in this.’
Like the seven-year-old who had been so bright, so quick, she said, ‘You don’t want to have to ask the Doctor for anything.’
Isaac shook his head firmly.
He couldn’t read her expression. Disgust, perhaps, that he still didn’t trust the Doctor. Didn’t trust her, by implication.
There was so much he wanted to tell her, to fill up that silence. But he couldn’t. It was too soon. It might always be too soon.
After a few moments, she said, ‘Actually, I thought perhaps you and Ms Randrianasolo —’
He smiled again. ‘No.’
‘You worked it out a long time ago, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘What you’d do if a time traveller came along — someone with the power to get you back to Mum?’
‘The time travellers are dreadful, Bernice. They always offer to take you back to save a dead relative, or correct some terrible mistake. Which doesn’t mean much when you know they’re stranded because they forgot to bring spare batteries for their time machine.’
Benny laughed, just a small laugh, some of the tension leaving her face.
‘Do you know what the Draconians call him, Benny?’
She shook her head.
‘The Oncoming Storm.’
Above them, thunder crashed, making the crockery rattle in the cupboard. They both smiled at the timing.
‘We can’t help it,’ she sighed. ‘We’re lightning rods.’
10 Knight on Earth
Chris snapped out of sleep. He’d been dreaming about Roz again, the same old dream, he
Wait a minute. No, he hadn’t.
He opened his eyes, focusing on the hard smoothness of the painted wooden ceiling, and waited for his heart to slow down.
He’d dreamt that he was following the Doctor up a hill.
He’d been leading a grey mare, easily, as though he’d been handling horses