Doctor Who_ Winner Takes All - Jacqueline Rayner [18]
If they made it through this, that was.
On the other side of the room there were concrete steps, leading up to a door, with a thin sliver of light underneath. Daylight? She made her way up. The door was locked. She squinted through the keyhole, but couldn’t see a thing. It had to be blocked by a key.
So… she could think of only one plan. It came solely from children’s books, the adventures of the sort of young detectives who caught smugglers and jewel thieves, and she couldn’t believe it would work in real life, but she had to give it a go.
She collected an aged, crackling Woman’s Realm, and after a search discovered an ancient children’s comic with its free gift of a lollipop still sellotaped to the cover. Trying not to think what damage the sweet would do to a child’s insides after thirty years, she prised the sticky mess away from its long‐term home, and climbed back up the steps. She shoved the magazine under the door, rammed the lolly stick into the lock, took a deep breath, crossed her fingers and pushed.
There was a dull thud on the other side. Trying not to get her hopes up too high, she pulled back the magazine.
And there, on top of a recipe for damson jam, was the key.
She was shaking as she put it in the lock. So close, so close… If they heard her now…
The door didn’t want to open. It creaked like a door from a horror film. She expected the Quevvils to come running; she expected to find Dracula waiting for her on the other side.
But, to her amazement, she came out somewhere that she actually knew. It was the newsagent’s shop where the Doctor had bought his seventeen Guardians; where she’d bought that last pint of milk, now in Mickey’s fridge; where she’d totally failed to win on the scratchcards.
She considered briefly that the newsagent was in league with the aliens, but she couldn’t see it somehow. He might be a bit grumpy, but he wasn’t that bad. And the door into the shop obviously hadn’t been opened for ages.
Luckily, no one seemed to have noticed her come in. The newsagent was serving a customer at the front of the shop, and he couldn’t have heard the door opening over the loud background Radio One.
She slipped out of the front door, on to the street. There in front of her was the prize booth, the place that they’d totally failed to get into before. The Quevvils had obviously extended it down, linked it up with some of the old shop cellars. A nice little underground base that no one’d suspect.
But now what could she do?
She looked down the high street for inspiration. Woolworths. Chemist’s. Chippie. She couldn’t half fancy a portion of chips, swimming in salt and vinegar…
Something clicked, somewhere at the back of her mind. Something she’d once read, or seen on one of those Wildlife on One documentaries. Porcupines and salt. Porcupines would do anything for salt; they were like total salt addicts. Would it be too much to hope – yes, it would be, it would be far too much to hope that these creatures had the same craving, just because they looked like the Earth animal… But they might do, and it was the best plan she had…
She nipped into the chip shop. The smell was divine, but all she had was the pound coin she’d picked up from behind Mickey’s chair; she couldn’t afford to treat herself. But there was no one else in the shop, no one to create a distraction.
‘Portion of chips, please,’ she said. ‘Wrapped.’
The pretty Chinese girl behind the counter slid a shovelful of golden‐brown chips on to some paper. ‘Salt and vinegar?’ she asked.
‘I’ll do them myself,’ said Rose, picking up the giant salt pot. ‘Oh, and could I get a can of Coke?’ She pointed to the fridge behind the counter, and the girl turned. And the instant she did, Rose was out of the door, salt cellar in hand, regretfully leaving the chips behind her. She waited for the girl to shout out, but it never came. Perhaps customers did runners all the time. It wasn’t as if she’d nicked the chips. The girl might not have noticed the absence of the salt. It was the second time that day that Rose had been a minor criminal. But,