Doctor Who_ Winner Takes All - Jacqueline Rayner [43]
The girl pushed past her companion and headed straight for Robert. She had eyes for no one else. And she held out her hands towards him, and he took them in his, and she said just the one word, ‘Hello,’ and then she grinned at him.
He said breathlessly, ‘I’m Robert.’
She said, ‘I know. We’ve come here for you, Robert. I’ve come here for you. Because you’re special. I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long.’
He said. ‘I’ve been wanting to meet you too, although I hardly dared to believe that there was someone so beautiful in the world.’
She leaned towards him, she was going to take him in her arms, and he stood strong and tall and closed his eyes, and said, ‘I don’t even know your name…’
He opened his eyes. The girl was standing behind the tall man, in the doorway of the police box. ‘All right,’ said the man in a northern accent, looking round at everyone, ‘We’re the rescue party.’
And Robert smiled for real.
* * *
The room they’d landed in was totally grim, a bleak concrete shell. A group of people were huddled in one corner, staring at the Doctor and Rose: mainly adults, but a couple of kids too, one boy and one girl. They all had small metal discs stuck to their foreheads, like Mrs Hall and the lad they’d seen in the game.
‘We’re gonna take you home,’ said Rose, stepping forward. There were disbelieving smiles from the crowd; one man threw himself on the ground and started weeping.
A moustached man pushed himself to the front of the group. ‘Are you in charge here?’ he said. ‘I have a serious complaint to make!’
Next to him, bizarrely, an elderly woman began to sing, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover…’
‘Don’t think you’ll find any bluebirds in England, love,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, blue boxes, on the other hand…’ He gave an exaggerated, ringmaster’s gesture towards the TARDIS. ‘If I could trouble you all to walk this way…’
The door to the room thudded open, and two Quevvils stood in the doorway, with several more behind them. Their heads were down and their quills bristling.
‘Inside, now!’ barked the Doctor, but the instant they sprang towards the TARDIS, before the poor people in the corner had taken even a single step, a barrage of quills soared through the air, tinkling on to the concrete floor at their feet. A few stuck into the sides of the TARDIS.
‘That was just a warning!’ called the lead Quevvil, as they all froze on the spot.
The first two Quevvils slowly came into the room.
And with them was a human. A human Rose recognised. It was Darren Pye.
‘What on Earth is he doing here?’ she cried out to the Doctor. ‘I thought he was dead!’
‘No such luck,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s the one who was nicking the games and selling them on the Internet.’
And she realised the rest, wondered why she hadn’t worked it out before. They’d heard someone outside, thought it was the person who’d nicked Mickey’s telly. He’d have heard everything they said, about the games, about the holidays, about the aliens. And he went down the stairs and met Jackie and had taken her ticket and her phone. Wouldn’t have used the ticket himself, not knowing what it represented. Sold it straight away, and before you could say Jack Robinson the poor guy who’d bought it had ended up dying here, on this planet.
‘I thought I recognised the voice when he offered to send my unwanted old aunt a winning scratchcard for 500 quid,’ said the Doctor. He raised his voice. ‘Must have been a bummer when you found out how much you could get