“Harold Hill,” the Doctor remarked as they stepped out of the TARDIS on the pavement outside Charley’s flat. “Of all the council estates in London, and you choose the one without a Tube station.”
Charley folded her arms across her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. “Says the man with the time-travelling police box,” she pointed out dryly.
The Doctor shrugged and followed her up the pavement. “Haven’t always had the TARDIS. She didn’t work most of the time I was with UNIT, remember?” He glanced around them. “These are houses, not flats.”
“I let the first floor,” Charley explained. She pointed to a narrow iron staircase around the side of the house, which they promptly ascended to reach the door at the top. Charley pulled a key from her handbag and slipped it into the lock. She tried to turn it, but the lock didn’t budge.
“You sure this is the right place?” the Doctor asked wryly.
Charley glared at him. “Of course I am.” She tried the key again, but it was no use. “It’s probably the wrong time: when did you say you brought us back to?”
“Twelve hours after we left, that’s all,” he protested.
“Right,” was the disbelieving answer, Charley’s grimace expressing her skepticism far more eloquently than any words could. “Good to know your TARDIS driving abilities are still in top form.”
“Oi!” he protested indignantly.
She ignored him, turning to race down the steps. “Let’s just hope it’s not before I took the flat!”
A short rap on the front door of the house soon revealed the familiar face of Charley’s landlady, Mrs. Hollingsworth, a woman in her middle with light brown hair only lightly salted with grey. She watched them both with a wary expression as she stepped onto the front stoop, shutting the screen door behind her. “Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Hollingsworth, it’s Charley.” When the woman’s expression didn’t change, Charley asked tentatively. “You…do know me, don’t you?”
“Sure, I do,” was the careful but utterly uninformative answer.
“Oh, good.” Truthfully, that wasn’t terribly encouraging, but there was nothing for it now. “I was wondering if you could let me into my flat. The key doesn’t appear to be working.”
Mrs. Hollingsworth snorted. “I’ll tell you why it’s not working. ‘Cause it’s not your flat anymore.”
All right, now that she’d not been expecting. Charley stared. “What?”
“That’s what happens when you swan off without paying,” Mrs. Hollingsworth informed her pointedly. “‘Course, that nice older gentleman, Mr. Lethbridge-Stewart, paid it up for a couple of months, but after a bit even he said you likely weren’t coming back.”
“‘A couple of months’?” Charley echoed. “Why, how long have I been gone?”
Mrs. Hollingsworth just stared at her and Charley blushed, realizing how utterly inane that must sound to someone who couldn’t possibly know she’d been time travelling. “I was, erm, in hospital. In a coma. And when I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything for the longest time. I’ve only just found my way back.”
“Oh.” Whatever undercurrent of hostility there’d been in her landlady’s bearing, it drained away quickly in light of this particular revelation. Charley felt a bit bad lying to her, but then it was just about as close to the truth as she’d likely believe. “Why, I’d say it’s been almost twelve months, give or take.”
Twelve months? They’d missed the mark by an entire year? But then, she oughtn’t to be so surprised: she knew how long it had taken the Doctor to successfully bring them to Singapore. She’d long suspected that couldn’t be entirely attributed to the paradox of her survival. That didn’t stop her, though, from casting a token glare in his direction.
Mrs. Hollingsworth turned to the Doctor. “I almost didn’t notice at first. She keeps to herself, this one.” Then back to Charley with a motherly frown. “It’s a shame, a pretty girl like you, holing herself up so much. You’d have found your way home a lot sooner if you had more friends.”
The Doctor cast a sharp look in Charley’s direction and she squirmed under the piercing light of those blue eyes. “Yes, well. Did Sir Alastair happen to mention what he meant to do with my belongings? If, that is, you gave them to him?”
+++
“It’s not like she made it sound, you know.” Charley wasn’t sure why she felt the need to explain, but the words came tumbling out almost without her consent. Nor was she entirely certain why she suddenly needed something to do with her hands.
The Doctor looked back at her, his key already in the TARDIS door. “What isn’t?”
“I have made friends. Through UNIT mostly, and not just the Brigadier. I’m not some sort of hermit,” she grumbled as the Doctor opened the door and ushered her in.
“‘Course you have,” he answered lightly, but as with most things he said these days, there was an edge she couldn’t quite define beneath it. Obviously in the mood to be enigmatic, though, the Doctor didn’t look at her before opening to the door, striding to the console and setting the coordinates for the Brigadier’s London house. They’d try the one in the country if he wasn’t in.
“But you of all people ought to understand why I have to be careful,” she persisted as she followed him inside. “I don’t belong in this time. I oughtn’t even to be alive.”
“So, no boyfriend then?” the Doctor asked a little too casually.
“No.” Charley frowned. “I didn’t dare. Suppose I fell in love with a boy and we got married, maybe even started a family. What if he was meant to fall in love with someone else? And what if one of their children was meant to discover the cure for cancer or some such? I’d be changing history. It’s the same with friends. The people at UNIT, some of the people I’ve met through there…their lives have already been changed, often by you.”
They were both silent for a long moment. The Doctor had a look on his face that she knew well, though she’d never seen it on these features before. It was the look he usually wore when he was deciding how much to tell someone. Or whether or not to ask the question that might confirm the certain doom that faced them.
Charley held her breath.
Whatever the question might have been, it never came, for just then they landed and the Doctor was already headed for the door. Letting out a deep sigh, she followed him and emerged from the TARDIS just in time to hear a familiar voice say, “Oh, dear. You’ve gone and done it again. Hello, Doctor.”
The Doctor, grinning, bounded across the small back garden to enthusiastically pump the arm of the bearded old man sitting on a bench with a book in one hand and a resigned look on his face. “That’s right,” he announced cheerfully. “Did you miss me?”
Former Brigadier General Sir Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart just shook his head. “That rather depends which ‘you’ we’re talking about, doesn’t it? Although, come to think on it, the answer would be the same regardless: no.”
There was an affectionate twinkle in his eye, though, that belied his words. “My life is a good deal less eventful when you’re not about, Doctor.” He then looked past the Doctor and spotted Charley. “Ah, Miss Pollard. I had a feeling you might have taken up with this lout again when I heard you’d vanished without a trace from Henrick’s just about the time it blew up. Were you two involved with that mess down by the river, as well?”
Charley just smirked. “What do you think?”
He huffed briefly but was still smiling. “Yes. I might have known. Where you go, Doctor, trouble invariably follows.”
If it were a cue in a play, it couldn’t have been timed better. No sooner were the words out of the Brigadier’s mouth then they all heard a loud roar from overhead and looked up just in time to see a ship of some sort zig-zag through the air above their heads, trailing a long cloud of black smoke.
Sir Alastair sighed. “Right, then.”
Charley stared in horrified fascination at the ship’s trajectory until it dipped below the horizon. “Doctor, it’s headed for the city centre!”
The Doctor darted towards the door of the house without even a by-your-leave. “Come on! Up to the roof – view’ll be better there.”
“Doctor!” Charley scolded, glancing helplessly back towards the Brigadier.
He just waved them on with a rueful smile. “You two go on; I’m far too old to go racing up and down stairs any longer. If any of the servants give you trouble, just tell them he’s the Doctor. They’ll understand.”
The Doctor was right, the view from the roof was much better. They arrived just in time to see one of the strange craft’s wings clip the Clock Tower, cutting a deep gash into the gigantic, iconic clock face. Charley cringed. “Oh, that’s bad!”
“What are you talking about, bad?” the Doctor asked. “This is fantastic! I can’t believe I’m here to see this. First contact! History in the making! This is why I travel.”
“So, you knew this would happen?” Charley demanded in disbelief. She watched as the ship disappeared once again from view. Based on the angle of descent, though, and the fact that there was no explosion, no cloud of dust, smoke or ash that followed a moment later, it seemed logical to assume it had crash-landed in the Thames.
“Course not,” the Doctor scoffed. “Even I don’t know every little detail of your planet’s history, now, do I?”
“You’ve known littler ones,” she grumbled. “So, what do we do?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “That’s not an invasion, that was a genuine crash landing: angle of descent, colour of smoke, everything. It’s perfect! Besides,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “They’ve already got one space ship in the middle of London, don’t want to shove another one on top.”
“Well, maybe you don’t want to know what’s going on, but I do,” Charley retorted. “So I’ve been gone a year, UNIT ought to be used to that by now.”
She headed for the door that led back into the house, not really surprised when the Doctor followed. Downstairs they found Sir Alastair already in front of the TV, switching channels until a news broadcast came on. “Ah, there you are,” he announced as they strode into the parlour. “I suppose you’ll be wandering off to get in the middle of things, Doctor.”
“Not this time,” the Doctor insisted, taking a seat in an armchair and staring at the television.
“The Doctor doesn’t want to expose the TARDIS, or himself I imagine, to that sort of scrutiny.” Charley and the Brigadier exchanged sceptical smiles. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What are they saying?”
“They’re sending divers down to the wreck,” the Brigadier answered, his voice dry. “Not UNIT men, naturally, who might actually know how to deal with whatever they find, but police divers.”
“For the best,” the Doctor shot back over his shoulder. “Knowing UNIT, they’d likely deal with whatever they find by shooting it.”
“And you think a policeman who’s never seen aliens before is going to do better?” Sir Alastair shot back. “Really, Doctor.”
The Doctor surprised them both by remaining focused on the news programme. What wasn’t a surprise, though, was when he looked about for a moment then pulled out the sonic screwdriver and promptly began using it as a remote to flip from one channel to another, some of them probably not even normally accessible in this country. His interest piqued, though, when reporters began to say that a body had been found in the wreckage.
“The body has been transferred to a secure UNIT mortuary…” the reporter on the telly announced. “The whereabouts is yet unknown.”
“Albion hospital,” the Brigadier announced confidently. “It’s closest to the river. Particularly with all the roads closed off except to emergency personnel.”
“Can you get us in there?” Charley asked. “Or, sorry, me in there?” she added with a sly glance at the Doctor.
He gave her a dirty look.
“Right. Us it is, then,” she concluded triumphantly.
The Brigadier huffed in mock offence. “You lot always seem to conveniently forget that I’m retired. What makes you think I’ve any sort of pull with UNIT any longer?”
“You’re the Brigadier,” Charley pointed out. “UNIT wouldn’t exist without you.”
The Brigadier sighed and looked them both over before finally allowing a smile to creep through. “Right. Not that you need my help to get into Albion Hospital: just use that infernal blue box. I suppose you’ll be wanting an invitation to Downing Street as well?”
“Ten Downing Street?” Charley echoed, amazed. “Why ever for?”
“The Emergency Protocols,” he answered plainly. “Which you and I helped to compose, if I recall correctly, Doctor. The government of the United Kingdom is not authorized to take any action regarding an alien incursion onto Earth territory without first consulting the leading experts in the field to determine if the action is warranted.”
The Doctor grinned. “And who’s the biggest expert of the lot?”
Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart shook his head in resigned amusement. “Very well, Doctor. Just do me one favour and keep my name out of it, there’s a good lad. Last thing I need is to get called out of retirement again. Let the younger generation deal with its own problems.”