The woman sucked her teeth. ‘I suppose that would be all right… I am also very worried about Mr Whitaker. He is, I think, a very lonely man.’ She collected her keys and locked the door.
Rory led the woman into the kitchen of number 11 and began to search the cupboards for tea.
‘The name’s Rory, by the way. Rory Williams. You’re?’
‘Mrs Levenson’
*
His car had been stolen. Or at least, it wasn’t where he’d left it.
Mark was a little shaken, but after the rest of the evening’s events, he didn’t have the energy to get annoyed.
He considered finding a phone box to call the police but something made him decide against it. That Doctor and his two friends, they had something to do with this.
Something to do with Mrs Levenson not being in Flat 12.
He’d find the Doctor, get him to explain.
He returned to the electrical goods shop where he’d met the Doctor, but there was no trace of him. Peering in the shop window, it took a while for him to register what was wrong about the television sets on display. They had all been widescreen and HD, but now they were the old, square type. And the shop sold video recorders! Who the hell sold video recorders these days? Mark looked up at the shop sign. Dixons. But there weren’t any Dixons any more.
Mark kept walking, his mind a whirl, past the video rental store – wait, hadn’t that been a fried chicken restaurant? The posters in the window advertised Mrs Doubtfire and Groundhog Day. The butchers were still there, and the bookmakers, but instead of the Taste Of The China, there now stood a greasy-spoon café.
Exhausted and hungry, Mark entered the greasy-spoon and leaned on the counter. The menu chalked on the blackboard included a cup of tea for 40p and a bacon sandwich for a quid. Mark gave his order to the café owner, a tired-looking man in his sixties, then sat down at a table where somebody had left a copy of The Sun.
According to the front page, Bobby Charlton had just been given a knighthood.
The date at the top of the page read 10 June 1994.
‘1994?’
The Doctor darted around the six-sided console, adjusting the controls as if trying to achieve a high score on a pinball machine. The floor juddered and swayed and Amy clutched at one of the railings around the console to stop herself from falling to the level below. ‘1994. Just over seventeen years into the past. Which is odd.’
‘Odd, in what sense?’ asked Amy.
‘The Angels usually send their victims forty, fifty, a hundred years into the past,’ gabbled the Doctor in a rush of enthusiasm. ‘Stick them out of the way somewhere safe, where any minor alterations to the time-stream will be absorbed by the established pattern of history.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Amy, trying hard to sound knowledgeable. ‘Time can be rewritten!’
‘Time can, as you say, be rewritten. Insignificant details can be changed, so long as the big picture remains more or less the same. Imagine time as being a great big carpet. Or, on second thoughts, don’t.’
‘But you said this Angel was different.’
‘Yes,’ The Doctor peered at the central rotor, tensing his fingers in preparation for a landing. ‘It’s sent him back to a point within his own lifetime. Which I’m afraid is very, very bad news indeed.’
Mark leafed through the newspaper. There were a
couple of pages on the forthcoming European elections and speculation as to whether John Prescott or Tony Blair would be the next leader of the Labour Party. As Mark read, a bass-heavy reggae track played on the radio.
Somehow he’d travelled in time. It was impossible, utterly impossible, but there was no other explanation for it. Ever since he’d felt the touch of the statue, he’d been walking around in 1994. It felt strange, almost dreamlike.
And yet so real, so mundane. If it was a dream, he would hardly be able to read advertisements for washing machines, or taste the bitterness of the tea. And besides, if it was a dream, his feet wouldn’t still hurt from the run to his flat.
So, the next question was, what was he going to do?
Would he ever get back to his own time? For all he knew, he was stuck here permanently. He’d have to get a job, find somewhere to live. First things first, he’d have to find somewhere to sleep tonight.
The café owner coughed and indicated the clock. It was gone eleven. ‘Closing up, mate.’
Mark rummaged in his pockets for some change and dropped it in the saucer on the counter. ‘Cheers. Thanks.’
Behind the counter was a black-and-white monitor showing the output of the café‘s closed-circuit cameras.
On the screen Mark could see himself and the café owner, but thankfully no statue.
‘What’s this?’ said the café owner, inspecting the contents of the saucer. ‘A two-pound coin?’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘ Problem is we don’t take made-up money here. What
is this, Scottish? Haven’t you got anything else?’
Mark checked his wallet. He had a credit card and a debit card. For a moment he considered asking the owner if he could use it pay, before he realised that chip-and-PIN
hadn’t been invented. Mark patted down his coat and his hands rested on the bulge of the padded envelope.
It wasn’t his money. But if he replaced it as soon as he had the chance, that would hardly be stealing, would it?
Mark opened the envelope and removed a fifty-pound note. ‘Here, sorry.’
The owner held it up to check the watermark. ‘You’re lucky we’ve had a good day. Give us a minute.’ He opened the till and dug out £48.60 in five-and ten-pound notes and coins, creating a pile which he handed to Mark.
‘You wouldn’t know of a bed and breakfast around here, would you?’ said Mark.
‘Not round here, mate. Your best bet is to head into London Bridge.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Mark headed to the door and paused, turning over the envelope in his hands. It was a bit of a coincidence that he’d received it on the same day as being sent back in time. An envelope containing the one thing he would need to survive in the past. It was too lucky.
Too lucky to be a coincidence.
As the café owner disappeared into a back room, Mark returned to his table to study the contents of the envelope properly. Along with 120 fifty-pound notes, all dating from before 1994, there was a handwritten letter.
Unfolding it, Mark saw a list of dates from 1994 to 2001
annotated with detailed notes.
It was written in his handwriting. And yet he had no memory of ever having written it.
Mark looked at the first date. 10 June 1994. Arrival.
He checked the other side of the paper. Halfway down the page, the list became a letter: Mark
If I remember correctly, you should be reading this in a café in Bromley in the year 1994. Earlier tonight, you were sent back in time.
How did you get sent back through time? I can’t go into that here. But you should know one thing. There is no way back to 2011. You have no choice but to live the rest of your life from this day onwards. It won’t be easy, but you have the advantage of knowing the future. Out of all the people in the world, you alone know what tomorrow will bring.
I’ve included instructions describing what I did when I found myself in the past. Follow them to the letter. And whatever you do, make sure these instructions don’t fall into anyone else’s hands. Guard them with your life.
Your first step is to use the money to create a new identity for yourself. I’ll leave you to decide the details.
You’ll have to make your own way in the world, just as I did when I found myself in the past.
But make sure you follow these instructions, Mark.
Because if you do, remember this: YOU CAN SAVE HER.
Just as I did.
Yours sincerely
Mark Whitaker, April 2003.
Chapter
3
11 June 1994
&
nbsp; The litter in the high street swirled, caught in a sudden gust of wind, and then, with a grinding sound, a flashing beacon appeared in mid air. A moment later the police-box exterior of the TARDIS materialised beneath it. The Doctor emerged, grimacing in frustration at his wibble-detector.
Amy followed him, and sighed. ‘We haven’t moved.’
‘Oh, but we have,’ said the Doctor. ‘Four-dimensionally. See, that.’ He pointed to the nearby branch of Our Price. ‘In seventeen years’ time, that shop –that shop – will sell sandwiches and Danish pastries.’
‘So this is 1994.’ Amy looked around. All the shops were closed but one of them had a clock as part of its sign.
‘At approximately five minutes past midnight.’
‘The time-trace has almost faded. He would’ve been transported through time, but at the same spatial coordinates. Allowing for the rotation of the Earth, its orbit around the sun, and the solar system’s orbit around the Milky Way, of course.’
‘Then, er, why isn’t he here?’
‘He was.’ The Doctor approached a small café.
Squinting inside, Amy could make out chairs stacked on tables. ‘Under an hour ago,’ the Doctor continued, shaking his wibble-detector. ‘We just missed him.’
‘Oh well,’ shrugged Amy. ‘Don’t suppose he’s got very far.’
‘In London?’ said the Doctor. ‘He could be anywhere within a hundred-mile radius. If he travelled at a hundred miles an hour.’
‘Can you detect him with your amazing egg-boiling gadget thing?’
‘No. The trail has gone cold.’ The Doctor looked around as though the shops held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. ‘We have to find him before he does any damage. The wrong word in the wrong ear and the whole course of human history – pfff!’
‘Pfff?’
‘Gone.’ The Doctor clicked his fingers. ‘Not with a bang but with a pfff!’
‘What makes you think he’s going to do any damage?’
‘Amy. What would you do if you found yourself trapped in the past? In your own past?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Amy. ‘I’d… I’d probably look for someone I knew. So I could tell them what’s going to happen in the future.’
‘Exactly! The wrong word in the wrong ear. The first pebble of the avalanche! That’s the danger with only being sent a short way into the past. If you’ve been sent back a hundred years, you wouldn’t know anyone, you wouldn’t know enough about the day-to-day events to make much of a difference, and even if you do make a difference, there’s plenty of time for history to paper over the cracks. Whereas travelling back seventeen years, you’ll know people, you’ll know all sorts of details about future events, and any alteration in the course of future events is likely to have a direct, dramatic and disastrous impact upon your own personal timeline.’
‘Then how do we find him? We don’t even know where he’s going to go, we don’t even know who –’ Amy stopped as she realised she knew the answer. ‘Rory!’
‘Yes. Rory,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘He’s probably wondering where we’ve got to.’
The Canary Wharf tower glinted in the morning sunshine.
It looked odd, standing alone without its surrounding throng of towers. And out on Greenwich peninsula, there was no Millenium Dome, just a derelict gas works. Ever since Mark had left his hotel, he had found his attention being drawn to the sights that no longer existed in the future; the tower block that would be demolished to make way for the Shard, the waste ground that would become the site of City Hall.
The most obvious differences from 2011 were the advertisements and those high-street shops which had changed their names or logos. But even the people looked different. Teenagers had their hair tousled like street-urchins or in centre partings. Men wore denim jackets and had their jeans belted higher above their waists.
Women had highlights and glossy lipstick. The more Mark looked, the more differences he could see. It was like the first day of arriving in a foreign country, finding everything new, searching for the familiar amongst the unfamiliar.
Apart from the hiss of a teenager’s walkman, the railway carriage was silent. It took a while for Mark to guess the reason why; nobody had a mobile phone. There were no laptops, no free newspapers. People just read magazines.
In addition to the eerie feeling of being a man out of his time, Mark’s stomach fluttered with nerves at the prospect of the coming encounter. His apprehension grew as the train pulled into Blackheath station and he emerged to climb the hill to his parents’ house.
Everything was just as he remembered it. The overgrown bushes that would be cropped back. The lawn that would be concreted over. His mother’s Peugeot parked in the driveway.
Steeling himself, Mark strode up the driveway and pressed the doorbell.
A dog barked inside the house. After what seemed an age, a shape coalesced in the door’s frosted glass. The door opened to reveal his mother. Looking younger than he’d seen her for years, her hair still dark brown, wearing her old, plastic-framed glasses.
‘Hello, yes?’ she said, smiling at him curiously. ‘Can I help you?’
His own mother didn’t recognise him. She had no idea who he was.
Amy stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the pavement
outside Mark’s block of flats. Nothing had changed. Rain splashed in the puddles and thunder rumbled in the distance. She followed the Doctor to the entrance where the remnants of the Weeping Angel had been blown away in the wind. ‘Where is he?’ muttered the Doctor impatiently. ‘I said one hour. Some people are so unreliable!’
‘We’ll just have to wait,’ said Amy, kicking her heels.
‘Back inside the TARDIS?’
‘No time.’ The Doctor retreived his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and levelled it at the door. The sonic buzzed, glowed green, and every single doorbell in the building rang at once. A dozen bedroom windows lit up as their occupants were roused from their sleep.
‘Doctor, Amy, it’s you!’ crackled Rory’s voice through the intercom. ‘I’ll be right down.’ A minute later, he appeared at the door, looking relieved and breathless.
‘You took your time!’
‘I said we’d be one hour,’ said the Doctor, tapping his watch.
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Rory. ‘That was a week ago.’
‘Is that all?’ The Doctor paused. ‘Sorry. Did you say a week?’
‘I did.’
‘A whole week?’
‘Seven days I’ve been stuck here, waiting for you to turn up.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘Must have forgotten to correct for temporal displacement. Still, could be worse.’
‘Worse?’
‘Could’ve been a month. Or a year!’
‘I thought you’d forgotten about me! Again! ‘
‘Never.’ Amy gave her husband a peck on the cheek.
‘So you’ve been here all this time?’
‘Yeah. Seems to be what I do most of the time, wait.
Though I did pop back to Leadworth to pick up the post.
Just bills, I’m afraid.’
‘But if you’ve been here for seven days, where have you been staying?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Mark’s place. After all, I had his keys.’ Rory dangled the keys in his hand. ‘And Mrs Levenson next door to keep me company.’
‘Mrs Levenson?’ Amy narrowed her eyes.
‘Old lady, neighbour, she’s lovely, but… no,’ said Rory hurriedly. ‘She just made me cups of tea and chatted about Mark.’
‘So what did you find out about him?’ said the Doctor.
‘Everything I could. He doesn’t seem to have been one for keeping scrapbooks or photo albums, but I managed to find a copy of his CV and all the addresses of his friends and family.’ Rory presented the Doctor with a folded sheet of paper. ‘Not many names. Seems like he kept himself to himself.’
The Doctor read the paper in under a second and handed it back to Rory. ‘Right. So,
given all this, if Mark found himself in 1994… where do you think he’d go?’
‘Must be a bit of a surprise, me turning up like this,’ said Mark, taking in the living room. The television in the corner, the photos on the coffee table, everything was just as he remembered, except for all the photos of him on the mantelpiece. There were so many. His parents must have put them out when he’d left for university and tidied them away whenever he returned.
Mark sipped his tea but didn’t swallow. His throat felt so tight he thought he might choke. He wanted to hug his mother and tell her everything that was going to happen over the next seventeen years, but looking at her sitting in the armchair opposite, her eyes twinkling in a way they hadn’t done for years, a contented smile on her lips, he couldn’t bear to break her heart.
‘And your husband? Patrick, wasn’t it? He’s out at work?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he won’t be back until late, council meeting. It’s a pity you’ll miss him.’
‘Yes, a pity. I’d hoped to, well, say hello and stuff.’
‘Particularly with you coming all this way, from, where was it again?’
‘Canada.’
‘Canada, yes. I didn’t know we had relatives in Canada.’
‘Very distant. Second cousins of second cousins, that sort of thing.’
‘You must be on Patrick’s Aunt Margaret’s side, we don’t know what happened to them.’
‘Yes, that’s right, Aunt Margaret.’ There was an awkward pause. The family dog, a Labrador called Jess, padded in, its tail wagging furiously. It sniffed at Mark’s legs before deciding to lick his hands.
‘You’re honoured,’ observed Mark’s mother. ‘She’s not
normally so friendly with strangers. You know, you don’t sound like you come from Canada. I thought they sounded American.’
‘Not from the bit I’m from.’ Mark struggled to think of a Canadian city. ‘It’s a small town, fifty miles out of…
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