‘I recommend you stay as far away from your younger self as possible just to be on the safe side,’ said the Doctor.
‘Get out of the country if necessary. Belgium, I recommend Belgium. And I never thought I’d say that.’
‘Any more conditions?’
‘Condition number three.’ The Doctor clapped his hands like a university lecturer warming to his theme.
‘You are not to tell anyone you are from the future. Not even as a joke. As far as anyone from this time period is concerned, you were born – how old are you, Mark?’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘You were born thirty-seven years ago. You can keep the same birthday if you like. But you have not travelled in time. If anyone asks, you think the whole notion is science-fiction.’
‘Right.’
‘You’ll need a new identity. I’ll leave the details to you.
Keep your head down. Don’t do anything to arouse suspicion. Don’t get married, don’t have children.’
‘I don’t see why –’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Amy. ‘Because if you end up
getting married to some girl, you might be changing history because she should’ve got married to somebody else.’
‘All right, I agree, I agree,’ said Mark, so loudly that passing shoppers turned to look at the disturbance. ‘Don’t get involved.’
The Doctor patted his jacket pockets. ‘Do you need money?’
‘I have money,’ said Mark. ‘The envelope I sent to myself contained six thousand pounds.’
The Doctor whistled in admiration then frowned.
‘Sorry, is that quite a lot?’
‘Enough to last me a few months. Is it OK for me to get a job?’
‘As long as it’s not Prime Minister, yes,’ said the Doctor, breaking into a smile. ‘Speaking of which, that letter of yours. You have to remember to send it to yourself.’
‘I won’t forget. I’ll keep it safe, and then send it –’
‘No. You mustn’t send the original letter. That wouldn’t make any sense. You must make a copy, a handwritten copy, identical in every detail. And you send yourself the copy.’
‘The copy, right.’
The Doctor tapped out a rhythm on the top of Fireman Sam’s fire engine. ‘Well, I think that’s everything. Oh…
and one last thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Watch out for the Angels. As long as you behave yourself, you should be quite safe. The Angels are only going to be drawn to you if there’s the possibility of a paradox. And if you do see the Angels, that means you’re on the brink of creating a paradox, so whatever you’re doing, stop.’
‘You’re sure they won’t come after me?’
‘They’re not going to waste energy chasing you unless there’s a meal at the end of it.’
Mark wasn’t convinced but didn’t want to press the point. ‘If you say so.’
‘Good luck.’ The Doctor shook Mark’s hand and waited by the police box. Rory gave Mark an encouraging slap on the back, and Amy gave him an encouraging kiss on the cheek.
‘Be a good boy,’ she said, before following Rory into the police box.
The Doctor lingered on the threshold. ‘Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t contact your former self. And don’t, whatever you do, change history.’ He disappeared inside, shutting the door after him. The lamp on top of the box flashed and, with a wheezing, groaning sound, the police box faded from view.
He’d convinced them. Mark patted his coat pocket, feeling the reassuring weight of the padded envelope. He opened it and checked the list of instructions, reminding himself what he had to do. First, get a fake ID. He had ready cash, so it shouldn’t be difficult.
The fingers of his right hand tingled for the first time since the previous night.
‘Thanks for coming with me, Mark,’ said a familiar voice. Mark turned to see Sophie and his younger self emerge from the supermarket, both laden with plastic bags full of groceries.
Mark ducked behind the Fireman Sam ride, keeping out of sight.
‘Don’t mention it, good to get out of the house,’ replied Mark’s younger self. ‘Besides, I feel bad about abandoning you last night.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ said Sophie. ‘But don’t do it again.’
‘OK, cup of tea, then back to the exciting world of contract law,’ said Mark’s younger self. His older self watched him walk out into the car park with Sophie.
The tingling in his hand faded until there was no sensation at all. Suddenly there was a brief flapping sound from overhead like the sound of a large bird taking off, but when Mark looked up at the supermarket roof, there was nothing there.
Chapter
7
2 April 1995
Mark poured the last of the white wine into the plastic cup and lay back on the rug. Above him vapour trails crossed the sky. Trees rustled in the breeze and ducks flapped and quacked on the river. In the distance, Warwick Castle rose from the woodland, imposing, and ancient.
Becky - she no longer liked to be called Bex – lay beside him, tickling his neck with a grass stem. ‘So where’s Sophie today?’ she enquired idly, rolling over to lean on her elbows.
‘Gone home to her parents,’ said Mark. ‘No reason.’
‘What do you mean, no reason?’
‘I mean, we haven’t had an argument or anything.’
‘Wasn’t suggesting you had.’
Mark took a sip of wine. He hadn’t had an argument with Sophie because in order to have an argument, you had to be speaking, and at the moment, they weren’t speaking. He’d sent Sophie an apologetic email from the computer centre but had yet to receive a reply.
A couple of joggers bounced past listening to portable CD players. ‘What about Anthony?’ said Mark. Anthony was Becky’s latest boyfriend. He had a face that, in Mark’s opinion, resembled a pink potato.
Becky thumbed idly through her battered copy of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. ‘Rugby match. Said he might join us later, but he won’t.’
‘Right.’ Mark stretched back, trying not to think about Anthony, or Sophie, or work, trying to lose himself in the blueness of the sky.
Becky gave up on her book. ‘Forgive me, none of my business, but you’re not getting on with Sophie, are you?’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘So what’ve you done wrong this time?’
‘No, you’re right that it’s none of your business.’
Becky pouted. ‘I don’t know why you put up with her.
Sorry to be blunt, but she makes you unhappy, Mark. It’s like, on your own, you’re quite a nice guy, but whenever you’re with her, you just sit there, glowering.’
‘Do I?’ asked Mark, even though he knew Becky had hit the nail on the head. He didn’t enjoy spending time with Sophie any more. It had become an obligation to be endured.
‘You should find someone else. Someone you actually get on with.’
‘I would, but you’re taken, alas, alas,’ said Mark mockingly.
‘You had your chance, as I recall. That night, on the roof of the union…’
‘I remember.’ Mark finished his wine. ‘God, if Sophie
knew I was talking to you like this…’
‘What?’
‘Oh, she has this idea in her head that I would rather be going out with you.’
‘Well, obviously,’ joked Becky. ‘I mean, I’m sane, she’s a control freak. Is that why she’s always so unfriendly?’
‘Yo, dudes,’ said Lucy, clumping up to them with a smile and a clinking carrier bag. Despite the heat, she wore her usual black T-shirt, jeans and combat boots. Her girlfriend, a shy, bookish girl called Emma, followed in her wake. ‘Did you miss us?’
17 February 1996
‘Well, this is embarrassing,’ groaned Becky.
Mark was lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. On the opposite wall hung a Monet print and a cork board pinned with Polaroids of pa
rties, pets and holidays. A window looked out onto the cold, drizzly morning. And Becky was sitting on the bed beside him.
He could see her back, so smooth and pale, her shoulder blades, her spine. Then she pulled a baggy T-shirt over her head and tugged on a pair of jeans. ‘I suppose, civilised thing, do you fancy coffee? Or tea? We’re out of milk.’
‘Black coffee’s fine.’ Mark blinked, his eyes stinging as he’d slept with his contact lenses in. ‘What’s embarrassing?’
‘What do you think? Last night.’
Mark remembered. ‘Oh.’
Yesterday had been a bad day. He’d got fired from his
job in telesales, a job which he loathed but that wasn’t the point, he’d never been fired from a job before. After splitting up with Sophie - at long last - he’d moved in with Rajeev. While he had yet to get a placement with a solicitor since graduating, all his friends still lived in Coventry and the surrounding area. But while they studied for PhDs, he drifted from one dead-end job to the next.
He’d gone to Becky’s for tea and sympathy. They’d talked for a while, about Anthony, and how Becky hardly ever saw him since he’d got a job in Manchester. Then Becky had boiled some pasta, he’d popped out to the off-licence, and they’d spent the evening curled up on the sofa watching Cybill, Friends and Frasier. By the time Channel 4 got to The Girlie Show, they’d got to the kissing and unbuttoning stage.
‘What are you saying?’ said Mark, feeling his stomach churn. ‘You regret it?’
‘Of course I regret it. Hello! Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Thanks,’ said Becky sarcastically as she inspected herself in the mirror. ‘Thanks a lot, Mark. Make it complicated.’
‘Look, I know you’re with Anthony, it’s just, well, I don’t think he knows what he has,’ said Mark, echoing something Becky had once said to him. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll stay just between us.’
‘There is no us. It was just a, just a silly—’
‘Mistake?’
‘Your word not mine. I was going to say “one-off”.
Let’s just try to forget it ever happened, OK?’ Becky
whipped the duvet from the bed. ‘Now I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I think you should go, I’ve got loads of stuff to do today and don’t need you hanging around.’
Mark ran the conversation over and over again in his head, trying to work out where he’d gone wrong, what he should have said. He sat alone in the kitchen, drinking instant coffee, watching The Chart Show on Becky’s portable television. Apparently The Lighthouse Family felt ‘Lifted’. Mark didn’t share their optimism and turned it off.
‘When you’re finished,’ said Becky, pausing on her way to the door in a thick coat, scarf and beanie hat, ‘make sure the door locks behind you.’
‘Don’t you think we should talk?’ said Mark.
‘About what?’
‘About what happened.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Becky. ‘Goodbye, Mark.’ She left, the door slamming shut behind her.
Mark finished his breakfast, washed up the mug and bowl, pulled on his jacket, and braved the outside world.
Speckles of snow fluttered in the blustery air. The snow wasn’t settling, though, it was just melting and making the pavement sludgy and grey.
Something had changed between him and Becky. The warm feeling of trust, of private jokes and shared confidences had been replaced by a feeling as cold as this February morning.
Mark huddled his hands into his pockets and headed for home, thinking about the fact that he’d lost his best friend in the world.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor cranked the dematerialisation handle and darted around the console, making an adjustment here, typing in a new setting there, all the while glancing at a folded sheet of paper.
‘So that’s it?’ said Amy, trying to attract his attention through the glass of the central column. ‘You’re just trusting him, leaving him in the past?’
‘Not quite,’ said the Doctor, grimacing as he pulled a particularly stiff lever. ‘I’m slaving the navigation systems to the contents of Mark Whitaker’s CV.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Rory.
‘Curriculum Vitae. It’s Latin. Would’ve thought you’d have known that.’
‘No, what does “slaving the navigation systems” mean?’
‘It means the TARDIS is going to follow Mark through the course of his life. Young Mark, I mean. Wherever he is, the TARDIS won’t be far away. Multidimensionally speaking.’
‘You’re using the TARDIS to keep tabs on him?’ said Amy.
‘Which means that if there are any disturbances in his timeline, the TARDIS will put us down nearby.’
Disturbances?’ said Amy. ‘You mean if old Mark doesn’t behave himself—’
‘Exactly.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘If at any point he crosses his younger self’s path, or attempts to change the course of history… well be there to stop him.’
‘But hang on,’ said Rory. ‘You said that whenever there’s a build-up a potential time energy, the Weeping
Angels will be drawn to it like moths to a flame.’
‘I did,’ said the Doctor, suddenly solemn. ‘Which is why we have to get to him first.’
16 December 1997
‘Mark!’
It took the 24-year-old Mark a couple of seconds to register that someone had called out his name. He turned, searching the shopping precinct for a familiar face. There were pensioners in heavy coats, young families with pushchairs, teenagers with Santa hats and rucksacks, all of them wielding bulging shopping bags. A brass band pumped out a festive carol.
But even with the brisk sense of excitement in the air, even with the silvery webs of lights overhead, even with the combined efforts of Slade, Wizzard and Wham!, Mark didn’t feel full of Christmas cheer. He felt numb, miserable and anxious.
Until he saw Becky stride out of the crowd towards him, her face beaming. She wore a fluffy cream coloured hat and scarf, her cheeks flushed from the cold. ‘Mark!’
she repeated, before hugging him. ‘What are you doing here?’
Mark lifted his two bulging shopping bags. ‘Guess.’
‘Me too. God, Christmas is a nightmare.’ Becky studied his face. ‘Something different about you. What is it? Don’t tell me. No, I give up, tell me.’
‘New glasses,’ said Mark, though they weren’t new, he’d got them six months earlier.
‘They suit you,’ said Becky earnestly. ‘Groovy, baby!
Look, do you fancy going for a coffee, only I think that if I don’t get out of the crowd, I might literally murder someone.’
‘Yeah, sounds great,’ said Mark. Becky guided him through the crowd, past Woolworths with its cardboard cut-out Teletubbies, and past the large, stone fountain, where the rushing water glittered in ever-changing colours.
Becky paused at the fountain, disconcerted. ‘Hey, since when did they put the statues here?’
Mark shrugged. He’d never really noticed them before.
Six stone statues of angels in robes, placed around the edge of the pool, facing outwards. Except they were all covering their faces with their hands.
They stepped into the steamy warmth of the coffee shop, to be greeted by the chorus of ‘Never Ever’ on the radio.
‘Coffee?’ said Becky. ‘Let me remember. Black, no sugar?’
‘Yep,’ said Mark.
‘Grab us a seat, can you, I’ll get these.’
While Becky paid for and collected the two cups, Mark found a couple of padded seats in the comer by the window.
‘So,’ said Becky, carefully placing the coffees on the table, on top of a discarded copy of The European. ‘News.
Tell me everything.’ She shrugged off her coat and took the seat opposite. Mark studied her for a moment. She looked different. She’d had her hair cut short and dyed red with a blonde streak, like the girl from This Life, and wore
more lipstick and eyeli
ner.
‘Not a lot, really,’ said Mark. ‘Still working for the housing association. Boring but it pays the rent, just about.
Still looking for a practice that’ll take me on. You?’
‘Oh, you know, dissertation rumbles on. OK, that’s work out of the way. What about everything else? Are you still with that girl, what was her name?’
‘Jenny,’ said Mark. ‘Yeah, we’re still together’. He’d met her on his first day at the Housing Association. They were both temping in the same office and found they both needed someone sane to talk to. Jenny was very…
determined. It had been her idea for Mark to change his spectacles, along with most of his clothes. Mark sometimes wondered if she even had a sense of humour.
Whenever he made a joke she would just look at him as though he had let her down somehow.
‘And it’s going OK?’
‘Yeah, it’s good. We haven’t moved in together yet but it’s, you know, inevitable.’
‘Wow. Sounds serious. How long has it been, then?-‘
‘Nearly a year.’
‘A year? God, I’m so out of date.’ Becky blew the foam off her coffee and took a sip. ‘When I last saw you, you’d just started going out She is the one with no sense of humour, right?’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Marie. Becky had met Jenny, very briefly, at Lucy’s birthday party in March. He could still remember the argument he’d had with Jenny on the way home, it had been their first big argument The first of many.
But while that had been the last time Becky had seen him, it hadn’t been the last time he’d seen her. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been chatting with some people he didn’t know at Rajeev’s going-home party in July. He’d watched her from the other side of the room but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to go up to her. What would he say? After that night in February, they hadn’t had a proper conversation. He always felt self-conscious and resentful and she always gave the impression she would much rather be somewhere else.
‘And what about you? Still with Anthony?’
‘Oh, yeah. He’s still keen, bless him. We’re doing Christmas at his parents.’ Becky grimaced. ‘Which will be agony. I don’t think they regard me as daughter-in-law material. What about you, what are you doing?’
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