Chapter Text
When she found out the Doctor had been using the Facebook account she’d set up with Tania’s help in the vain hope of finding someone who might have known Albie Helen wasn’t entirely sure how she felt.
She should have been angry, and indeed she felt a bit annoyed, but after he’d apologized profusely, claiming not to have realized she was still logged in when he happened to see the site open on the laptop, and she’d seen the smile on his face one night when she came through the living room for a glass of water to find him chatting, first via instant messenger and then something called Skype, with a rather attractive blonde named Grace in San Francisco she couldn’t really stay cross for very long. As with all of them Covid, lockdown and everything else that accompanied their second enforced stay in 2020 was getting him down and she much preferred him cheerful to brooding about the flat, talking of returning to the TARDIS to see out the rest of the year.
Thankfully she’d managed to talk him out of that for now, not wanting him to go and leave her alone in the flat no matter how much they’d begun to get on each other’s nerves; though Liv was downstairs with Tania and the other inhabitants of 107 Baker Street were there for company once restrictions began to ease she knew she would still feel lonely without the Doctor around, moods and all. She’d told herself to be patient with him; it was hard enough for her being stuck here, but at least she was equipped for living a normal, human life. Given their frequent trials and tribulations as flatmates she wasn’t convinced he had more than a passing acquaintance with the concept, regularly destroying the kitchen appliances and leaving a general trail of devastation in his wake, but she would still miss him if he left. She’d become so used to having him and Liv there that if she had to spend all day in an empty room she was fairly sure she’d go mad.
One evening when there was nothing on the television and she’d decided she didn’t want to risk another restaurant in an effort to ‘eat out to help out’ even if it did mean seeing Andy for a couple of hours, she got the Doctor to tell her about Grace and the way his face had lit up as he spoke of the American cardiologist was wonderful to see. There was a spark in his eyes that had been missing for some time, the breathless excitement back in his voice as he recounted the story of his last regeneration and the Master’s near-destruction of the Earth; when Helen pointed out the fact that the woman he still felt obvious affection for had accidentally killed him he’d thrown back his head and laughed.
“Well, everyone makes mistakes,” he said, taking a sip from his mug of tea. “I don’t hold it against her.”
“Why didn’t she go with you?” Helen asked, curious. She’d heard them talking into the early hours (well, probably lunchtime for Grace) more than once and knew how well the two of them got on. “Did you ask her?”
“Yes, of course. And she asked me to stay with her. She’s the only one who’s ever done that.” The Doctor looked pensive for a moment before shrugging. “I suppose it just wasn’t the right time, for either of us. She had a life to live here, and as for me… well, you’ve seen how I cope with being stuck in one place.”
“But you still see each other.” When he cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her Helen gestured to the computer on the coffee table. “You left her profile open the other day; I couldn’t help catching a glimpse of some of the pictures. You’re not exactly inconspicuous, you know.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “No, that’s true. And certainly not when I first met Grace.”
Helen thought back to the photos she’d seen. In many of them he’d been considerably younger and a lot less careworn, all easy grin and fluffy curls; even if their encounters were of necessity fleeting ones the two of them looked happy together, Grace’s smile wide and her eyes shining as she hugged him. “I think I’d like to meet her.”
“When the TARDIS is back to full working order I’ll take you. I’ll owe her a couple of visits; usually I drop in around New Year. Birthday celebrations, she says, for this body at least,” the Doctor told her with a wink. He went to take another drink, realised his mug was empty and frowned. “Is there any more tea in the pot?”
Over the next few weeks Helen frequently found him hunched over the computer at the kitchen table, tapping away with rapt fascination.
It seemed that this timely rekindling of his friendship with Grace had inspired a desire to see how some of his other former companions were doing and he spent his time hopping about the internet, scrolling through reams of names searching for them, his reaction upon finding somebody he recognised one of almost childlike glee that couldn’t help but prompt a smile in Helen when he waved her over to show her what he’d discovered. Jo Grant (no longer Jones, her marriage over some time ago much to the Doctor’s disappointment as it seemed she’d left the TARDIS for love) was pressuring the government about climate change, Sarah Jane Smith’s fearless investigative journalism had won several major awards and Professor Elizabeth Shaw had just had a building at University College named after her, amongst other revelations, and she was glad he’d found something to take his mind off the TARDIS and the months they still had to endure trapped in 2020. Though he didn’t try to contact any of them directly – “The pandemic’s been scary enough for everyone; the last thing any of them need is me turning up out of the blue” – he was as pleased as punch to see that they were doing so well for themselves.
“Just look at this! Ian Chesterton, still hale and hearty at… good grief. Ninety-seven!” he exclaimed one afternoon when Helen returned from a trip to the shops, barely even waiting for her to put down the heavy bags of groceries she’d lugged from the bus stop. He had offered to go but she’d discovered some time ago that it was easier and far less stressful to do it herself; the one time she’d sent him out with a list he’d come back with several things not on it that would have been completely useless in preparing a meal, such as a soldering iron and a bunch of dahlias, and forgotten the items that were. “Still teaching until just a few years ago, too. Incredible.” He leaned forwards, nose barely an inch from the screen; Helen wondered whether Time Lords got myopia. “He was one of my first companions, you know. I wasn’t happy to have him, not by a long shot; he and Barbara very peremptorily invited themselves aboard the TARDIS. Thought I was mistreating Susan in some way!” An annoyed tsk. “Honestly! As if I’d harm my own granddaughter.”
Helen took a mental step back at that pronouncement, not quite sure what to do with this sudden revelation that the Doctor had a family. Yes, they’d met his wife - well, presumably one of his wives given this new information as since it had already happened there wasn’t much chance River could be involved - but as for children… somehow she just couldn’t imagine it. Liv always joked about him being like an overgrown toddler and Helen couldn’t in all honesty disagree. She certainly couldn’t see him dealing well with the responsibility a family entailed.
Fortunately she wasn’t given a chance to enquire about it as he was rambling on, tapping at the keyboard, the white light of the screen reflected in his eyes. “…they were from your time, actually,” he was saying, bringing her properly back to the present moment. “I imagine you’d have got on like a house on fire, especially with Barbara. I wonder if she’s… oh.” The expression on his face changed abruptly and he sat back, rubbing a hand over his unshaven chin as though something had disturbed him.
“What is it?” Helen was about to start unpacking the shopping but she stopped, leaving the bag on the table, concerned by his expression.
“Barbara. She passed away nearly…” The Doctor touched the trackpad, scrolling down the page. “Nearly forty years ago in linear time. There’s a memorial post here, see? She never saw her grandchildren.” He shook his head, blinking quickly. “I had no idea.”
There was a black and white photograph of a young couple on the screen: he was a tweedy sort but handsome in a chiselled, matinee idol way, she willowy and beautiful with back-combed hair in the kind of style that had been fashionable in the early 1960s. Rather than the camera they were looking at each other, as though they had eyes for no one else, happy smiles creasing their faces. Beneath the picture were messages from friends and family, reminiscences, and other photos, of the same woman in later life, her hair and clothes different but the same humour and intelligence shining through no matter how she changed as the years went by. Helen found herself wondering where she had travelled to in the TARDIS, and what wonders she’d seen, able to feel the pull of that connection between them even though they had never met and now likely never would. “Well,” she said quietly, resting a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, “You’ve been away, haven’t you?”
“Too much.” He started tapping again, hitting the keys rather harder than necessary as his brow furrowed. “I meant to visit, but time always got away from me. Always does. Ironic, for a Time Lord. There’s never enough time…” Trailing off he glanced up at Helen and his gaze was mournful. “And then it’s too late.”
“You have a time machine,” Helen reminded him, but he shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be the same. The knowledge, the shadow… it would always be there, hanging over her, over them.” He sighed. “Better to leave it be.” A strange approximation of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth for a second. “I probably shouldn’t have started this. It just reminds me how fragile you all are.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that and so, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze she straightened and went back to putting the groceries away. “There’s probably a proper memorial somewhere for Barbara,” she said after a while, not looking at him as she stowed the cans in the cupboard. “We could take some flowers. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find out.”
“Thank you. That’s a nice idea.” She heard him swallow, and when he spoke again his voice was strangely thick, though his tone was one of awed astonishment. “She and Ian have sixteen great-grandchildren. Imagine that! Sixteen!”
“That’s very impressive.” Now Helen did glance at him and the look on his face was one she’d never seen there before, on odd combination of happiness and pain that made him seem just in that moment peculiarly vulnerable and very human. Had she been a more tactile person she would have offered him a hug; instead she moved to fill the kettle. Tea was usually the best bet in these situations. “You know,” she remarked as she set about finding mugs and teabags, trying to decide whether lapsang or Darjeeling would be appropriate and plumping for plain old English Breakfast, “I find it quite incredible the way you can just look up anyone and anything on there, find out what everyone you know is doing. It’s fascinating and slightly worrying at the same time.” She had wondered whether she should ‘google’ herself and see if she was still wanted by the police after so many years, but decided against it. There were some things it was better not to know.
“And quite dangerous if you volunteer too much information. I could have hacked into several hundred bank accounts quite easily with the most basic details.” The Doctor sounded more himself now, a disapproving edge to his words. “I mean: telling the world you’re going on holiday! That’s just asking for trouble. Not just by raising your chance of catching the virus and having to deal with utter chaos at the airport – if the country you’re flying to lets you in, of course - but announcing that your house is going to be empty for a fortnight…! Really, the naivety of humans.”
“Some humans. I’ve done no more than add my name, and that’s kept private. This social media is a very strange thing; I don’t understand why anyone would feel the need to tell complete strangers what they had for breakfast, and then take a photo of it!”
He chuckled as he took his tea from her. “Every species has its own eccentricities. And the human race has quite a few: photographing food, videoing their pets, wearing kilts in a cold climate…”
“Don’t mock the Scots, Doctor. They’re a very hardy people. My great-great-grandfather was a Cameron,” Helen informed him in a suitably lofty tone, sipping from her own mug.
“I wouldn’t dare! My friend Jamie would reprove me very fiercely if I did. Well, if he could remember me, that is.” With a sigh the Doctor turned back to the screen, looking glum.
There was obviously a story attached to that comment but she sensed it wasn’t the time to ask so instead she mused, “I suppose we should be grateful that we have all these tools for keeping in touch. The past few months would have been very lonely without them for so many people.”
“Yes, that’s true. The lockdown could never have happened in an earlier era, though I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing,” he muttered, distracted by something in front of him. Helen drained her tea and heaved the second shopping bag onto the table, but before she could begin emptying it she was brought up short when the Doctor quite suddenly froze, staring at the screen in what was approaching utter disbelief.
“What is it?” she asked, startled. “What’s the matter?” All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes were wide, his mouth half open in shock. “Doctor? Are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I - ” His voice emerged more as a croak and he quickly cleared his throat, giving an odd, strangled kind of laugh. “I think I have.”
“What do you mean? Have you found someone else?”
His eyes closed, as if in pain, and he nodded.
Returning to his side Helen was surprised to see that he had Jo Grant’s friends page open. She scanned the list, not sure what she was looking for; it wasn’t as though she was likely to recognise anyone given the Doctor’s tendency not to talk much about his previous companions until now. After a minute or two he seemed to gauge her confusion and pointed to the screen; she frowned in confusion for a second but then she saw it: halfway down was an oddly-familiar name, one that flickered in her memory. It hadn’t been all that long ago but so much had happened since that she’d not given the encounter much thought; now she found that she quite suddenly remembered where she’d heard the name before, or something very like it. Charlotte Elspeth Pollard… a face swam into her mind’s eye, a cheerful, pretty face framed by bobbed blonde hair, and she could hear a voice bearing the kind of plummy, jolly-hockey-sticks accent that reminded her of some of the girls she’d been to school with declaring,
‘I’m Charlotte Pollard, Charley to my friends’.
Wary of disrupting the timelines, she and Liv had been careful to tell the Doctor only the bare minimum about their stint in the Nine’s prison. Even without River’s involvement they would have had to tread carefully as they had no idea from where Charley had been taken, his past or future; there was always the danger of accidentally changing something that ought to have remained fixed and so they had both agreed to keep it to themselves. The Doctor had of course been curious but he knew how delicate these things were more than anyone, and as they’d soon had more important things to worry about with the Ravenous and the Eleven the awkward conversation that might have ensued never happened.
“It can’t be her,” he said now, “It can’t be. I can’t just… stumble across her, not like this.” He waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the computer. “Not Charley. She wouldn’t leave a trace, make herself so easy to find…”
“It could be a coincidence, someone with the same name. It doesn’t follow that everyone Jo knows is a friend of yours as well,” Helen pointed out.
The Doctor glowered darkly at the screen. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Well, then, why don’t you click on the link and find out?” she suggested. There was no photograph alongside the name, just a view of some nebula or other, stars on an inky black background. It could be a clue, or complete chance. “Then you’ll know one way or the other, won’t you?”
His hand twitched, hovering above the trackpad. “But what will I do if it is her?” he asked, voice this time very small and uncertain. He glanced up at her again and she was shocked to see a trace of fear cross his features. That wasn’t an emotion she normally associated with the Doctor; he was the one who gave the monsters nightmares. “What will I say? I didn’t think I’d ever see her again; we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”
“You don’t have to say or do anything,” Helen reminded him. “You can just look, as you’ve been doing with the others.”
“I know, but… it’s Charley.” There was something in the way he said that name, in the sudden brightness of his eyes, the sad smile that touched his lips, which told of a relationship that had been something more; she’d never seen him look like that when he spoke of anyone else, not even Grace. In an apparently unconscious movement his fingers caressed the name on the screen in front of him. “My Charley. My Edwardian Adventuress.”
“You still miss her, don’t you?” The question didn’t really have to be asked: the answer was right there on his face.
He nodded. “Of course. I miss each and every one of you when you’re gone. But Charley was…”
“Special?” she prompted gently.
“You’re all that. But yes.” He took a deep breath, his blue gaze pained. “Charley was one of a kind. One of the best.”
For the second time in half an hour, Helen was assailed by an urge to hug him but again she held back, her natural reticence and awkwardness with physical affection as always overriding her desire to comfort. “Find out if it is her,” she said instead. “It’ll haunt you if you don’t. And if it is… you never know, this could be the universe’s way of giving you a second chance.”
“Or it could just be laughing at me.” The Doctor shook his head. “No, I can’t. I can’t.” Abruptly he pushed back his chair, getting to his feet, and ran an agitated hand through his untidy hair. “Digging up the past is never a good idea. What happened before she left was so difficult for us both; I doubt she’d thank me for raking it up again. And besides, she told me not to look for her. I can’t disregard her wishes.” Firmly he closed the laptop and turned away. “Thank you for letting me use your account, Helen. I appreciate it, but I don’t think I’ll be needing it again.”
With a sigh Helen watched him cross the flat, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, a despondent look on his face; a moment later he disappeared into the bedroom that had been Liv’s and now housed the makeshift laboratory he’d brought down from the attic, amongst other things. She was never entirely sure what he got up to in there and didn’t like to ask; there was still a bed but she was sure he rarely used it for sleeping given that in the few glimpses she’d got over the past few months it had always been covered with junk. When the door shut behind him she regarded the peeling paint for a while, tapping her fingers on the table, before coming to a decision.
Pulling the laptop towards her she lifted the lid, a couple of quick clicks taking her to the profile the Doctor had been too scared to look at. There were no personal photos on the account but its owner had been ‘tagged’ in a couple of others and Helen brought them up; they were promotional pictures for an organisation called ‘A Changing World’ and there, at the back of a group of smiling people was a face she recognised. Though she was older and her hair was darker, left to grow longer than it had been when they had met in the prison, it was definitely Charley Pollard.
For a couple of seconds she wondered whether what she was about to do was an entirely good idea, but then she remembered the expression on the Doctor’s face when he’d spoken Charley’s name and it was enough to spur her on; she clicked the private messaging option and after taking a few moments to think, began to type.
She wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t receive an immediate reply.
People were busy, making attempts to restart their lives now that they were no longer under virtual house arrest; they had more immediate concerns. It didn’t even bother her too much when a few weeks passed with still no answer; Charley’s account hadn’t been updated regularly and her last interaction had been with Jo at Christmas, before the pandemic came to turn the world upside down, so it was perfectly possible that she just hadn’t seen the message. Maybe she never would, but at least Helen, having had to live with the Doctor after his chance discovery and watch him once more moping about the flat, had tried.
And then, out of the blue one morning at the end of October, a good two and a half months after she’d initially made contact, the laptop pinged with a new arrival to her inbox.
It wasn’t much; Charley sounded cagey, as though she half remembered their encounter but wasn’t entirely sure it had been real. Helen could understand that; she didn’t know how River had returned Charley and Bliss to their proper times but she had a suspicion some memory-altering might have been involved, especially in Bliss’s case as she didn’t appear to even know who the Doctor was. She did her best to make her reply as genuine as possible, trying to include information that only those involved would know, and to her relief their next exchanges were rather less guarded. Deliberately, she made no mention of the Doctor, deciding it was best for now not to let Charley know he was there; Charley, for her part, didn’t seem at all surprised that there were yet more of his companions living in twenty-first century London having already it seemed encountered a few of them.
So far so good, but then came the inevitable: a suggestion that they meet somewhere for coffee.
Liv was in the flat when Helen received it. “So, what’re you going to do?” she asked, peering at the screen over Helen’s shoulder. “Are you going to tell her he’s here? And, if you do, are you going to tell him that you’ve been messaging her?”
Helen bit her lip. “D’you think they’ll be angry?”
“Well, you did say she’d told him not to try and find her. That sounds pretty final to me.”
“I know, but… you’ve seen him, Liv! He’s miserable. He’s talking about moving into the TARDIS again, to stay there until she’s fully restored.” Helen sighed. “I don’t want him to go. Yes, he drives me mad on a daily basis, but… well, his calls with Grace have tailed off because she’s apparently ridiculously busy and he’s looked so lost lately, even more than he did before. I just wanted to do something to cheer him up a bit.”
Liv raised an eyebrow. “And you think reuniting him with an ex-companion who left under painful and mysterious circumstances will do that?”
“I don’t know! I just… I know he’s been brooding on it and I think he wants to see her again, deep down. I just got the impression that…”
“What?”
“That she…” Trailing off Helen searched for the right words. “That she means more to him than anyone else,” she said eventually.
Liv contemplated that for a few moments, folding her arms and leaning on the back of the sofa. Helen stared at the message on the screen: I’ll be up around Regent’s Park on Thursday afternoon if you’re free. It would be fun to meet. Let me know! She mentally went through her diary for the next few days, trying to remember the Doctor’s movements of late and wondering what excuse she could give to persuade him to visit the park with her. At length Liv remarked, making her jump, “OK, go for it. But if you do, I’m coming too. I want to see his face.”
“What?” Startled that her friend could read her mind so easily Helen twisted around to find that Liv was grinning. “How did you know I was going to take him with me?”
“Because that’s exactly what I’d do. And from what you’ve told me it’s the only way you’ll get them together, setting them up on a blind date.”
“It’s not a blind date! I just… won’t tell them the other will be there, that’s all.”
Liv nodded, a smirk still lurking around her lips. “Right, right. If you say so. I still want to come, though; if nothing else, you’ll need me to help deal with the fallout if it all goes wrong.”
“Oh, gosh.” Helen hadn’t thought of that. “Do you think it might?”
Straightening, Liv’s face twisted in a grimace. “I’ve had enough painful break-ups in my life to know it’s a very distinct possibility. Better that he has some friends around just in case.”
With that pronouncement she headed for the door, leaving Helen wondering whether she really had done the right thing after all.
“I don’t understand all the urgency,” the Doctor protested a few days later as he was hustled down the stairs and out into the street, Helen checking she had her purse, keys, umbrella and a couple of masks in case they were needed. “It’s going to rain! Wouldn’t you rather go for a walk when the weather’s better?”
“I feel like one now,” she said, ignoring Liv’s little smile as she made sure the front door was shut behind them. “A bit of rain won’t hurt us. I need some fresh air, and so do you.”
He pouted at that, proving once again that it was perfectly possible for a grown man (or rather a millennium-plus Time Lord) to look like a thwarted five-year-old. “I do not! And I was busy; you interrupted some vital work - ”
“Doctor,” Helen told him firmly, grasping him by the shoulders and turning him bodily in the direction of the Marylebone Road, a route he had taken more times than she could count during their initial period of residence in the parallel universe when he’d had a tendency to spend hours, if not days, mooching gloomily about the paths and terraces of Regent’s Park, “Whatever it is you’ve been doing I very much doubt it can be that important and as it filled the flat with green smoke we all need some air, so come on.”
“It was extremely important, actually,” the Doctor groused, kicking at a particularly large stone at the edge of the pavement. “You were complaining about the state of the oven so I thought I’d whip something up to clean it. That stuff you get in the shops is never strong enough. The formula just needs a few tweaks, that’s all.”
“What kind of tweaks?” Liv asked, a faint hint of trepidation in her voice. The last time he’d tried to magic up something similar, to get rid of the rust on the hinges of the back door, the mixture had been so powerful that the hinges themselves melted, as well as every other piece of metal in the vicinity, leaving them with a gaping hole and useless door propped up against the frame and no hope of calling out anyone to fix it because the lockdown was still in full force. He’d been lucky that the weather that Easter had been unusually mild and so no one really minded but it had made security a nightmare and Helen didn’t fancy a repeat performance.
He shrugged. “I just need to alter the ingredients slightly. I may have used a bit too much acid - ”
“Acid? Oh, my goodness… Do we still have an oven?” Helen enquired, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“Of course!” He winced, chewing on his lip and trying not to look too guilty. “I just… might have burnt a hole in the bottom, that’s all.”
“What?!”
“It’s OK! Really! The smell will wear off, and I’m sure it won’t affect the taste of anything, though it might be a good idea to leave it to dry out for a bit, just in case. For a month or two.”
“Oh, Doctor…!” With a sigh, because she couldn’t really in all honesty be as angry with him as she should knowing he always meant well, Helen added a new cooker to the mental shopping list she’d been preparing. She just hoped they had enough in the kitty to cover it. “Looks like it’ll be takeaway for dinner tonight.”
“No different from any other time he’s tried to cook, then,” Liv remarked and the Doctor looked affronted.
“I’ll have you know that my cooking skills are considerably improved, and somewhat in advance of yours, Ms. Chenka,” he informed her with a theatrical sniff.
“Given that Liv’s are non-existent, that’s not saying much,” Helen countered, grinning when it was Liv’s turn to look put out. “Well, you did manage to completely incinerate a harmless slice of bread. And burn soup.”
“That bread would’ve been fine if he hadn’t messed with the toaster,” Liv retorted, glaring at the Doctor. “Number three on the dial should’ve been a moderate heat, not the equivalent of a solar flare.”
“Good point. And you did promise me faithfully you wouldn’t touch the toaster,” Helen added as they headed for the York Bridge and Queen Mary’s Gardens, were she’d arranged to meet Charley.
“I know, I know, but I thought that would make it better, more efficient,” he insisted, unrepentant. “Don’t you want better toast?”
“I’m quite happy with ordinary, inefficient toast. I mean: toast is just toast! It doesn’t have to be anything else.” Pretending to adjust her glove she peered surreptitiously at her watch and increased her speed slightly; it had taken so much persuasion to get him out of the house that they were running late. She hoped Charley would wait.
Of course he’d noticed, as she should have known he would. His eyes narrowed as he shot her a sidelong glance. “Are we in a hurry?”
“No! No, not at all.” Helen gave him what she hoped was a genuine-looking smile. “I just wondered what the time was.”
Naturally the Doctor wasn’t taken in by that. He could be extremely vague and obtuse when he wanted but never when anyone else did, something she had discovered fairly soon after meeting him. “Helen, you’re running,” he said, and she realised she’d broken into a jog.
She laughed nervously. “Oh, yes. So I am. It must be the cold; trying to warm myself up.” He opened his mouth but before he could make any comment she spotted the refreshment kiosk up ahead. “Oh, look! Why don’t you get me a coffee; that should help. I think you owe me one for ruining the oven,” she added sternly when he started to object.
He sighed. “I suppose I do. How about you, Liv? Do you want anything?”
Liv exchanged a glance with Helen. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll come with you,” she said. “I never know what to choose.”
“I thought you always had a mochaccino?” the Doctor asked, surprised, when she grabbed his sleeve and started tugging him away, having agreed that she would keep him out of the way until Helen had had a chance to speak to Charley.
“Well, yeah, but I fancied a change and that menu board is massive. Come on.” As they left Liv waggled her eyebrows at Helen and nodded in the direction of the broad path that led to the Triton fountain at the other end of the garden. Helen barely had a chance to work out what she meant when behind her a familiar voice enquired slightly hesitantly,
“Helen? It is, isn’t it? Helen Sinclair?”
As they walked away Helen could hear Liv quizzing the Doctor over whether he actually had any money in his bottomless pockets; a quick furtive glance over her shoulder confirmed that they’d disappeared from view behind some bushes and she plastered on a smile, finally turning to face the woman she’d arranged to meet. Charley was frowning slightly but her expression cleared when she could see Helen properly and she relaxed into a smile as well.
“Oh, that’s a relief,” she said, sounding just as she had when she’d been thrown into their cell in the prison. “I thought for a minute I might have missed you, or been the victim of a hoax. Though I admit, it would have been an extremely specific and detailed hoax.” She was dressed almost completely in black, her face pale against the backdrop of her coat and the dark brown of her hair, the only splash of colour an olive green scarf wound around her neck. Helen wasn’t sure of the fabric but it looked a little like velvet. Though their first meeting had been just a few months ago for her and Liv, Charley seemed to have aged at least twenty years, her eyes surrounded by fine lines, the corners of her mouth beginning to droop. She offered a hand before belatedly remembering social distancing and letting it drop back to her side. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, though as I told you online, I don’t really remember all that much about what happened.”
“That’s all right. None of us do,” Helen lied. “It was a rather strange experience.”
Charley laughed slightly. “Very true. And I’ve definitely had more than my share of strange experiences. It’s a description that would cover the majority of life with the Doctor, I think. As for the rest of it..” Her face clouded and she shook her head, seeming to steel herself for a second before summoning up resolve from somewhere within, the smile returning. “I may not remember much about the prison but I definitely remember you, and… wasn’t someone else there too?”
“There was a girl named Bliss. The Nine seemed to think she was one of the Doctor’s companions but she’d never met him.”
“Really? Funny; I’d forgotten all about her. No, there was another person… a friend of yours, I think. Small, dark-haired. A bit bolshy, as my mother would say.”
“Oh, you mean Liv, Liv Chenka. Yes, she was there. She came with me today, actually,” Helen added carefully, biting back a smile at the accurate description. “Thought it might be nice if we all have a bit of a catch up, now we have the chance. Relive those strange experiences. She’ll be here in a minute. Just gone for coffee,” she explained when Charley shot her a look of surprise that they hadn’t waited for her. “Comes from a hot climate; gets cold easily.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll go and get one myself and then we can find somewhere to sit and talk.” Charley rummaged in her bag to find her purse. “I won’t be long; I don’t think there’s much of a queue.”
She’d taken a few steps towards the kiosk before Helen could stop her, and as bad luck would have it just at that moment Liv and the Doctor emerged onto the path, her friend arguing animatedly with the Time Lord about something while he just nodded and offered a smooth rebuttal of whatever it was she was contesting, gesturing towards the rose garden with one of the corrugated coffee cups he was holding. They’d returned far quicker than she’d anticipated and desperately Helen grabbed for Charley’s coat sleeve, trying to drag her back, the other woman staring at her as though she’d run mad.
“What on Earth is the matter?” she demanded. “What do you think you’re doing? I don’t - ”
She was cut off by the sound of crumpling paper and liquid splashing all over the floor.
Charley spun round, her sleeve tearing from Helen’s grip and her eyes widened. The Doctor stood ten feet away, the coffee he’d just dropped soaking into the leather of his boots and even the hems of his trousers, and he was staring at them as though he was witnessing a vision, his face ashen, the expression it bore a horrible mixture of hope and despair. For her part, Charley looked no better, turning so white that for a moment Helen feared she was about to faint, her mouth dropping open in amazement.
“Oh my…” Her voice cracked and she had to swallow several times before it would pass her lips as anything other than a rasp. “Oh, my God.
“Doctor… is …that you?”