I
Winter
I run my finger down the spine of the book. I can’t face opening it. Not now, maybe not ever again.
I used to love that book. My mum would sit and read it to me, when I couldn’t sleep. Back before I could even read, she’d show me the pictures, strange and exotic and far away, revealing the knowledge contained within those unreadable traces of ink below. Words. That was when I first fell in love with them, when I sought to understand them.
After she died, I wouldn’t part with that book. I took it everywhere, couldn’t face letting go of it. But I wouldn’t open it, wouldn’t read a single line of it, wouldn’t dare glance over a single picture, because I knew it would remind me of her. Eventually I managed to. I even did it with a smile.
There’s a different reason, this time. The reason is that I’ve always loved that book. I don’t just have memories of that book, but of how much I loved it. So of course, of course I can’t open it now. I’ve learnt this lesson already. The things I love… they leave me cold and empty. I don’t want to stare at those pictures and feel empty. The memory is all I have, and I’m not going to spoil it.
Still, I want to. I want desperately to turn over the cover, just to be sure, just to check. But I can’t. I can’t. I close my eyes, repeat it in my head until I start to believe it. I can’t open that book. I’m never travelling to those places, never doing those things. Whatever purpose I had has gone now, and those places are nothing now there’s no one to explore them with.
What was it that Auden said? The stars are not wanted now: put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. I think I did that at school… or maybe I’m just remembering Four Weddings and a Funeral. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because the words reach out to me. I look up at the sky and see even the most beautiful things rotting before my eyes. Suddenly, I find myself pitying that man, that poet, whilst – disturbingly – envying his peace.
I cast my eyes off the book, knowing that this isn’t doing me any good. I get out a glass, go to make myself a drink. My hand pauses over the fridge. No… I shake my head, and get out a glass, heading for the tap instead. I just drink water now because it’s easier.
Decisions became difficult for me about a week after it all happened, just as I was beginning to process it. Not the big decisions – I’ve been avoiding them – but the little ones. What shall I have for dinner? Should I go and visit Gran tomorrow? What shall I wear today? Is it time to go to bed yet? When’s cleaning day? Every time I go to the shops I find myself wavering over each potential item, and notice my hand shaking as I’m doing it. No one understands why these decisions are difficult for me. No one understands why, when they ask me whether I want a small tea or a regular tea, I burst into tears.
I take a sip of the water, and my stomach complains, so I open the biscuit tin and take out a malted milk. As I bite into it, I realise how much I suddenly don’t want it. I digest the crumbs and my stomach complains about that, too, so I throw the rest in the bin. As it lands on yesterday’s carrot peel, I change my mind again, but it’s too late to do anything about that.
I don’t eat well these days. I make my meals because that strict routine is all I have left, but I usually throw them away. I get constant cramps in my stomach, which surprises me, because this month’s shark week has been decidedly absent. Apparently that’s related to stress. Everything, it seems, is related to stress.
I walk around the kitchen a bit, listening to the noises it makes. Slam. Beep-beep, beep-beep. Drip. Drip. I try to turn off the tap, but it won’t go all the way. Little droplets keep escaping, like there’s just too many to keep contained.
As I walk around, I feel the weight of my own body. I always feel that, these days. I feel my shoulders sagging to the height of my chest, my head resting on my neck, my feet as they’re pulled to the ground. The human body, constantly trying to escape gravity, its oldest enemy. I don’t know how I’ve managed to go my whole life without feeling the weight of my existence, and now I can’t seem to shake it off.
You should exercise, says my dead boyfriend, behind me. I’m not mad. I know he isn’t there, and that’s why I don’t turn around. But my mind thinks he is, and it’s retrieving a conversation we had a few weeks before it happened, before he had that stupid, stupid accident.
“I do exercise,” I say, smiling, remembering. “I walk. Walking’s the best form of exercise there is, my mum told me that.”
But if it was working, says Danny, carefully avoiding the perilous topic of my mother, then you wouldn’t be complaining, would you?
“Then what would you suggest, P.E.?” I tease.
I really shouldn’t let you spend time with him. I’m amazed that he’s able to joke about it, when it’s probably what he believes. No, as a maths teacher – just to remind you, a maths teacher – I would recommend adding some sit-ups onto the start and end of your day, and subtracting the hour you spend watching Waterloo Road.
I cringe. “That was corny as hell, Danny.”
Waterloo Road is corny as hell.
“All right, all right, you win. I’ll do one sit-up tomorrow.”
One?
“One.”
I need to have words with your P.E. teacher.
“You are my P.E. teacher.”
I turn around to kiss him, and he’s not there. I shut my eyes, try to continue anyway.
“And remember, you… you said… you…” I give up. I’ve forgotten the rest of that conversation. When I open my eyes again, I discover that tears are streaming out of them. I didn’t cry when he died. I didn’t cry at the funeral; I didn’t cry after. But once I’d stood on the edge of that volcano, once I’d gone to Hell and back and said goodbye to Danny face to face, I couldn’t stop the tears coming.
I look up, and I see a post-it note left out on the door frame. Robin Hood, it reads, in my hand-writing. I’m sure there was a point to that, once, so I leave it there, giving up on the basic motor skills required to move it. I see another post-it note: Lying… I remember that I’d lied to Danny about the exercise, too. I didn’t tell him that my life was constantly in danger, that I was constantly running away. I romanticised it all.
My phone buzzes on the worktop, startling me. I get headaches easily these days, and ringtones are the worst, so I keep it permanently on silent now, and only take the calls I can face. Slowly, I approach the worktop, glance down at the caller ID. Kate. I sigh, knowing I should take it, because if there’s one person who’s got me through this last month, it’s Kate Stewart. But in the time it takes to think about it, the line goes through to answerphone. I’m glad it’s on silent, so I don’t have to hear my voice as it was before, young and happy and weightless. Kate doesn’t leave a message, but a few seconds later, a text comes through.
Need you. Usual place. Not a nice one.
I throw on a scarf and head for the Tower of London.
***
I’m glad I’m on my motorbike. I don’t walk anywhere these days, because people look at me. That’s the problem with being a woman and dealing with this kind of thing. You forget to do a few basic things – to make yourself up in the morning, to do something with your hair, to smile when smiled at – and people notice. People judge. Why don’t you put on some foundation, at least? It’s little effort for a big result.
People know when you’re grieving. It’s like they can smell it on you, and the more people looking at you, the dirtier you feel. People don’t smile, either. Some people even glare. I just don’t understand that. Why do people glare? Just what about this is my fault?
The world is a mess. It’s been a month, I think, though I’m not good at keeping track of time. The world has had a month to recover from its dead returning, covered in cybernetics, drained of emotion, and blowing themselves up in the sky. The world has coped with that just about as badly as you’d imagine.
The most disturbing thing about it all is the graveyards. No one goes near them. They’re not graveyards anymore, but ditches. The doors to tombs are left open like some sort of warped biblical parody, and gravestones have collapsed in on their uneven ground. There are no bodies anymore, except for the recently deceased, and they’re all in transit because funerals are overbooked. Not murders, not accidents, not heart attacks. Suicides. There are so many reasons for that, and I’m not listing any of them.
Then there are the religions. Some have utterly disbanded, their leaders giving up and searching for meaning elsewhere. Others have claimed those terrible events as their own. One Evangelical Christian group is telling everyone that the End of Days has already happened and we’ve all been left behind, us sinners, in Hell. They don’t know how right they are, because I’ve stared right into Hell and this, this is worse.
No one quite understands what happened. But, I become aware as I slow down and turn into the Tower, everyone realises that it was a terrible thing.
***
Kate greets me with that smile I’ve become accustomed to. Smart, short-lived, supportive, telling me she’s going to be strong for me but I don’t have to be strong back. I try to smile anyway, and I realise, shying away, that I look like that quiet little girl at the back of the class. How times change.
I head into the main hall, but Kate taps my shoulder, redirects me.
“This way, today.”
I frown as she leads me down a stairwell, into a part of the Tower I’ve never been to. I feel suddenly stressed and suffocated. For the first time in my life, I feel claustrophobic, and I have no idea why.
“Through here.”
Kate pushes open a door, and I walk into the room. We’ve moved, from the stone corridors of an ancient monument to some sort of hospital ward. The walls are that indecisive shade caught between light blue and green. The lights are a little bit too light. The only music in the world is a beeping, constant and piercing and threatening to end at any moment. I know, instinctively, that the beeping is the song of someone’s heart.
“Daniel Wells,” says Kate, gesturing to the bed. “This case is utterly unique, I’ve – we’ve – never seen anything like it. McGillop suggested we use someone with experience, Osgood suggested we use someone with sensitivity. You’re one of the few people out there to possess both.”
I take a step forward, wondering what’s so special about some dying man, and then I see. He’s old; so old, bones pushing through into a skeletal face. Pale grey, not the shade of illness, but of what comes after. I’ve seen that colour before. I saw it when they asked me to identify my mother’s body, and I saw it when my boyfriend told me to kill him again.
I’ve seen that contraption before, too. I’ve seen that silver armour, the helmet his colourless face is enclosed in, the smooth industrial handles holding it together. Kate Stewart has brought me to the last living Cyberman.
Suddenly I’m numb again, tearless, like the last month hasn’t happened.
“Mr Wells died of cancer,” Kate explains. “Two years ago. He turned up on his wife’s doorstep, told her it must be the end of time, because he’d come back to her. Told her how painful it was.”
“A miracle and a nightmare,” I find myself musing. “I can’t even imagine how she felt.” And yet, I can.
“They think there was some sort of fault, a failed upgrade. The emotional inhibitor was switched off and he couldn’t network with the other Cybermen. So when the order was given for them all to, well…”
“…explode,” I say, shamelessly.
“Yes, when the order was given, he didn’t receive it. He looked out the window and watched it happen. They called the police straight away, and as out of their depth as ever, they came to us. We’ve had him here ever since, trying to see if we can operate on him, but it’s impossible. He’s asked us permission to end his life. We… don’t want a court case.” She looks to the floor. “We just needed a second opinion. Someone impartial, but someone… well, human.”
“You’re human,” I point out.
“Only just. And there’s no one more human than you.” She smiles again. I don’t smile back this time.
“His wife?”
“She’s just slipped out momentarily.” She glances behind me, sees a shape behind the door. “In fact, there she is. I’ll… step outside, give you two a moment to talk it over.”
I take a deep breath. I remind myself that for once, I’m the most fortunate person in the room. The woman, whose name I haven’t even been told, enters. She’s smart, formal, bright-cheeked. I wonder how she does it, but I can’t bring myself to envy her, not here.
“Mrs… Wells?” I ask.
“Jill,” she replies, and I realise she hasn’t succeeded that well. The grief has taken her voice instead, made it small and shaken and filled it with a deep, deep sadness.
“Hi.” I offer a handshake. “I’m Clara Oswald. Kate brought me here to…” What the hell did Kate bring me here for? “To talk things over with you.”
“We met in The White Horse,” she says out of nowhere. “I still remember the song that was playing. The sweet memories you gave-a me… you can’t beat the memories you gave-a me.”
“Dean Martin,” I say. My Gran’s a fan.
“The last two years have been the worst days of my life. I swore to myself that if by some miracle I ever got him back, I’d never let him go again. And yet here I am, doing just that. Betraying my own heart.”
“Take one… fresh and… tender kiss…”
We both turn around, startled. Eyes closed, Daniel Wells is, in a weak whisper, singing. Jill rushes to his side, kneels down with impressive agility, grips his cybernetic hand. “I thought you were asleep, darling! You should have told us-“
“It… was the… song,” he wheezes, and Jill begins to cry on him, hopelessly and with no dignity at all, just like all people cry when they truly mean it.
“I can’t leave you,” she sobs. “I can’t leave you now.”
“You left me a long time ago,” he assures her, using the last of his strength to stroke her face with his finger. “This is just closure.”
There’s a moment of silence, a moment in which I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen. Then, something changes. Something in the air, like the room itself is making a decision. I sense a sudden, bitter chill filling the room, and at last Daniel speaks.
“Sing to me.”
Jill sits up, keeps one hand where it is, and noiselessly begins to move the other towards a machine. I know what she’s doing. I back away, towards the door, ready to call Kate, but then I stop. I can’t move, I can’t… bring myself to move.
“One girl… one boy… some grief… some joy.” Her hand wobbles over a switch. I walk up to her, steadying my own hand, and place it on top of hers. Together, we flick it. “Memories…” she continues, smiling at her husband, reassuring him, “are made of this.”
In what at least looks like a painless moment, his eyes flicker shut. Jill doesn’t do what I expect her to do. She doesn’t break down, doesn’t scream. She wipes her face, stands up, leans over him, and kisses his forehead. “Goodbye, Danny,” she says, and all of a sudden it’s too much. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I’ve just seen, or what’s about to happen, or what this means for me or whether I’ve done the right thing and I realise I’ve just made a decision, a huge decision, and I wasn’t ready for it, and I have to do something now, I, I have to help someone else, I have to…
And before I can process what’s happening, Jill is hugging me, holding me, when it should be the other way around. She’s telling me that it will be all right, that it’ll all get better and that I’ll get to live happily one day, and all the questions leave my head, replaced by one: how? How is this happening? And I hate myself for not coping, for letting this woman down on the worst and most important day of her life. I hate myself. I hate my life.
***
“I’m so sorry,” says Kate, and by the look on her face she means it. I’ve become so good at reading faces, because I’ve learnt to make most of them now. “I don’t know what I was doing. I thought, after you going through everything with Danny… maybe meeting someone in a similar position would help you, but I didn’t think about the…” And she just trails off.
“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s not. I say that a lot these days. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing lately.” Kate makes a fist, looks like she’s about to hit something but it just sort of shakes in the air in front of her. “I keep making these, these – stupid – decisions, and I look back and I wonder, how did I do that? I can’t afford to do that, I’ll end up getting someone killed.”
“You need some time off, Kate. You’ve been through a lot. You need to rest.”
“I can’t rest. Every time I lay down and close my eyes, I feel like I’m falling through the clouds. I can feel the ground getting closer, the wind around me, my stomach flies and it’s… it’s awful.” She sits down and runs her hands through her hair, messing it up. “I’m sorry. You’ve got so much on your plate; I’m being so selfish.”
“It’s fine,” I say again.
She pauses, lifts her head, and sighs. “Osgood left us yesterday. She was never the same after that day. We told her she’d lost her sister and she started working, so constantly and furiously… and, astonishingly, happily. So full of smiles, and laughter… so fake. She was fooling herself, the poor girl. Then just after we briefed her on this case, and she went in and saw it for herself, it was like it all caught up with her. She lifted up a vial and lobbed it across the room, and she told me she was sorry, and then she left. No one knows where she’s gone. I don’t know if we’ll even see her again.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I wish I could bring myself to say more.
“This world… maybe those mad sects are right. Maybe this is Hell.”
“Hell is a state of mind,” I recall from a book I read once. “And we’re all trapped in it. The world just needs a psychiatrist.”
Kate chuckles very, very softly. “The world needs a Doctor.”
Before I can stop myself, I’m telling her something I swore I’d never tell anyone.
“I lied to him. The Doctor, I mean. I told him that Danny was still alive, so that he could move on without me. It breaks my heart every day but it’s the one thing I’ve done that I can be really, properly proud of. But I think he’s a long, long way away now.”
“Do you know where?”
“He went back home, he said, to Gallifrey. He’s probably King - or Queen, if he's upset someone and got himself executed, which is always a likelihood, what with him constantly sticking his foot in his mouth. He, or she, will probably be sitting on a throne, trying to act all formal and giving orders, and no one will be taking him seriously. He’ll ask for a comfy chair, lots of tea, and probably his own orchestra.” I find that I’m smiling. Without meaning to, without trying to, and without pretending. “Every day he’ll be making things worse for himself, but he won’t care. Because while all the old grey-haired men around him grow furious and plot against him, the children below will feel safe, protected, loved. They’ll have someone to look up to, and to laugh at. I miss that, Kate. I miss laughing at him, and I miss trying to be the good person he was. But I’m glad he’s able to carry on without me. I’m so glad I managed to tell one last lie and make it a good one.”
Kate nods. She stands up and puts on a scarf, because she has no words to respond with, except for:
“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas Eve.”
“My Christmas Eve was ruined the moment I woke up, Kate. Thank you for trying to save it.”
Before she can escape, I give her a hug. I cry, just for a second, knowing that no one will ever have to know I did.
***
I place my book on the shelf, I climb into my cold sheets, and I turn off the light on my bedside table. It’s the night before Christmas and I’ve got to pretend in front of Gran, to pretend I’m glad to be here and that everything is okay for once, when I know already that it won’t be. It can’t be. Nothing will be okay again, and for a moment that’s the only thing I’m sure of.
As it’s Christmas, I lay back and naively, childishly, make a wish. I wish for a miracle.
On the other side of the universe, he hears me.
Part II >
I used to love that book. My mum would sit and read it to me, when I couldn’t sleep. Back before I could even read, she’d show me the pictures, strange and exotic and far away, revealing the knowledge contained within those unreadable traces of ink below. Words. That was when I first fell in love with them, when I sought to understand them.
After she died, I wouldn’t part with that book. I took it everywhere, couldn’t face letting go of it. But I wouldn’t open it, wouldn’t read a single line of it, wouldn’t dare glance over a single picture, because I knew it would remind me of her. Eventually I managed to. I even did it with a smile.
There’s a different reason, this time. The reason is that I’ve always loved that book. I don’t just have memories of that book, but of how much I loved it. So of course, of course I can’t open it now. I’ve learnt this lesson already. The things I love… they leave me cold and empty. I don’t want to stare at those pictures and feel empty. The memory is all I have, and I’m not going to spoil it.
Still, I want to. I want desperately to turn over the cover, just to be sure, just to check. But I can’t. I can’t. I close my eyes, repeat it in my head until I start to believe it. I can’t open that book. I’m never travelling to those places, never doing those things. Whatever purpose I had has gone now, and those places are nothing now there’s no one to explore them with.
What was it that Auden said? The stars are not wanted now: put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. I think I did that at school… or maybe I’m just remembering Four Weddings and a Funeral. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because the words reach out to me. I look up at the sky and see even the most beautiful things rotting before my eyes. Suddenly, I find myself pitying that man, that poet, whilst – disturbingly – envying his peace.
I cast my eyes off the book, knowing that this isn’t doing me any good. I get out a glass, go to make myself a drink. My hand pauses over the fridge. No… I shake my head, and get out a glass, heading for the tap instead. I just drink water now because it’s easier.
Decisions became difficult for me about a week after it all happened, just as I was beginning to process it. Not the big decisions – I’ve been avoiding them – but the little ones. What shall I have for dinner? Should I go and visit Gran tomorrow? What shall I wear today? Is it time to go to bed yet? When’s cleaning day? Every time I go to the shops I find myself wavering over each potential item, and notice my hand shaking as I’m doing it. No one understands why these decisions are difficult for me. No one understands why, when they ask me whether I want a small tea or a regular tea, I burst into tears.
I take a sip of the water, and my stomach complains, so I open the biscuit tin and take out a malted milk. As I bite into it, I realise how much I suddenly don’t want it. I digest the crumbs and my stomach complains about that, too, so I throw the rest in the bin. As it lands on yesterday’s carrot peel, I change my mind again, but it’s too late to do anything about that.
I don’t eat well these days. I make my meals because that strict routine is all I have left, but I usually throw them away. I get constant cramps in my stomach, which surprises me, because this month’s shark week has been decidedly absent. Apparently that’s related to stress. Everything, it seems, is related to stress.
I walk around the kitchen a bit, listening to the noises it makes. Slam. Beep-beep, beep-beep. Drip. Drip. I try to turn off the tap, but it won’t go all the way. Little droplets keep escaping, like there’s just too many to keep contained.
As I walk around, I feel the weight of my own body. I always feel that, these days. I feel my shoulders sagging to the height of my chest, my head resting on my neck, my feet as they’re pulled to the ground. The human body, constantly trying to escape gravity, its oldest enemy. I don’t know how I’ve managed to go my whole life without feeling the weight of my existence, and now I can’t seem to shake it off.
You should exercise, says my dead boyfriend, behind me. I’m not mad. I know he isn’t there, and that’s why I don’t turn around. But my mind thinks he is, and it’s retrieving a conversation we had a few weeks before it happened, before he had that stupid, stupid accident.
“I do exercise,” I say, smiling, remembering. “I walk. Walking’s the best form of exercise there is, my mum told me that.”
But if it was working, says Danny, carefully avoiding the perilous topic of my mother, then you wouldn’t be complaining, would you?
“Then what would you suggest, P.E.?” I tease.
I really shouldn’t let you spend time with him. I’m amazed that he’s able to joke about it, when it’s probably what he believes. No, as a maths teacher – just to remind you, a maths teacher – I would recommend adding some sit-ups onto the start and end of your day, and subtracting the hour you spend watching Waterloo Road.
I cringe. “That was corny as hell, Danny.”
Waterloo Road is corny as hell.
“All right, all right, you win. I’ll do one sit-up tomorrow.”
One?
“One.”
I need to have words with your P.E. teacher.
“You are my P.E. teacher.”
I turn around to kiss him, and he’s not there. I shut my eyes, try to continue anyway.
“And remember, you… you said… you…” I give up. I’ve forgotten the rest of that conversation. When I open my eyes again, I discover that tears are streaming out of them. I didn’t cry when he died. I didn’t cry at the funeral; I didn’t cry after. But once I’d stood on the edge of that volcano, once I’d gone to Hell and back and said goodbye to Danny face to face, I couldn’t stop the tears coming.
I look up, and I see a post-it note left out on the door frame. Robin Hood, it reads, in my hand-writing. I’m sure there was a point to that, once, so I leave it there, giving up on the basic motor skills required to move it. I see another post-it note: Lying… I remember that I’d lied to Danny about the exercise, too. I didn’t tell him that my life was constantly in danger, that I was constantly running away. I romanticised it all.
My phone buzzes on the worktop, startling me. I get headaches easily these days, and ringtones are the worst, so I keep it permanently on silent now, and only take the calls I can face. Slowly, I approach the worktop, glance down at the caller ID. Kate. I sigh, knowing I should take it, because if there’s one person who’s got me through this last month, it’s Kate Stewart. But in the time it takes to think about it, the line goes through to answerphone. I’m glad it’s on silent, so I don’t have to hear my voice as it was before, young and happy and weightless. Kate doesn’t leave a message, but a few seconds later, a text comes through.
Need you. Usual place. Not a nice one.
I throw on a scarf and head for the Tower of London.
***
I’m glad I’m on my motorbike. I don’t walk anywhere these days, because people look at me. That’s the problem with being a woman and dealing with this kind of thing. You forget to do a few basic things – to make yourself up in the morning, to do something with your hair, to smile when smiled at – and people notice. People judge. Why don’t you put on some foundation, at least? It’s little effort for a big result.
People know when you’re grieving. It’s like they can smell it on you, and the more people looking at you, the dirtier you feel. People don’t smile, either. Some people even glare. I just don’t understand that. Why do people glare? Just what about this is my fault?
The world is a mess. It’s been a month, I think, though I’m not good at keeping track of time. The world has had a month to recover from its dead returning, covered in cybernetics, drained of emotion, and blowing themselves up in the sky. The world has coped with that just about as badly as you’d imagine.
The most disturbing thing about it all is the graveyards. No one goes near them. They’re not graveyards anymore, but ditches. The doors to tombs are left open like some sort of warped biblical parody, and gravestones have collapsed in on their uneven ground. There are no bodies anymore, except for the recently deceased, and they’re all in transit because funerals are overbooked. Not murders, not accidents, not heart attacks. Suicides. There are so many reasons for that, and I’m not listing any of them.
Then there are the religions. Some have utterly disbanded, their leaders giving up and searching for meaning elsewhere. Others have claimed those terrible events as their own. One Evangelical Christian group is telling everyone that the End of Days has already happened and we’ve all been left behind, us sinners, in Hell. They don’t know how right they are, because I’ve stared right into Hell and this, this is worse.
No one quite understands what happened. But, I become aware as I slow down and turn into the Tower, everyone realises that it was a terrible thing.
***
Kate greets me with that smile I’ve become accustomed to. Smart, short-lived, supportive, telling me she’s going to be strong for me but I don’t have to be strong back. I try to smile anyway, and I realise, shying away, that I look like that quiet little girl at the back of the class. How times change.
I head into the main hall, but Kate taps my shoulder, redirects me.
“This way, today.”
I frown as she leads me down a stairwell, into a part of the Tower I’ve never been to. I feel suddenly stressed and suffocated. For the first time in my life, I feel claustrophobic, and I have no idea why.
“Through here.”
Kate pushes open a door, and I walk into the room. We’ve moved, from the stone corridors of an ancient monument to some sort of hospital ward. The walls are that indecisive shade caught between light blue and green. The lights are a little bit too light. The only music in the world is a beeping, constant and piercing and threatening to end at any moment. I know, instinctively, that the beeping is the song of someone’s heart.
“Daniel Wells,” says Kate, gesturing to the bed. “This case is utterly unique, I’ve – we’ve – never seen anything like it. McGillop suggested we use someone with experience, Osgood suggested we use someone with sensitivity. You’re one of the few people out there to possess both.”
I take a step forward, wondering what’s so special about some dying man, and then I see. He’s old; so old, bones pushing through into a skeletal face. Pale grey, not the shade of illness, but of what comes after. I’ve seen that colour before. I saw it when they asked me to identify my mother’s body, and I saw it when my boyfriend told me to kill him again.
I’ve seen that contraption before, too. I’ve seen that silver armour, the helmet his colourless face is enclosed in, the smooth industrial handles holding it together. Kate Stewart has brought me to the last living Cyberman.
Suddenly I’m numb again, tearless, like the last month hasn’t happened.
“Mr Wells died of cancer,” Kate explains. “Two years ago. He turned up on his wife’s doorstep, told her it must be the end of time, because he’d come back to her. Told her how painful it was.”
“A miracle and a nightmare,” I find myself musing. “I can’t even imagine how she felt.” And yet, I can.
“They think there was some sort of fault, a failed upgrade. The emotional inhibitor was switched off and he couldn’t network with the other Cybermen. So when the order was given for them all to, well…”
“…explode,” I say, shamelessly.
“Yes, when the order was given, he didn’t receive it. He looked out the window and watched it happen. They called the police straight away, and as out of their depth as ever, they came to us. We’ve had him here ever since, trying to see if we can operate on him, but it’s impossible. He’s asked us permission to end his life. We… don’t want a court case.” She looks to the floor. “We just needed a second opinion. Someone impartial, but someone… well, human.”
“You’re human,” I point out.
“Only just. And there’s no one more human than you.” She smiles again. I don’t smile back this time.
“His wife?”
“She’s just slipped out momentarily.” She glances behind me, sees a shape behind the door. “In fact, there she is. I’ll… step outside, give you two a moment to talk it over.”
I take a deep breath. I remind myself that for once, I’m the most fortunate person in the room. The woman, whose name I haven’t even been told, enters. She’s smart, formal, bright-cheeked. I wonder how she does it, but I can’t bring myself to envy her, not here.
“Mrs… Wells?” I ask.
“Jill,” she replies, and I realise she hasn’t succeeded that well. The grief has taken her voice instead, made it small and shaken and filled it with a deep, deep sadness.
“Hi.” I offer a handshake. “I’m Clara Oswald. Kate brought me here to…” What the hell did Kate bring me here for? “To talk things over with you.”
“We met in The White Horse,” she says out of nowhere. “I still remember the song that was playing. The sweet memories you gave-a me… you can’t beat the memories you gave-a me.”
“Dean Martin,” I say. My Gran’s a fan.
“The last two years have been the worst days of my life. I swore to myself that if by some miracle I ever got him back, I’d never let him go again. And yet here I am, doing just that. Betraying my own heart.”
“Take one… fresh and… tender kiss…”
We both turn around, startled. Eyes closed, Daniel Wells is, in a weak whisper, singing. Jill rushes to his side, kneels down with impressive agility, grips his cybernetic hand. “I thought you were asleep, darling! You should have told us-“
“It… was the… song,” he wheezes, and Jill begins to cry on him, hopelessly and with no dignity at all, just like all people cry when they truly mean it.
“I can’t leave you,” she sobs. “I can’t leave you now.”
“You left me a long time ago,” he assures her, using the last of his strength to stroke her face with his finger. “This is just closure.”
There’s a moment of silence, a moment in which I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen. Then, something changes. Something in the air, like the room itself is making a decision. I sense a sudden, bitter chill filling the room, and at last Daniel speaks.
“Sing to me.”
Jill sits up, keeps one hand where it is, and noiselessly begins to move the other towards a machine. I know what she’s doing. I back away, towards the door, ready to call Kate, but then I stop. I can’t move, I can’t… bring myself to move.
“One girl… one boy… some grief… some joy.” Her hand wobbles over a switch. I walk up to her, steadying my own hand, and place it on top of hers. Together, we flick it. “Memories…” she continues, smiling at her husband, reassuring him, “are made of this.”
In what at least looks like a painless moment, his eyes flicker shut. Jill doesn’t do what I expect her to do. She doesn’t break down, doesn’t scream. She wipes her face, stands up, leans over him, and kisses his forehead. “Goodbye, Danny,” she says, and all of a sudden it’s too much. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I’ve just seen, or what’s about to happen, or what this means for me or whether I’ve done the right thing and I realise I’ve just made a decision, a huge decision, and I wasn’t ready for it, and I have to do something now, I, I have to help someone else, I have to…
And before I can process what’s happening, Jill is hugging me, holding me, when it should be the other way around. She’s telling me that it will be all right, that it’ll all get better and that I’ll get to live happily one day, and all the questions leave my head, replaced by one: how? How is this happening? And I hate myself for not coping, for letting this woman down on the worst and most important day of her life. I hate myself. I hate my life.
***
“I’m so sorry,” says Kate, and by the look on her face she means it. I’ve become so good at reading faces, because I’ve learnt to make most of them now. “I don’t know what I was doing. I thought, after you going through everything with Danny… maybe meeting someone in a similar position would help you, but I didn’t think about the…” And she just trails off.
“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s not. I say that a lot these days. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing lately.” Kate makes a fist, looks like she’s about to hit something but it just sort of shakes in the air in front of her. “I keep making these, these – stupid – decisions, and I look back and I wonder, how did I do that? I can’t afford to do that, I’ll end up getting someone killed.”
“You need some time off, Kate. You’ve been through a lot. You need to rest.”
“I can’t rest. Every time I lay down and close my eyes, I feel like I’m falling through the clouds. I can feel the ground getting closer, the wind around me, my stomach flies and it’s… it’s awful.” She sits down and runs her hands through her hair, messing it up. “I’m sorry. You’ve got so much on your plate; I’m being so selfish.”
“It’s fine,” I say again.
She pauses, lifts her head, and sighs. “Osgood left us yesterday. She was never the same after that day. We told her she’d lost her sister and she started working, so constantly and furiously… and, astonishingly, happily. So full of smiles, and laughter… so fake. She was fooling herself, the poor girl. Then just after we briefed her on this case, and she went in and saw it for herself, it was like it all caught up with her. She lifted up a vial and lobbed it across the room, and she told me she was sorry, and then she left. No one knows where she’s gone. I don’t know if we’ll even see her again.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I wish I could bring myself to say more.
“This world… maybe those mad sects are right. Maybe this is Hell.”
“Hell is a state of mind,” I recall from a book I read once. “And we’re all trapped in it. The world just needs a psychiatrist.”
Kate chuckles very, very softly. “The world needs a Doctor.”
Before I can stop myself, I’m telling her something I swore I’d never tell anyone.
“I lied to him. The Doctor, I mean. I told him that Danny was still alive, so that he could move on without me. It breaks my heart every day but it’s the one thing I’ve done that I can be really, properly proud of. But I think he’s a long, long way away now.”
“Do you know where?”
“He went back home, he said, to Gallifrey. He’s probably King - or Queen, if he's upset someone and got himself executed, which is always a likelihood, what with him constantly sticking his foot in his mouth. He, or she, will probably be sitting on a throne, trying to act all formal and giving orders, and no one will be taking him seriously. He’ll ask for a comfy chair, lots of tea, and probably his own orchestra.” I find that I’m smiling. Without meaning to, without trying to, and without pretending. “Every day he’ll be making things worse for himself, but he won’t care. Because while all the old grey-haired men around him grow furious and plot against him, the children below will feel safe, protected, loved. They’ll have someone to look up to, and to laugh at. I miss that, Kate. I miss laughing at him, and I miss trying to be the good person he was. But I’m glad he’s able to carry on without me. I’m so glad I managed to tell one last lie and make it a good one.”
Kate nods. She stands up and puts on a scarf, because she has no words to respond with, except for:
“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas Eve.”
“My Christmas Eve was ruined the moment I woke up, Kate. Thank you for trying to save it.”
Before she can escape, I give her a hug. I cry, just for a second, knowing that no one will ever have to know I did.
***
I place my book on the shelf, I climb into my cold sheets, and I turn off the light on my bedside table. It’s the night before Christmas and I’ve got to pretend in front of Gran, to pretend I’m glad to be here and that everything is okay for once, when I know already that it won’t be. It can’t be. Nothing will be okay again, and for a moment that’s the only thing I’m sure of.
As it’s Christmas, I lay back and naively, childishly, make a wish. I wish for a miracle.
On the other side of the universe, he hears me.
Part II >