CLARE CLOSED THE blinds over the windows that looked out onto the little grass courtyard and shivered at the memory of that fiery face.
It was hard not to feel unnerved, being alone in here with that book. Under the lab’s strip lighting it looked so innocuous, as harmless as the other books on a nearby bench. Idly, Clare wandered over and inspected them. It occurred to her that these were the books Chris had gone to St Cedd’s to borrow. They were clearly aimed at impressing her. And she was impressed, not because of the books – she had read them all several times over under the covers in her tiny teenage bedroom, and hid them in public behind My Guy annuals – but because of the thought that had gone into their selection. It was just possible that shoving a few books about carbon dating under her nose was Chris’s idea of a romantic gesture.
But this was silly. The strange book was just a book. A strange one, admittedly, but just a book. She walked straight over to it and opened it again.
She was kissing Chris – not a peck, a full-on snog – and she heard herself saying ‘I suppose a police station is as good a place to start as any –’
Suddenly she was brought back to here and now as the lab door burst open and an extraordinary figure burst through it. He was an almost unfeasibly tall and imposing person, with a long, dark-brown coat, a mop of curly hair, checked trousers stuffed into buccaneer boots and a stupidly long scarf. He should have looked ridiculous, and yes, in a way he did, but Clare was immediately overpowered by feelings of generosity and trust, as if she’d known this stranger since childhood and he was as familiar as Father Christmas or Winnie-the-Pooh.
She only had a second to feel like this, however, as he shot Clare a look of surprise and immediately burst back out again.
A second later he burst back in again, as if the first burst hadn’t happened at all.
‘Hello!’ he said in a deep dark voice that was unlike any voice Clare had ever heard. ‘I’m looking for Christopher Parsons.’
‘You’ve just missed him, I’m afraid,’ said Clare.
The stranger’s extraordinarily bulging blue eyes passed cursorily over her and fell upon the book on the bench. He raised a finger and said, ‘Aha!’
Clare found this ‘Aha’ much less offensive than Chris’s ‘Aha’s. This man, she thought, had somehow earned the right to be pompous and odd. ‘Can I give him a message?’ she asked.
The stranger leaned over, his large beaky nose almost touching the book, and examined the cover, that curious scroll design. Then he straightened up and turned his probing stare to Clare once again. ‘This isn’t yours.’
Clare had the oddest feeling that he was studying her, weighing her up as a potential enemy. A part of her was screaming inside Who the hell are you? How did you get in here and what’s all this to you? but it was muted by the part that felt the sudden warmth for him, which for some strange reason was shouting, much more loudly, TAKE ME WITH YOU!
‘No, it isn’t mine,’ she said, trying to sound calm and normal. ‘Is it yours?’
‘It belongs to some friends of mine,’ said the stranger, carefully, his eyes still not moving from her.
‘It’s a very strange book,’ said Clare.
‘I’ve got some very strange friends,’ he said. ‘And very careless.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘Strangely careless…’ He looked into the distance and then suddenly snapped back to her. ‘Why did you take it?’
‘I didn’t take it,’ said Clare.
‘I know,’ said the stranger.
Clare sighed. ‘Look, come on, what is all this about?’
‘What’s what about?’
Clare indicated the book. ‘That. This book business.’
The stranger seemed almost afraid to touch the book. His fingers hovered hesitantly over it. ‘Have you read it?’
‘I can’t,’ said Clare.
‘You can’t read?’
‘No – I mean, yes, I can read, but – the writing looks more like an explosion in a spaghetti tree.’ Suddenly the questions blurted out of her. ‘Where does it come from? What’s it made of? Why did it make the spectrograph blow up?’ She indicated the tea-towel-covered machine in the corner.
‘May I inspect your spectrograph?’ asked the stranger. Clare nodded and he strode over and whipped the tea towel from the machine. He whistled. ‘That book did this?’
Clare nodded. ‘This book did that.’
The stranger looked between her and the spectrograph and seemed to come to a decision. He smiled suddenly and unexpectedly, with teeth like two rows of great gleaming tombstones. ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor,’ he said, extending a hand.
‘Clare Keightley,’ said Clare, shaking it.
But what she was thinking inside, rather oddly, was Well, of course you are.