Doctor who, p.1
Doctor Who, page 1
About the Author
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson is a science-fantasy author and co-founder of the organisation Impact of Omission, as featured in The Guardian, Huffpost, and the Channel 4 Documentary Where’s My History? with footballer and anti-racism campaigner Troy Deeney.
Winner of the inaugural Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award in 2020, now known as the Future Worlds Prize, her writing is invariably about Black people dismantling space empires, travelling through time, and saving the world – often simultaneously.
THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD
Based on the BBC television adventure
by Russell T Davies
ESMIE JIKIEMI-PEARSON
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
To my dear parents, Pamela and Adam, for always encouraging me to dream big.
CHAPTER ONE
Manchester, 24 December, 2004
Once upon a time, late on Christmas Eve, a stranger came to the church on Ruby Road.
It was an old church, the grand kind one usually finds in small villages, with a tower and a clockface. Gravestones stood in the front churchyard: great stone crosses made blurry and indistinct by the snow which fell in heavy flakes from the night sky, blanketing the whole scene in white, muffling the sounds of the stranger’s frantic footsteps. Beyond the church, in the middle distance, houses stretched out in neat rows, their windows flickering with warm light.
But in the churchyard, the only illumination came from old-fashioned streetlamps, the sort you might read about in a children’s story, their yellow light struggling out from behind dusty panes.
Indeed, you might be forgiven for thinking this is a children’s story. Alas, it is not.
The stranger was dressed for snow – wrapped in a shawl all the way up to her eyes and ears, shuffling down the icy street, and clutching a bundle in her hands. She might have wanted to stop and catch her breath, but she gave no sign of it. The stranger just kept walking, her precious bundle pressed to her chest as she made her way towards the church. Determined, steady.
When she reached the grand, arching wooden doors, she placed the bundle before them, on the ground. In the light of the streetlamp, her daughter’s face was visible, peeking out of the swaddling blankets, a pale circle with a button nose, eyes squeezed shut.
Above her, the minute hand on the clocktower ticked closer to the hour.
By the time it struck midnight, the stranger was gone, swallowed by the snow and the dark of the night, vanished completely into the wideness of the world.
Had the stranger turned back, perhaps to raise her hand in farewell to her daughter, she would have seen the door open just as the rolling tolls of the church bell rang the hour, a flood of light and warmth like a river spilling across the stone, the merry sound of the choir carrying out into the freezing air of the night. She would have watched from afar as the vicar glanced around, his face wrinkling at the sight of the bundle on the doorstep. The small, waving hands, the little nose and wisps of blonde hair peeking out from beneath the child’s little cap. She would have seen him scoop up the child, his robes ruffling in the cold evening air, before shaking his head, and placing a kiss on the newborn’s brow.
But the stranger did not see any of those things, though she might have, if only she had turned. Instead, she moved forward, onward, and disappeared into the snow.
Now, if this were a true Christmas fairy tale, the stranger might have been reunited with her daughter, many years later. She might have been a rich duchess, or a pirate queen, or a snow fairy come to take her child back to her icy realm. But this story isn’t a fairy tale, and the stranger was never seen again. No one ever even knew her name.
This is what happened instead.
Across the snowy square, frozen still as a statue, was a man. In the darkness, his long coat shrouded him in shadow. Behind him, a blue police box stood in the snow, its door open, the interior glowing softly. The man’s sad, clever eyes followed the stranger down the road, watching as she hurried off; a hooded figure, dark and lonely against the snow, which had begun to fall heavier and heavier, piling in small drifts by the side of the road. For one moment, it seemed as though he might call to her. Say something. But the man wasn’t here for her, and the mere minutes he had left to do what he needed were trickling away. Something had gone wrong in the future, terribly wrong, and the cracks in time had chased him all the way back to this night. To this very corner, on the street named Ruby Road.
The Doctor turned towards the church.
Its thin, pointed spire was gothic in the soft glow of the streetlamps, and as he stood, seen by no one, like a lonely statue amongst the falling snow, the light caught his face. And his eyes were filled with tears.
CHAPTER TWO
London, 1 December, 2023
‘… And that’s my name.’ Ruby smiled, trying not to squint against the harsh glare of the lights they’d set up around her to illuminate the scene, even though they were so bright she felt like her face – along with all the makeup that had been put on it – was melting off. ‘Ruby, named after Ruby Road, where I was found. Almost nineteen years ago, now.’
Shifting in her seat, she looked across at Davina McCall – Davina McCall, for god’s sake, a proper famous TV presenter! – who was currently perched on a seat facing her, and wondered not for the first time if this was all an elaborate hallucination.
Ruby had grown up watching shows where celebrity hosts helped children in the care system to track down their birth families, but never in a million years did she think she’d ever go on one. The thought of staring down a camera lens and sharing all the things that had happened to her since she was found by a vicar on the steps of a church – basically, explaining her whole life – made her feel vaguely sick with anxiety.
And yet here she was.
Davina shook her dark, glossy hair and nodded under-standingly. ‘So, you were a foundling. And you were fostered by Carla, who then adopted you, is that right?’
At the mention of her mum’s name, Ruby felt herself relax. Carla had given her a stern talking to before she’d come on the show. Your story belongs to you. Don’t let anyone tell it for you, she’d said before squeezing Ruby in a hug so tight she’d thought she might burst.
‘Yeah, my mum’s amazing.’ Ruby laughed. ‘I mean, she’s completely nuts. But she’s the best mum I could ever have, yeah.’ She wanted to say, Without her, I don’t know what I’d do. Where I’d be. I love her more than anything. But the words felt too personal for the glitzy London club where the interview was being filmed. The seats at the black marble bar were velvet, for crying out loud. A drink here probably cost more money than Ruby earned working two entire hours at her part-time job.
‘So life’s been good, would you say?’ Davina asked.
‘Well! Not bad. I mean, we’ve had the pandemic, of course, and the recession, and the Giggle.’ She ticked things off her on her fingers. ‘And my A levels weren’t the best, cos we had to leave Manchester and move down here. We came to look after my gran – she wouldn’t move north, not in a million years! And we couldn’t pay for care. So that’s been tricky,’ she laughed awkwardly. ‘And expensive.’
Davina nodded sagely again. ‘I bet! No one moves to London these days!’
She was a good interviewer, Ruby thought. Kind, and calm. I keep forgetting I’m on camera. ‘To be honest, it’s left me a bit stranded, really. I think, well to be honest, I think I’m still waiting for my life to begin—’
‘Sorry – sorry, can we stop?’ A male voice interrupted her. One of the sound guys. He was frowning at his monitor, pressing his set of headphones tighter to his head, as though trying to listen in on a very faint sound. ‘Is there a radio or something? I’m getting a noise – like a whisper. Could be an open door?’
Ruby blinked, the chic surroundings of the bar around her coming back into focus. Crystal lights and crystal glasses, the assembled crew, all linked via headsets and wires. She’d been so immersed in the interview that the interruption felt like a splash of cold water to the face.
Davina leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘Don’t worry, stuff like this happens all the time, won’t take long.’ She shuffled her notes. ‘Oh, you don’t mind me using the word “foundling”, do you? Some people think it sounds a bit old-fashioned.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Like a fairy tale.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘No, I don’t mind. It’s what I am.’ Honestly, she didn’t. Davina was right, it did sound a tad old-fashioned and maybe a little strange, but what was life without a little strangeness? She laughed. ‘I was found. I was foundled!’
Davina eyes crinkled in a smile. ‘I love that.’
At a signal from the sound guy, Davina beamed at Ruby again. ‘Wonderful. Right, everything seems to have been sorted. Let’s pick it up at … So! Ruby! The whole point of this show is to see if we can help you reconnect with your family …’
There was a small, flickeri ng movement out of the corner of Ruby’s eye. Trying her best to focus on the interview, she blinked hard. But it flickered into view again. A small grey shape. She blinked again. Probably a wire moving, or someone’s shoe, she told herself, and refocused her attention on Davina.
‘… In the old days, foundlings were left without a trace, and there was nothing we could do. But now we can work magic with DNA. We’ve taken your swabs and we can start the search …’
The flicker was back. And now there was a sound, like hissing, right at the limits of her hearing. Ruby tried to concentrate on Davina’s face, or even just her voice, but the strange, eerie sound cut right through.
Darting a look at the sound guy, she noticed he was frowning again, looking at his monitor in confusion. Could he hear it too?
Snicker-snacker-ticker-tacker.
‘Now, Ruby,’ Davina was saying. Ruby wrenched her focus back to the interview. The sound faded to nothing, disappearing as swiftly as it had interrupted her. Relief flooded through her. She needed to stay present; this could be her only chance of ever tracking down her birth parents. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by vague, whispering noises.
‘We can’t promise miracles,’ Davina continued. ‘And even if we do make contact with someone, your mum or dad, or even a cousin, they might not want to be found. And we have to respect that.’
Ruby nodded, smiling. ‘I understand.’
‘Can I ask, if we find someone … what are you hoping for?’
‘Just the truth,’ Ruby said, and she meant it. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’m from royalty or anything!’ She laughed, but Davina didn’t, just kept staring at her, earnestly, as if waiting for Ruby to elaborate. ‘I just think … if I’m waiting for my life to begin, then knowing where I came from is a good place to start.’
In the back of the room, unseen by everyone, including Ruby, a thin grey hand reached towards a cup of coffee, recently set down by one of the crew. Spidery fingers wrapped around the cardboard and moved the coffee a few inches to the left, quiet as a whisper, subtle as a breeze.
The lines on the sound monitor jumped, pinging upward, picking up the faintest murmur. A hiss, barely audible. Snicker-snacker-ticker-tacker.
Another hand. There! By a plug in the wall, disconnecting it from the socket.
At the front of the room, Ruby and Davina chatted away, none the wiser.
Then several unexplainable things happened within the space of only a few seconds.
The thin grey hand pulled the wire taut, lifting it off the ground just as the crewmember noticed her coffee had inexplicably moved. She stepped forward to get it, careful not to make a sound and disturb the set, which was silent but for the sound of Davina and Ruby’s voices.
The wire, pulled taut by the tiny hand, bowed against her foot as it snagged her at the ankle. There was a moment of stillness, in which the crewmember’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in shock, before she toppled over, coming down hard against the floor with an almighty crash. The lid of her coffee flew off, hot liquid arcing through the air, and the wire, which was wrapped around the lamps surrounding Davina and Ruby snapped tighter …
All this happened behind Ruby, while she waited for Davina’s next question, blinking in the bright lights, which seemed almost to wobble before her eyes …
‘Look out!’ Davina cried.
SMASH!
The wobbling lamps teetered and then fell like giant steel dominoes, crashing into each other in a shower of bright sparks and shattering glass, their wires whipping around like tentacles. Ruby yelled and dived off the stool, just as the third lamp smashed into the soft padded seat, the burning hot bulb thudding into the barstool right where she’d been sitting only moments ago.
‘Oh my god!’ Davina was also crouched on the ground, right where she’d landed after jumping out of the way. Her voice was shaking, her perfect hair now in disarray. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine!’ Ruby said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m okay.’ But all she could think was, That lamp fell right where I’d been sitting. I could have been killed! She noticed that her hands were shaking, nervous tremors caused by adrenalin. The room swam, and she shook her head to dispel the buzzing of her fear. ‘I’m fine, honestly. It’s okay, it missed.’
The Church on Ruby Road
Davina’s relief was palpable. ‘Oh, how lucky,’ she exclaimed, standing up. ‘Thank goodness, I mean—’
Ruby didn’t see the wire whipping around until it was too late. The plug connecting the third lamp to the wall popped out of the socket, a final freak event in this destructive and illogical sequence. It flew upwards, the hard plastic casing whacking Davina firmly in the back of her head with a solid thunk.
‘Ow!’ Davina cried, her hands flying up on reflex to feel for an injury. She swayed on her feet, expression woozy and disorientated, before her eyes fluttered shut, and she fell right into Ruby’s arms.
CHAPTER THREE
London, 22 December, 2023
The pub was warm, the smell of mulled wine filling the room with the undeniable spirit of Christmas.
Ruby and her band were performing their usual Christmas set, full of old classics and crowd-pleasers, with some newer, cooler Christmas anthems snuck in. The rosy-cheeked patrons laughed and chatted, coats unbuttoned, bobble hats hanging off chairs, scarves trailing forgotten on the floor. Behind the bar, a boy Ruby knew from around the area served drinks with a cheerful smile, a tinsel crown in his hair.
She could see it all from where she stood on the stage, her fingers dancing across the keyboard, its chimes mingling with the sounds of conversations and her bandmate’s instruments. At the front of the stage, one of Ruby’s best mates Trudy swayed, her long brown hair pin straight as usual, mic grasped in both hands, as she sang her way through a lively version of ‘Winter Wonderland’. Their other bandmate, Clark, strummed at his guitar, eyes closed, cradling it as lovingly as if he wanted to take it home to cuddle up to and watch old David Attenborough documentaries. Big Jim was light on the drums, sticks flashing daintily over the cymbal, summoning a shimmering, glittering noise out of the drum set that was so Christmassy, it made Ruby feel like a kid again.
She smiled as she played her part, the noise in her head going quiet – all her usual worries disappearing, drowned out by the sound of Christmas cheer.
These were her friends. Her bandmates.
And yeah, this was only a small gig, and they’d not been paid much … But Ruby could use the money, and Trudy still had bits of tinsel in her hair from where Ruby had wrestled a tinsel scarf onto her before getting on stage, causing Clark’s David Bowie eyeliner to smudge from laughing so hard at the two of them and their tinsel war that he had cried. On a cold night during the festive season, there was nowhere else she’d rather be than this cosy pub with her best friends, making music.
They all geared up for the next verse, and though the crowd wasn’t paying them too much attention, they launched into it, Trudy’s dreamy voice filling the room.
Out of the corner of Ruby’s eye, she saw a flash of grey.
Snicker-snacker-chitter-chatter.
Distracted, her fingers stumbled over the chords.
Without warning, the music died. Trudy’s microphone stopped working with a high-pitched squeal of feedback that had the whole pub groaning and covering their ears.
For a moment, all the conversation died, fifty pairs of eyes blinking up at the silent stage. Ruby stared back, her face going red, before most people shrugged and turned back to their conversations.
‘What’s going on?’ Clark whispered.
‘I don’t know!’ Ruby said, tapping her keyboard. There was no response. ‘It’s dead!’ She saw Clark fiddling with his silent guitar amp. A fuse must have blown somewhere – that was the only explanation she could think of.
Trudy shouted over the noise of the crowd, ‘Sorry, everyone! Trouble with the sound, we’ll be back in a moment.’
A woman heckled from the bar. She looked like a bit of a hippy, Ruby thought, with a bohemian-style red headband, holding back frizzy blonde curls. ‘Give it some welly!’ she shouted.
