The Longest Farewell - Chapter One [1/?]
‘’Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!’
DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS
Rose Tyler lay wide awake in the early hours of the morning, staring unseeing at the ceiling above her. Somehow, it didn’t feel like the same one she had woken up beneath the previous day.
The events of the last twelve hours kept running through her mind, as though on endless replay, and yet she couldn’t make any kind of sense of it.
Could I have imagined it all? Rose wondered for the umpteenth time. She had heard of people imagining weird things like angels or ghosts in a crisis, strangers who appeared to save their lives and then disappeared seconds later without a trace.
Was that what had happened?
Was her mind trying to explain how she got herself out of that building before it exploded? And instead of something half way rational, it settled on some stranger nattering on about living plastic and relay devices?
Glad I didn’t say anything to Mum or Mickey, or they’d have me sectioned, she reflected without humour. Is it even possible to go mad that fast, though? I mean, everything was normal up ‘til then…
Her day had started out ordinary enough. Like every other morning in the past year, it followed the same lacklustre routine to which she was resigned. Rose woke at seven-thirty still wishing for at least another two hours of sleep, and then blearily went through her morning routine. She’d kissed her mother goodbye and taken the bus to Henrik’s. As usual, she debated whether she had time to duck into Costa before work and, as usual, decided that she didn’t.
Her job at the department store was mind-numbing, but it was work. Besides, she hoped to make assistant floor manager at the end of the month. That would mean a better paycheque and more control over her hours. She’d finally be able to start saving money again and repay Mickey for all the trips he made in to town to share her lunch break.
It was this possible promotion in mind that often made her volunteer to stay late as needed, or run errands for management. So that night when the security guard handed her the lottery money to bring down to Wilson, the chief electrician, she didn’t question it. Even if it was past closing and she would have to walk home instead of catching the bus and the basement was just plain creepy. It wasn’t everyone on the sales floor that management trusted with a bag full of cash. The fact she’d earned that trust in six months was an accomplishment. Her upper-class co-workers had a general suspicion for anyone off a council estate.
Upon reaching the basement, however, she’d found the place deserted. Wilson hadn’t been in his office, nor in the adjacent storage room. As she tried to decide whether he was out back in the shipping bay, she first heard the noise.
And that was when it had all gone to pot.
One minute she was alone and calling out for Wilson so that she could bloody well go home, and the next she was surrounded by window shop dummies.
First she thought it was just the blokes from the sport department mucking about. Derek always messed with her, ever since she turned him down for a date her first week. He was popular enough with the others that they went right along with whatever idiot scheme that popped into his head. Last month they’d clipped a security tag to her favourite hoodie when she wasn’t paying attention. When she left for home the anti-theft ink had stained both the hoodie and the t-shirt beneath it.
Rose had egged his car in revenge, but she had been expecting some kind of escalation ever since then. Window shop dummies seemed his exact brand of humour.
But as the expressionless figures backed her into a wall, she had realised that their gait was more predatory than lumbering. And she heard none of the sniggering that would have accompanied a stupid prank.
By the time she realised she was in actual danger, they had already isolated her from the storage room exit. One of them was in the process of raising its blunt, solid arm above her head.
I’m gonna be killed by a mannequin, Rose realised with dim disbelief as the arm prepared to strike her.
Then, someone had grabbed her hand and whispered, ‘Run!’
And she had inexplicably found herself legging it through a maintenance corridor to the lift with a strange man in a leather jacket. Trying to escape a horde of students dressed like window shop dummies.
Except it wasn’t students, she reminded herself now. He said it wasn’t. Living plastic, was it?
Before the lift doors had closed on them, one of dummies had reached for them and the strange man had pulled its arm off. He’d tossed it to her and then matter-of-factly told her it wasn’t students and that Wilson was dead.
She hadn’t even processed this before they reached the ground floor. Then he waved a bomb in front of her, introduced himself as a doctor and told her to run for her life.
Doctor of what? Making living plastic dummies? Rose wondered. She lifted the hand he had clutched and staring at it in the darkness of her room, its outline illuminated by the lights of the estate. She could feel the phantom sensation of callused fingers around her own that told her she had imagined nothing. Maybe he was some sort of mad scientist.
It still answered none of her questions. Rose wished she had stuck around long enough to see if he had gotten out, but she had been confused and wrong-footed. She had simply stared at the door he had disappeared behind for a moment before her legs carried her away from the building. She hadn’t even realised she had moved until she was nearly run over by a black cab as she crossed the street.
But that wasn’t the last near-death experience of the night.
The second she got to the other side of the road, the entire block shook and the top level of Henrik’s exploded.
She’d been left gaping in disbelief at the side of the road, a plastic arm clutched to her chest until the sirens started.
And then she’d run.
Don’t think I’ll be getting that manager position now, she thought, and then blinked in the darkness. The implications of that hit her for the first time. I haven’t got a job anymore. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
She knew she could follow her mother’s advice - sell her story to one of the papers. It would at least keep them in groceries for the month. Jackie had rambled on that subject the entire night, from the minute Rose stumbled in the door to right before she went to bed. As unimpressed as Rose was with her mother using the night’s events for her evening gossip exchange, she had a point.
But how would she explain the mysterious doctor? And besides, he’d told her if she talked about what happened someone could get killed.
Jackie would tell her hang the consequences, she needed the money. But then, her mother was as money conscious as they came and notorious for knowing how to stretch a pound.
She’d have to be, wouldn’t she? Almost nineteen years’ experience doing it…
Rose’s father, Pete, had died when she was eight months old, run down by a car while on his way to a friend’s wedding. He’d left her mother to bring Rose up all by herself, which she’d done rather well for a work-at-home hairdresser. They had lived in the same council house flat her whole life, and Jackie had done her best to make sure Rose never felt like she had gone without.
She’d even put away enough every year so she and Rose could spend a week at Tenby on the South Wales coast. There weren’t many of Rose’s friends whose parents bothered trying to give them holidays, even if they could have afforded it. But Rose and Jackie were all each other had and their relationship was always close.
At least, until Rose fell in love with Jimmy Stone.
Never one to keep her opinion to herself, Jackie had made her dislike of the musician known from the first, and would badmouth him at every opportunity. Rose, in all of her headstrong sixteen-year-old certainty, had defended him with the same fury, leading to a few weeks’ worth of vicious rows.
One night her mother’s harping exploded into a row that had the neighbours threatening to call the police. Jackie had told her she would not sit by and watch Rose destroy her life.
‘Not after everything I sacrificed to give you a better chance than I had!’ she’d yelled.
‘Fine,’ Rose had retorted, and walked out. She’d shacked up with Jimmy that same night and vowed she wouldn’t return home until her mother got over herself and apologised.
As was wont to happen with these things, though, Rose discovered over the next five months that her mother had had the rights of it. Long before she’d come home from a Valentine’s Day shopping trip, bags overflowing with racy knickers and wine, to find Jimmy shagging some hippy slag named Noosh.
With no other choice, Rose had found herself standing in front of her mother’s flat, trying to work up the courage to knock on the door. To her mother’s eternal credit, she hadn’t even let Rose get out the apology before she shepherded her into the kitchen. With a cup of tea shoved into her hands Rose sobbed out the entire story.
Since then, neither of them mentioned the period of estrangement. Still, there was a tension between them that had never been there. It didn’t help that when Jimmy and Noosh left for Amsterdam, he’d used Rose’s credit card to keep them in gas, cigarettes and beer. He’d racked up £800 in debt before Rose had the cards - which she’d only gotten because he’d suggested it - cancelled. Jackie had since fronted her the money to keep her name out of the credit bureau, but she’d made it clear Rose would pay back every cent.
Not that there was ever a question of that. Her experience with Jimmy taught Rose a valuable lesson. She now knew that whatever her dreams had been before, you couldn’t get anywhere in the world without working for it.
Which was how she ended up behind the till at the Christmas Shop of Clifton’s parade, working shit hours for even worse pay. Just to manage her half of the rent every month, never mind her phone bill.
She had spent six months reeking of fake evergreen scent, cinnamon hearts and peppermint before one of Jackie’s old boyfriends let them know about a position at Henrik’s. The posh department store wasn’t much better in terms of pay, but there was more opportunity for promotion there. She’d started out in the stock room and quickly worked her way up to the sales floor.
A sales floor that doesn’t exist anymore, Rose thought ruefully, turning and trying to get comfortable on her side.
Sleep continued to evade her, and she wished she had taken up Mickey on his offer to go for a pint. She wasn’t one for beer, but it would have dulled her thoughts enough to help her fall asleep. As much as his offer hung on the fact there was a football match on, Mickey knew that as well as she did.
Daft man, she thought with affection. Most men tried to ply their girlfriends with alcohol hoping to get a shag out of the deal. Her bloke did it when he wanted her to calm her nerves or sleep through the night.
Of course, that kind of guilelessness was Mickey to the core. He’d always been like that.
Rose had been dating him on and off since she was fourteen. Though she didn’t consider their relationship anything special, she knew she would end up marrying him in a few years. That was just how things were meant to work. Besides, he had gotten to be a habit with her.
After her experience with Jimmy, she could do a lot worse.
Mickey was four years older, had finished secondary school and had a steady job as an apprentice mechanic. He had always lived in the same block of flats as her and Jackie, but she’d only started dating him from the beginning of her Fourth Year. It was the beginning of the most laid-back, on-again-off-again friendship-relationship in history.
They dated for nine months, but then she broke up with him right before summer holidays. Shareen and Keisha had called it quits with their blokes a week before, and they wanted to enjoy being single all together. Mickey had taken it awfully well, all things considered, and they remained friends.
Once she started Fifth Year they hung out again, which led to getting back together. This time it lasted three months, ending when Jackie decided Rose needed to spend more time on her school work than in the back of Mickey’s car. She’d only been allowed to date again after GCSE results were announced.
To Rose’s own surprise, she hadn’t done that badly.
She had even planned to sit her A-levels in English, French and Art despite her mother’s complaints. Jackie maintained that none of those things would get her as good a job as computers or engineering. Mickey thought she should do whatever she wanted, likely supposing it wouldn’t matter much once they settled down and had kids.
Neither response had been encouraging.
Then in September, Rose had met the man she thought was the love of her life. Jimmy was twenty, played bass guitar in a local band called No Hot Ashes and was, according to popular consensus on the estate, the Fittest Bloke Ever.
And for some reason, he had looked at Rose like she was worth more than only becoming someone’s “missus”. He had asked her out, and it came down to a choice. Either stay with her good, dependable boyfriend or step into the unknown with an amazing man who wrote her songs and promised to take her away from the estate.
She’d dumped Mickey, convinced that she and Jimmy were soulmates.
It was a bitter, painful mistake to have made.
But Mickey was patient.
He waited for her, uncomplaining that she had abandoned him. He’d forgiven her when she came to him, five months into the tumultuous relationship, and confessed she might have made a mistake. Mickey hugged her and told her it was alright, then helped her leave Jimmy.
It was he that convinced her to go back to Jackie.
Within weeks they were back to dating, and Rose made a promise to herself that she would let no man treat her the way Jimmy had. The best way to keep that promise was to stick with Mickey. She wasn’t likely to do better than him, and she supposed there was no point trying.
For all that he was the typical football-watching, sex-obsessed man with the sense of humour of a preteen boy - honestly, give a man a plastic arm! - he was also capable of being remarkably sweet right when it counted.
At least I got him to take the arm with him, she thought to herself, once again shifting her position and trying to find comfort lying on her stomach. Knowing the managers, they’ll be after me for theft of Henrik’s property or something.
Which forced her thoughts back to the night’s events.
She went over it all again, everything: the living dummies, the doctor saving her before she was likely bludgeoned to death, his directive to leave the building, the explosion…
What was the point of it all? Rose wondered. Why Henrik’s? Why attack me? Are they gonna come after me now? Is that why the doctor told me not to say anything? What the hell would I say anyhow? It’s not like the police or anyone would believe me.
Would it even matter anymore? The evening newscast had said they’d pulled a body from the wreckage of the store. Maybe it wasn’t Wilson’s, but his. Something in her hoped it wasn’t. Beyond the fact she had a million questions to ask, she wanted to thank him for saving her life.
Though, maybe not for blowing up her job, because now she had no idea what her next move should be.
Although it had bored her to tears, working the floor at Henrik’s had allowed her to pay off all of her debts. Rose had been secretly considering A-Level again, something she’d been trying to talk herself into bringing up with Mickey for a while. She hadn’t even talked to her mother yet, because Jackie was…well.
Jackie would only remind Rose how she’d never been the best student. Which was depressingly true.
She never much liked school, and the teachers thought she was just another welfare brat they were forced to teach. Most of the teachers at Jericho Street Comprehensive didn’t even want to work there to begin with. No one was hard-pressed to help an estate chav with learning difficulties, even if it wasn’t her fault that science and history and math made no sense to her.
It also didn’t help that she had a remarkable talent for getting into trouble.
She’d been known to help plan food fights, and when she was fifteen, she had gotten suspended for three days for persuading the school choir to go on strike. The choir teacher had been trying to force them into old uniforms that had lice and smelled like cat sick, but the administration hadn’t seemed bothered by that.
Then she’d met Jimmy and dropped out of school, and by the time she came to her senses it was too late to go back. The choice had been to either take adult education courses at night, or find a job.
Considering she couldn’t afford any of the reputable night schools, she went to work.
Was now maybe the opportunity she had been waiting for? She could probably find something part-time and do A-levels at night. It would at least make getting a proper job easier if she had those.
And then what? Keep on with the “beans on toast”? Rose thought with a frown, the doctor’s words echoing in her head. This man - this complete stranger - had summed up her life in a few derisive sentences. Like he blamed her for not doing anything better.
Which was ridiculous because he was a stranger and knew nothing about her. Why should she care what some man who she’d exchanged less than thirty sentences with had to say about her life? He might be a criminal for all she knew.
Oh, she blinked as something occurred to her. What if the whole thing was some sort of drugs ring or terrorist cell?
If that were the case if she went to the police they’d be able to sort everything. She might stop someone or many someones from getting hurt. Or more people than were already hurt.
And what was the worst the police could do? Call her a nutter and show her the door?
At least if they thought she was out of her head, no one would get killed the way the doctor had implied.
That decided her.
She nodded to herself and turned over a final time, determined not to think about the matter anymore. Tomorrow she would head down to the police and give her statement. After that, she would look for a new job. Near-death experience or not, life would go on as always.
So decided, she finally drifted to sleep.
That night she dreamed of piercing blue eyes and running for her life.
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