Bigger on the inside: Space, Time Travel, Alien Criminals (A Space Time Travel Mystery Book 1)

by Alianna Smith

  He drew up another photo of her, the first one he’d taken, and in that picture, she looked at him wide-eyed. It was almost as if she recognised him. That maybe didn’t cover it. She didn’t only recognise him. She saw someone in him she hadn’t expected to see, someone very close to her. He opened the next photo, taken only a heartbeat after the first one. Pure joy played about the corners of her mouth and made her eyes shine. It was the kind of joy, he thought, of seeing the man she loved. It was directed at him; she was looking straight at him.

  Dave frowned and sat back. She definitely had mixed him up with someone else. He drew up the next picture in the series and saw realisation fall over her radiant smile like a shadow. She knew that he wasn’t the man she’d been thinking of. His heart broke, and he rubbed his hand over his mouth.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Lucy,” he said, stifling a sigh.

  “Has he replied yet?”

  “No, not yet,” he said, standing.

  Lucy huffed and slumped back in her chair.

  -:-

  “I’m going to see him tomorrow,” Dave said, shutting down his email program. He couldn’t bear to look Lucy in the eye, which held a glint. He was afraid of giving his feelings away, of embarrassing both of them and making her hate him even more.

  When he looked up, however, Lucy looked stunned. “Really,” she said flatly.

  “Yeah,” he said, closing his laptop. How could she think he’d not be serious on something like that.

  “But I can’t come with you.”

  “No, not this time,” he replied.

  Lucy nodded, closing her magazine. He noticed, briefly, that she had been looking at the photos from the reception again. “I’ll just...” she said, standing.

  After she had left, Dave sat back, exhaling. He dreaded going to Edinburgh and meeting Stuart’s family. In a way, it all sounded too good to be true. The fact that his family knew he had another daughter, the eagerness with which they had invited him to lunch... But Robin had assured him that Stuart was a decent man, and he also knew that Stuart had told him the truth at the airport. Also, if Rita hadn’t thought Stuart a good man, she’d never have chosen him. “Oh, Rita,” he sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. Maybe he needed to do this to understand her better, and, of course, to give Lucy a sense of belonging. It broke his heart that he hadn’t been able to provide that for her, but in a way he guessed that what Lucy needed right now was entirely different from what he could offer her, which was his unconditional love. He loved Lucy just as much as he did the other children, but there was no way of making her see that. She had to realise that herself.

  On a whim, he fished his phone out of his pocket and called Rose. He needed to think of something else for a moment. As the call connected, he realised how fast his heart was beating.

  “Hello?” Rose sounded puzzled when she picked up.

  “Hi, it’s Dave.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “I... um... I’m not interrupting anything?” he asked, standing to go into the kitchen. Although he could hear a film playing in the parlour, he didn’t want to be surprised or the music and voices to interfere with his conversation. He made a mental note to cut down on their TV time. They’d been watching way too many films in the past few weeks. Rita would have killed him. He smiled.

  “No, it’s just... I’m on the train,” Rose said. “So don’t take it personally when the connection falters.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked, biting his lip when he realised he had no business asking that.

  “Edinburgh. I’m going to catch the sleeper to London,” Rose said.

  “Oh, it’s just, I... I’ve got the photos from the charity event,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, I’m looking at one of them right now. Nice work,” she said.

  “Only as nice as the person in it,” he said, blushing. What was wrong with him? How could he be flirting with Rose?

  Rose laughed. “I’m not half as interesting as everyone else at the event, but thank you anyway,” she said. “Listen, I’ll be back in about a week’s time. I’ll call you. I’d really like to see the rest of the photos. Assuming, of course, there is a rest?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Dave said, leaning against the counter.

  “Are you all right, Dave?” she asked, and from her tone he could tell that she meant it.

  Was he all right? “Yeah,” he drawled, rubbing his eyes.

  “I’ll call you,” she said. “Probably before I come back.”

  He perked up a little. “Why’s that?”

  “I’m going down to see my family, and for some business,” she explained, “it’s going to be a nice but exhausting week. I could need a friendly voice.”

  And that’s when you’re going to call me, Dave asked.

  “If you don’t mind, that is,” Rose said. He really had asked that out loud. Dave cringed, warmth spreading in his face.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “You sound just like...” Rose said, interrupting herself. “Well, never mind that now. Not exactly train conversation.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t,” Dave offered, unable to grasp what had just happened. Was she really serious about calling him? Calling him of all people? What about that Mickey bloke? “Well, enjoy the capital then. Safe journey.”

  Rose sounded a little disappointed. “Thanks. I’ll do my worst.”

  Dave chuckled. “Bye then.”

  “Bye.”

  Dave disconnected the call and slid the phone back into his jeans pocket. He still felt a little flushed, and when he touched his cheek, he felt that it was very warm. What was going on with him?

  Chapter 6

  Holding the tea mug securely with both hands wrapped around it, Rose sat down on the sofa, tucking one leg beneath her. She still felt a little sleepy after her shower and her nap, but the exhaustion was gone, leaving in its wake a lovely feeling of contented tiredness. It felt a bit like the old days, when a shower and a stolen nap had to suffice to keep up with the Doctor’s seemingly endless stamina — until one day he had collapsed on the comfortable sofa in the library, and they had slept curled up around each other. They had never mentioned it afterwards, but still, over time, sleeping on the sofa had become a habit for them. It was this that Rose missed more than anything.

  The sofa in her Glasgow flat was a close approximation of the sofa in the phone box, but napping on it by herself was never the same. Maybe, she thought from time to time — increasingly, actually, since the dimension cannon had failed — she needed to build new memories. It was easier said than done, though, because what she missed was someone with whom to make these memories.

  “Are you feeling better now, sweetheart?” her Mum asked, leaning back into the cushions herself. They were sitting in the family room, the room reserved for family and friends. The French windows were wide open, allowing in the spring breeze and the scents and sounds from the garden. Jackie Tyler was balancing her mug of tea on her drawn up knee.

  “Yeah, thank you,” Rose said. The train ride had been exhausting, despite the berth on the sleeper she’d booked. Even first class accommodation couldn’t drown out the monotonous beat of the wheels on the tracks, and the slight jerks as they crossed points. Some people might have found that soothing, but Rose, who was known to be able to sleep practically anywhere, had only been able to nap. Still, it had been better than wasting an entire day on the train, watching the landscape flit by and thinking about what she could be doing instead.

  “What was the charity thing like?” Jackie asked. Rose knew that really she wanted to talk about the dimension cannon, and she smiled gently to herself.

  “It was all right,” she said, thinking of the time she had spent with Dave in the roof garden.

  “I liked your photo in the mags,” Jackie said, sipping her tea. “For once they sent a decent photographer.”

  “He was nice, yeah,” Rose admitted, blowing over her tea.

  “Did you talk to him?
” Jackie asked, perking up a little. Rose’s prolonged singlehood worried and baffled her. She had understood, at first, that Rose was mourning for the Doctor, and she’d been understanding and supportive of the dimension cannon project. That did not allow for any romantic experiments. Although Rose knew that Jackie never believed that the project would succeed, she had never said so. It must be an instinct that mothers had, Rose told herself, coupled with the desire, despite her doubts, not to crush her hopes. Rose was very grateful to her for that; she had needed to fall on her bum in order to wake up from that dream.

  “Yeah, I did,” Rose said, debating for a while whether to make this just an offhand remark, but she decided to tell her Mum everything. She needed to get the events off her chest, and Jackie would ask anyway. Maybe, she’d be able to see things a bit more clearly after rehashing them with her Mum. If anyone, she’d understand. Mickey would, she knew that, but he wasn’t the perfect person to listen to her because he was far too protective.

  Jackie sipped her tea as she listened attentively.

  “How bad is it?” she asked eventually. Rose set down her mug on the coffee table and turned away from Jackie, pulling up her shirt. Rose had never seen the scars herself, she didn’t need to. She could feel them, of course, the hardened, bumpy patches of skin that felt like plastic beneath her fingertips, the nerve endings dead so all she had to go by were her fingertips. She only felt Jackie’s touch because of the pressure of her fingers as she brushed her skin.

  “You really want to keep them?” Jackie asked.

  Rose nodded. “As a reminder of how foolish I’ve been. I should have listened to him, Mum. Instead I saw all these worlds...” Rose’s voice trailed off. She had seen many worlds indeed on her search for the Doctor, never ready to admit that he had been right, that the walls between their universes really were sealed off. For once she should have listened to him.

  “What about Dave Tiler?” Jackie asked. Rose knew, of course, that she’d been talking about him when she’d asked how bad it was.

  “What about him?”

  “You said he looks like the Doctor,” Jackie pointed out patiently.

  Rose pulled down her shirt and sat back. “He does, yeah. But he’s... different from the Doctor. Very different. And I don’t think he’s interested in me.”

  Jackie’s eyes went wide. “Why ever not?”

  “He’s just lost his wife.”

  They were quiet for a couple of moments. It was the truth. Dave had lost his wife. He was in mourning, and if what little she knew about him was anything to go by he wouldn’t be interested in meeting anyone any time soon. He might need a friend, but he probably had those, and anyway, who’d want to be friends with her? She was moderately famous, which made her life at once complicated and easier. It certainly made having a private life more difficult; anyone following celebrity news knew that.

  “You’ve mentioned him several times,” Jackie said.

  Rose blushed. Had she really talked about Dave enough to give her Mum reason to believe that she was interested in him? It was not a good idea at all. Although she had managed, during lunch, to not compare him to the Doctor, she knew deep down that this similarity played a more important role than she cared to admit. Dating him for that reason would be unfair to both of them — provided, of course, he wanted to meet someone.

  “Be careful, Rose,” Jackie said. “I want you to be happy, I really do, but please be careful. The Doctor broke your heart. I can’t allow some bloke, because he looks like him, to break it again.”

  “He isn’t like that,” she said.

  “Oh, well,” Jackie said, the resignation in her voice indicating that she’s not going to fight over it. “I love you, Rose. I’d hate to see you hurt again.”

  Rose smiled, blinking back her tears. “I know, Mum. But... trust me, yeah?”

  Rose hardly ever used that plea with her Mum, knowing how powerful it was. After all, this wasn’t any different from what Jackie shared with Pete. Pleading was unfair, too, because Jackie couldn’t deny her anything. However, nothing had happened so far. And Dave seemed so swept up by his grief that she didn’t think he was even remotely interested in her. Obviously, she felt much more strongly about him than he did about her. She could deal with that.

  -:-

  “You’ve been preaching to the converted,” Pete said, offering her a seat on the sofa in his office. The tall windows overlooked the piers and gardens of Canary Wharf and the beautiful, refurbished warehouses and converted office buildings lining the Isle of Dogs. Beyond the glittering ribbon of the Thames lay Greenwich and the Royal Palace and Gardens. It was one of the old guest houses — mansions, really — that was the Tyler’s London home.

  Rose tore her eyes away from the view. It blew her away every time, probably because it was so very different from her London. “Have I?” she asked.

  Pete joined her with a French press and a binder. He poured each of them some coffee before settling down in the armchair facing the sofa. “There have been plans to set up a proper office in Glasgow for a while. After all, Scotland is the home of Torchwood, and the board members feel that it’s high time we honoured that. So your request is considered more like an offer, and the board are ready to establish the Glasgow office.”

  “Oh,” Rose smiled. “That’s... brilliant.”

  “They want you to find premises and give them an overview of what you think will be necessary to run a branch up there,” Pete said, smiling. “You can suggest staff you’d like to have up there, but of course it’s up to their personal discretion if they want to move north.”

  “Can we recruit locals?” Rose asked.

  Pete nodded. “The more people we have who’re familiar with the area and the people, the better.”

  An excitement Rose hadn’t experienced since the idea of the dimension cannon had been first presented to her washed through her and pooled warmly in the pit of her stomach. She and her team could create something new, just like Pete had after the Battle at Canary Wharf. “Thank you,” she breathed for lack of anything better to say. “I hadn’t thought it would be that easy.”

  Pete shrugged, smiling. “You did great work up there, and the rift really needs monitoring. I don’t know how we’ve managed so far. The rift didn’t appear overnight, after all.”

  Rose looked at the contents of her cup. “It might have,” she said, looking up. “From what we’ve seen so far, the rift isn’t very old.”

  “Is it expanding?” Pete asked.

  “As far as we can tell it’s been stable for a while, but part of our work will be about exploring it,” Rose said.

  “We need to make sure that it isn’t dangerous,” Pete cautioned. “What about the crashed Sheeryan ship?”

  “It’s under control. We’ve only got one witness, a teenager, and she’s already signed the Official Secrets Act. I’ve given her my number in case she needs talking about it,” Rose said. Pete didn’t look very pleased when she mentioned the witness’s age.

  “We’ll definitely need a counsellor up there,” Pete murmured, pulling his PDA out of the inside pocket of his jacket to jot down some notes. “And we’ll have to think about which part of official Torchwood will relocate to Glasgow.”

  They sat in silence, finishing their coffee.

  “You look... excited,” Pete said eventually. Rose touched her slightly pink cheeks. “I’m sorry about the dimension cannon.”

  “Yeah, well,” Rose said, putting her mug down gingerly. “It was worth a try, but we didn’t know enough in the end.”

  “Your Mum told me you don’t want to treat the scars,” Pete said, turning from Torchwood Director into her Dad.

  Rose sat back in the sofa. “Not for the moment, no.”

  Pete nodded. “Don’t give them too much power over you, you hear me?” he asked.

  “I won’t.”

  Pete nodded, and set down his empty cup as well. “Shall we? It’s my turn to pick up Tony from kindergarten today.” />
  -:-

  Planning the Glasgow office was just what Rose needed. It was a fresh start, and, although it wasn’t easy to admit, it would serve to heal the wounds the failure of the dimension cannon had torn in her soul. Maybe, over time, she would be able to honour the Doctor by helping aliens and not feel heartbroken over it, or hoping that one day, a blue phone box would crash-land in her back garden. She needed to move on.

  After tea with her family, she played with Tony for a while. She was going to see him and her family less frequently when she moved to Glasgow. It was the only downside to the whole enterprise. Mum and Pete had been there for her during the first months in this new universe. How Mum had coped so well was beyond her. Certainly, Pete had made it easier for her. Maybe Mum just hadn’t allowed him to make life and love more complicated. She’d have to ask her how she did it. Rose had no doubt that Pete and Mum getting together had not been all that easy, despite Tony.