My first Whofic: comments/critiques/machetes welcomed.
Many thanks to yourfavorite for the beta!
Rose tapped on the door as she let herself into the flat. "Shireen? You ready?"
The whine of a hair-dryer running full tilt behind the bathroom door was the only reply. Rolling her eyes, Rose walked into the lounge and flopped down on the couch. On the telly, Charlie Dimmock was jiggling under her top at the Chelsea Flower Show and wittering on about some garden that looked like it came straight off the bottom of the ocean, all shimmery fan-like things and spiky tufts of grasses and bright flowers waving in the breeze.
"S'gorgeous, innit?"
Startled, Rose craned her neck to see over the back of the couch. Shireen's older sister Yasmine was leaning against the door to the kitchen, a chipped china cup cradled in one hand. She nodded at the telly and sighed. "Looks even better in person, if y'can believe it."
"An' what were you doing in Chelsea?" Rose rolled to her knees to lean on the back of the couch as she spoke. "Bit out of the way for a girl from Southwark, ain't it?"
Yasmine smiled a little as she moved to the table and set the cup down. "A bit, yeah. Went with a... friend... yesterday." She pushed a few strands of hair behind her ear and a beam of light danced off the thick gold bracelet wrapped round her wrist. "He got tickets from work. They've summat to do with one of them big clubs."
"Who's this friend, then, taking you to posh garden shows?"
"Bloke I met few weeks back," Yasmine said as she sat down next to Rose, thumbed the mute button on the television remote and leaned closer like she was about to whisper some juicy gossip. "He's older."
"What, like old older? How old?" Rose sat back on her heels and looked Yasmine over. In addition to the thick gold bracelet round her wrist, she was wearing a blouse and trousers that looked soft and expensive ... and was that a diamond at her throat? As big around as Rose's little finger, it hung on a delicate golden chain and peeked out from under the lapels of her blouse.
Yasmine grinned, baring her teeth in an expression that reminded Rose of bedtime stories and huntsman's cottages. "Not too old. Mid-forties maybe? Never really asked him. He's loaded, though. S'got a vacation place in Majorca and all. Real flash."
They sat in silence for a minute, staring at the gardens on the telly and listening to the whine of the hair-dryer. Rose tried to think of something to say that wouldn't make her sound as appalled as she felt. She shifted so that her legs were stretched out in front of her, her fingers plucking at a threadbare patch in her jeans.
"Met him down the shop when he came in to buy a pressie for his daughter." Yasmine reached up and traced her necklace. "Told him if he really wanted to impress her, he'd quit muckin' about with the crap we got and take himself straight to Harvey Nicks. Two days later, he turns up with tickets to a show in the West End and we been seeing each other since."
"Does your mum know about him?" Rose tried to whisper but it came out more like a hiss.
Yasmine bit out a sharp laugh and shook her head. "Can you just imagine?" She scrunched up her face and started to mimic her mother's sing-song accent, "I did not raise my daughters to consort with men like that. Like we're going to do better with the blokes she thinks we should fancy -- bunch of backwards Pakis working two jobs just to get the rent in on time."
Blinking, Rose recoiled from her as Shireen shut off the hair-dryer and yelled, "Rose? You 'ere yet?"
"Yeah, we're in the lounge," Rose called back, grateful for the interruption.
"We? You didn't bring that Jimmy up, did you? I told him last time he wasn't allowed in this flat no more... Oh." Shireen hovered in the hallway, her face gone blank and hard as she looked at her sister. "C'mere, Rose, an' help me pick a top, will ya?"
She spun on her heel, dark hair fanning out behind her as she stomped back to her room.
Rose jumped to her feet and shrugged as if to say, What're you gonna do?
Dropping the necklace as if it had burned her fingers, Yasmine stretched her mouth into another wide, glittering smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "See you 'round, then, Rose."
"Yeah," Rose said, giving a small smile that felt like it would fall right off her face. "See ya."
The sound on the telly came back up as she hurried into the cramped bedroom where Shireen was flinging clothes onto the bed.
–––
She huddles deeper into her jacket as the wind whirls around her. The bricks are cold and rough against her back, pulling at her hair and sending shivers up and down her spine. Somewhere far below, a police siren rises and falls away as it moves through the streets. Night is racing across the estate, but up here it feels as if everything has slowed to a crawl.
For the first time in her life, she thinks she can feel the seconds moving around her like a riptide. Each of them sweeps her further from where she should be and she can't find her footing no matter how quickly she moves.
Rose knows she should get down from the roof before her mum starts to worry but she barely has the energy to wipe the tears from her face, never mind getting to her feet and walking down the stairs.
Plus, going back to the flat means more of Jackie's unique brand of smothering sympathy and screechy lecturing and that isn't anything Rose fancies listening to anymore tonight. She knows she's buggered up her life good and proper; she doesn't need to hear it from anyone else.
Her head falls back with a thud against the low brick wall. The pain ripples under her scalp, low waves beating in time with the ache that radiates from her heart.
There is no such thing as forever, she knows, especially not when you try to hang it on a pretty face and empty promises of a future and a ring that'll never come.
–––
The sweet old man who ran the chippie gave Rose a part-time job, but warned her that there weren't enough hours to go around. The paycheques were small, but they kept Jackie off her back, mostly. Eventually, she knew, she'd have to find something with a better pay scale and more hours, if only so that she didn't spend whole afternoons staring blankly at the telly and eating cheese sandwiches.
She went down the pub some nights with Shireen and pretended that life was golden and the future was at her fingertips. She flirted with the local boys and, after a while, she stopped feeling her heart rise up in her throat whenever she spied a dark blonde head out the corner of her eye.
She watched Mickey watch her from across the crowded room for weeks. She kept waiting for him to come to her – to buy her a drink or chat her up or make a stupid joke about all the pubs in all the world – but finally, finally, she gave up on waiting for things to happen to her.
Her life stood still, but when he held her, she pretended that it moved around her like it used to...
Rose, 'm gonna take care o' you, you just wait. Big things're gonna happen for me. Any day now.
...and sometimes – just for a moment or two – it did.
–––
She shuffles down the aisle of the bus, hands jammed deep into the pockets of her coat, as she looks for an empty seat. Her feet ache and there's a sharp prickling behind her eyes and nose.
She's only halfway through what will probably be one of the longest days of her life, wandering round town with a bright smile plastered over her face as she begs prettily for a job.
No, ma'am, I've never worked in a shop like this. Yes, sir, I can work during through the holidays and after. No, I left school though I could've gone for my A-levels but, you see, I thought he loved me and we'd be together forever.He told me we would.
A middle-aged man in a dark suit budges over and pats the seat next to him, but his smile seems too cold somehow and she shivers as she sits down. He's nice enough, chattering about the weather and isn't this traffic awful and what d'you think, that Yank going to get his claws into our Man United?
The only thing she knows about footie is that Mickey always wants to drag her along when there's a match on, so she just shakes her head and stares out the window. The man gets the hint and goes back to his paper, rustling and folding the pages while she watches the world rush past.
After three more shops, the prickling behind her eyes has become a burning and she slinks home like the dog that lived out behind the chippie when she was a kid. She phones Shireen on the mobile and just barely manages to keep the tears out of her voice. Shireen hears them anyway and tells her to come over for honeycakes and the new episode of Spooks.
When the show is over and Shireen's tired herself out with gasping over what happened to Tom Quinn, she phones her mum and tells her she's staying over. Jackie sounds distracted and rings off without asking any questions.
In the morning, Rose stumbles into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee and pulls up short when she sees Yasmine, dark hair swept up to the top of her head and another diamond – bigger than the first one – dangling at her throat. She feels like a stupid little girl standing there in her best outfit, all crumpled from sleeping on the couch while Yasmine glides across the room like a model out of a glossy magazine.
"D'you think you could get me your old job?" she blurts out.
Yasmine smiles, the one that shows all of her teeth but doesn't crinkle up her eyes, and Rose feels her life start to spin around her once again.
–––
Tricia and Marie sat with her at lunch on her first day at Henrik's and told her which managers to avoid if she didn't want pinch-marks all over her bum and which ones to spend time with if she did. She ate with them for the first few weeks while she was assigned to the stockroom, far from the customers and the bustle. When Mr Hitchens moved her out onto the floor, her breaks came at a different time and she didn't see them as much.
Mickey came into town to eat lunch with her whenever he wasn't working, which was more often than not. She folded tops and moved displays and told fat-arsed housewives that they looked fantastic in clothes that would have suited their daughters better.
She still went down the pub on the odd night with Shireen, but their conversations were stilted, like they hardly knew each other anymore. Rose tried a thousand times in a thousand different ways to explain what she was doing – that she wasn't like that, that she wasn't Yasmine – but the words got so tangled up in her mouth that Shireen just looked away and sipped at her drink.
A few days before Christmas, Jackie put up the tacky plastic tree and they popped crackers, just the two of them, giggling about not being able to wait another day. Mickey had wanted her to go with him to his mum's for dinner on Christmas Day, but Rose begged off, saying she couldn't leave her mum alone for the holiday. He'd pouted, flashing those big eyes at her until she gave him his present and he forgot all about dinner in the excitement of trying out his new videogames.
Later, as she pulled on her clothes in the dark, he'd mumbled that he loved her and she held her breath until he rolled over and fell asleep again.
She knew he was waiting for her to say it back and she wanted to – oh, how she wanted to say it.
It wasn't as desperate as it had been with Jimmy, for which she was thankful; the way she felt for him had felt like it was squeezing the life out of her sometimes. With Mickey, it was sweet and gentle and just... there. Like him.
Still, the words wouldn't come no matter how hard she tried. She couldn't shake the feeling that if she said those three words, it would all stop and never start back up.
–––
In January, their lottery syndicate hit the jackpot. Rose's share came to fifty quid and she opened her first savings account. The teller smiled condescendingly at her as she filled out the paperwork, her tongue poking out as she wrote her name and address as neatly as she could manage. Hours had been cut back at work in the post-holiday lull and she couldn't afford to add to her little reserve, but she checked the balance on Mickey's computer once a week and grinned every time she saw that little 'interest deposited' box ticked off.
The weeks slid by as the world around her slowly showed signs of coming back to life, greens and pinks and yellows peeking out from under the grey. Mr Hitchens called her into the office one afternoon in March and said he was authorising a pay rise for her, effective immediately. She'd bit back a grin and thanked him, one hand pressed against her belly to hold in the little glow of pride that had flared to life.
It flickered and guttered as suddenly as it had come when he pressed her against his door and tried to shove his hand up her top. She gritted her teeth and pushed him away, an image of Yasmine flickering at the edge of her vision. He'd backed off, apologising profusely, and didn't speak to her alone again.
Her next cheque was even larger than he'd said it would be. She ignored the whisper in the back of her head that asked how much it would have been if she hadn't shoved him away.
–––
Mickey's breath stirs the hair at her temple as they lay tangled around each other, skin cooling in the slight breeze from his window. He tells her she's beautiful and special and so much better than this miserable little flat with the dirty dishes and the clothes all over the floor.
She agrees, but she'll never say it out loud.
There are a lot of things she'll never say out loud.
–––
Her life moves ever faster around her and she moves with it, the days running together in a blur of buses and folded trousers and soft kisses and glimpses of what could be.
It's harder than she thought it would be to keep from sliding into what shouldn't be.
There's a man been coming into the shop lately. He's a little taller than her, starting to go soft over his belt and under his chin. He buys silly little things, socks and belts and hair clips, and he always manages to catch her in conversation while she rings up his purchases.
Ever since that thing with Mr Hitchens, she feels like she's skating on a barely frozen pond and waiting for the ice to crack under her. She tells herself that she's friendly because her job demands it but it gets harder to remember that as days go by.
The customer tells her his name is Bill and asks is she hungry? Only he knows this little café around the corner that he thinks she'd enjoy... Rose puts him off with a smile, but under her clothes, where he can't see, her skin is prickling. Is this how it happened with Yasmine? Was her rich man all smiles and charm that oozed over her skin? Winks and little touches that made her flinch on the inside and stayed on her like a bruise long after he'd gone?
Did she rethink her refusals when she went home at night and stared up at the cracks in the ceiling, listened to the neighbours through the parchment-thin walls?
After a few more rejections that get weaker and weaker, Bill gives up and leaves her alone, but not before he comes to visit her once more.
His eyes are sad and his smile is soft as he hands her a book. She's startled by it; she hasn't read anything but glossy mags and the websites Mickey visits since she left school.
Since Jimmy Stones.
"It's a bit hard to read, this book," Bill had said. "You seem like you're looking for something, Rose, if you don't mind me saying. When you find it, make sure you reach out and take it."
She reads the first chapter on the bus home and wonders why a man who'd been trying to chat her up would think of this as a present. It's not exactly hard to read but it's sweet and painful and she hardly notices the tears that well up until she can't see the page anymore.
When she finishes the book, she starts it again. She tells Mickey that her idea of heaven is standing so still while time rages around her that she has all the time in the world to do what she wants without missing out on anything.
He tells her she should stop watching his science-fiction DVDs and tumbles her to the bed.
–––
There were moments when her life felt like it was standing still again but she knew it couldn't be because she was still moving with it. She fell into bed at night, blundered to the bathroom in the morning, went to work, to lunch, home. She picked up her paycheques and put a little bit in her savings account – never as much as she'd like but not so little that she was embarrassed. She dodged eating with Marie and Tricia when their breaks coincided. She goofed about with Mickey and kissed him: lightly in public, harder in private. She fought with Jackie and stormed off in a huff and cried on Shireen's shoulder. Life marched onward, dragging her along with it, but the sameness of it all washed over her like a wave until she thought she would drown in it.
Then, one night, that wave broke around her and she fought her way above it, clinging to a stranger's hand. Time danced around her for days, but she felt like she was standing still even as she was running and fighting and swinging.
Until she let go.
Time caught up and stopped dead around her, with a grinding, groaning noise and a breeze that whipped her hair around her head.
Rose pulled Mickey to his feet and started walking with him down the path that stretched before her. For an instant, she could see all the way to the end of it and everything was so calm, so still.
–––
"By the way, did I mention? It also travels in time." He flashes a tiny grin and steps back and away from the open door.
Rose sees Yasmine out the corner of her eye, diamonds winking in the artificial light, and blinks.
It's not like that. She's not like that. She's not looking for some bloke to rescue her; she'll do that for herself. She remembers Bill, with his soft chin and sad eyes, telling her to reach out and take.
And she runs.
–––
He's older, but not too old, with a vacation place on any one of the millions of worlds out there in any year he chooses. Real flash.
He doesn't shower her in gold and jewels and tickets to posh garden shows. With him, it's all bombs and death and disgusting bits of slime and muck.
Her life spins faster than it ever has before, but she's steady in the middle of it with his hand in hers and time stretches out before and behind them, twisting and moving and folding in on itself.