Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - Soren Kierkegaard
Glasgow, Summer 1990
It was, in the local parlance, "taps-aff" weather.
Glasgow was having a mini-heatwave and the park was full of men and women in varying stages of decency toasting themselves in the unaccustomed warmth. Most had managed to shed the blue-tinged look of the typical native Scot and were now presenting in various shades of pink, brown and bright red for those who thought sunblock was for tourists.
Clara held tight to her mother's hand, gazing round greedily at the unfamiliar sights and colours. She thought she could see swings a little way in the distance and her eyes lit up.
"Mummy, swings!" she said, with a tiny lisp that she had not yet grown out of.
"In a while, sweetheart," her mum said distractedly. She was holding a map in her other hand, frowning as she turned it this way and that. Clara pulled on her hand a little as she took a step towards what she could now see was a full playground, with not only swings but slides, roundabouts and climbing frames. Her mother sighed and let go of her hand, taking the map in both hands finally and squinting at it. "We came in the north entrance," she murmured. "So it's...straight ahead, and then right." She nodded, and folded up the map. "Okay Clara...Clara?" Her head whipped round. "Clara!"
Clara hadn't meant to leave her mother's side, but there were swings, and other kids laughing and running around, and an ice cream van selling Mr Whippy with raspberry sauce off to one side and all in all it was too much for any three and a half year old to take. She giggled as she ran towards the playground, already mentally planning out the order in which she'd tackle it. Swings first, obviously. There was nothing she loved more than the sensation of flying higher and higher, and that little thrill of fear in her gut that she might fall, which made it all the sweeter.
Later in life she would realise that that particular combination of psychological traits was not exactly healthy.
She reached the swings and magically found an empty one to clamber into. "Mummy, push me!" she gasped, settling herself down into the warm rubber and wrapping her little hands around the chains. Only then did she realise her mummy wasn't with her. "Mummy?" she called frantically, her head whipping from side to side. "Mummy!" She leapt off the swing and ran towards the edge of the playground, looking for the pink dress her mum had been wearing.
"I've seen yer maw, hen," a rough voice wheezed. Clara turned round sharply and looked up at a tall man hovering over her, holding a lit cigarette in his left hand. His hair was blond and shorn close to his head. He wore ripped jeans and faded leather jacket over a grubby vest-top, despite the heat, and was sweating a little as he held out his hand to her, licking his lips as his eyes flicked from side to side. "'Mon, I'll take ye tae her."
Clara hesitated. His accent was thick and unfamiliar and difficult to understand. "Where's mummy?"
He looked around again. "She's just roon the corner, hen," he said, a little more urgently. "Come oan. I'll take you."
Clara chewed on her lower lip before taking a hesitant step forward. His right hand was held out towards her. She could see beads of sweat prickling on his palm as she tentatively reached out to grasp his hand.
"Oh, I don't bloody well think so."
The new voice had the same accent as the man, but it belonged to a woman who appeared as if from nowhere to stand between Clara and the stranger. She wasn't very tall, shorter than Clara's mummy, and quite skinny with lots of sharp edges. Her cheekbones were razor sharp beneath her sunglasses and her lips were a thin slash of red curled into a disdainful sneer as she stared at the man before her.
"Beat it," the man growled. "This isnae your business."
The woman took a single step towards him, her shoulders squared. He towered over her and was nearly twice as wide but, somehow or other, he suddenly seemed extremely small. Her voice was calm and sing-songy and cold.
"See if I wasn't busy right now?" she whispered, softly enough that Clara couldn't quite hear. "I'd peel away your skin and use it to make myself a new handbag. I'd slice off your manhood with a blunt silver fruit-knife and feed it to the swans in that pond over there. I'd deconstruct you atom by atom and cast you into the maw of a black hole that's eaten worlds older than your puny civilisation can even conceive of." She paused to glance at him over the top of her sunglasses as she reached out and ran one finger down his sweaty cheek from temple to chin. "But I am busy," she said slowly. "So. Off you fuck, and pray that you never see me again."
The man stumbled backward as if a spell had been broken. His face was bloodless and clammy. His mouth opened and closed reflexively like a fish for a full second that felt like an eternity and then he was off running, as fast as his wheezing lungs would allow him to go.
The woman turned round and dropped down to squat on her haunches so she was eye level with Clara. "Hello," she said, smiling. "I'm Melissa. Are you lost?"
Clara gripped on to Melissa's hand tightly as they walked round the pond. It was really nice, holding her hand: colder than you might expect on this hot day, and stronger than it looked. With her other hand she held the ice cream the lady had bought for her once she finished crying and explaining how she'd just wanted to go on the swings and her mum had been right there and how she hadn't meant to be bad, honest she hadn't. It was a soft tower of vanilla sweetness with a flake stuck in it and raspberry syrup drizzled over its folds. Despite missing her mum, Clara was starting to enjoy herself. After all, she had ice cream and she was in a park and the nice lady holding her hand had scared away the bad man, so she knew she was safe. She squeezed Melissa's hand and grinned up at her, her face sticky with melted ice cream.
Melissa was wearing strappy sandals and a knee-length dark pencil-skirt with a white, sleeveless button-down fitted shirt. Her thick dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Sunglasses covered her eyes, but Clara thought she'd caught a glimpse of pale blue when Melissa had got rid of the scary man earlier.
"You're nice," Clara said.
Melissa chuckled. "I'm really not, my little puppy-dog."
Clara giggled. "I'm not a puppy!"
Melissa glanced down at her. "No? How do you explain those big brown eyes then?"
Clara shrugged and returned to demolishing her ice-cream. "Mummy's wearing a pink dress," she said, looking around.
"I'm so shocked by this news," Melissa muttered. "Do you know where you two were going?"
Clara shook her head. Her mum had told her but the excitement of swings and the fear of the strange man and the slight, somehow pleasant oddness of Melissa had pushed the information out of her brain. "Don't 'member," she said. They walked together in silence for a few moments, before Clara added: "Will you tell me a story?"
They walked on for another ten or so paces before Melissa answered. "A story, eh? Have you got a favourite story your mummy reads to you?"
"Narnia!" Clara exclaimed immediately, finishing the last of her ice cream cone.
"And what's your favourite part of that story?" Melissa asked, swinging their arms pendulum like between them as they walked.
"The wardrobe," Clara replied. "It's bigger on the inside."
Melissa stopped suddenly, looking down at Clara with an odd expression on her face. Clara looked up at her, squinting against the light pouring down from the deep, cloudless azure of the sky.
"Who are you, little Clara?" Melissa murmured. She reached her free hand out and stroked absently over the top of the little girl's head. Clara blinked. Melissa's fingers trailed over her temple. "Impossible Clara…"
The girl opened her mouth to say something.
"Clara!"
Melissa's head snapped up to see a brunette woman in her late twenties wearing a pink dress running towards them. Her face was pale and pinched with worry. "Mummy!" Clara exclaimed, surging towards her mum just as she arrived in front of them. Ellie Oswald grabbed her daughter and held her head against her stomach, sobbing with sheer relief. Mother and daughter stood together for at least half a minute just absorbing the joy of being reunited before Ellie looked up and acknowledged the woman waiting a few paces away.
"Were you looking after her?" she asked. "Thank you!"
Clara pulled back and looked up at Melissa. "She's Melissa," she said. "She's nice."
Melissa smiled a tight smile and held out her hand. "Melissa Oakdown," she said. Ellie let go of Clara and reached out to shake the other woman's hand. "Thought I'd better keep her close," Melissa said, nodding towards Clara as their hands clasped. "There was a guy talking to her...seemed dodgy."
Ellie gasped and looked down at her daughter. "Clara Oswald, you never talk to strange men!"
Clara's face took on a sheepish expression as she looked down at her toes. Melissa smiled at Ellie. "Were you two heading somewhere in particular?"
"Oh!" Ellie replied. "Yeah, we were meeting my husband at the Fossil Grove. It's round here somewhere. It's this place where they have these ancient fossilised tree stumps; it's meant to be amazing."
Melissa nodded. "I know it," she said. "Come on, I'll chum you over. Keep two pairs of eyes on wee puppy-eyes here."
Clara giggled and grabbed Melissa's hand, unfortunately with the hand that had been holding the ice cream. Melissa grimaced at the sticky sensation but quickly covered it with a smile.
The three of them began to walk together towards the western end of the park, Clara clinging on to both their hands. "What's a fossil?" Clara asked after a minute, looking up at Melissa.
"Oh, well, it's a special sort of stone," she replied. "It's like an echo of something that was once alive. Preserved in the stone. Maybe a plant, or a little fish. Maybe a dinosaur." Clara frowned.
"I don't think she understands," Ellie said, laughing. "She's only three and a half."
Melissa shrugged. "Precocious wee thing though, eh?" She glanced over at Ellie. "What's that accent? Lancashire? Yorkshire?"
"Lancashire," Ellie replied. "Blackpool. We couldn't afford to go very far this holiday, but I thought this European City of Culture thing would be interesting. More culture here than in Blackpool anyway."
"Oh, I don't know," Melissa said. "You've got a tower and a beach with only one raw sewage outflow. Plus you have more public toilets than any city in Europe."
"Eh?"
"Well, the rest of us call them doorways."
Ellie's face was blank for a second then she barked out a laugh. "Oi, watch it, I could make a crack or two about your hometown you know."
Melissa smiled. "Oh, you have no idea poppet."
The three of them walked on in companionable silence for another few minutes, Clara enjoying the feel of her mother's warm hand in hers and Melissa's contrasting coolness.
"You know, it's strange. I can't shake the feeling I've met you somewhere before," Ellie mused, glancing at Melissa over the top of Clara's head.
"Oh aye?" Melissa replied. "Where would that be?"
Ellie thought hard for a moment. "Oh!" she exclaimed finally. "It was in the hospital when Clara was born. Looking into the nursery. You said you were visiting a friend. I pointed Clara out to you."
Melissa glanced at Ellie over the rim of her sunglasses, her pale eyes appraising and calculating. "That's quite some memory," she said, then smiled, showing her teeth. "Small world, eh?"
"Small world right enough," Ellie said, grinning.
They rounded a bend in the path. "That's the place there," Melissa said, pointing towards a small building a few dozen feet away.
Ellie glanced over. "Oh!" she said. "That was fast. Well...thanks. For everything, you know." She gestured towards Clara who was smiling up at her.
"Not a problem," Melissa replied, and lowered herself down to Clara's level. "You watch yourself, puppy-eyes," she said. "Watch out for strange men."
Clara nodded, solemnly, then lurched forward and threw her arms round Melissa's neck. "Bye bye," she said. When Clara let her go, Melissa stood up again and nodded to Ellie.
"Well, bye then Melissa," said Ellie.
Melissa smiled. "Call me Missy," she said, then reached out and cupped Ellie's and Clara's cheeks.
"Forget," she murmured, feeling the warm trickle of telepathic energy flowing from her consciousness through her hands and into their minds, smoothing over the ripples of the last hour, removing from Ellie the frantic worry and heart-stopping panic, and erasing Clara's fear of the hulking man with the sweaty palms. She removed the image of her from both their minds, but left Clara with the wariness of strange men. Mother and daughter's eyes fluttered closed as she worked and when they opened them again she was gone.
Missy watched them from a distance as they came back to themselves and slowly began to wander towards their destination. Clara's father would probably ask why they'd taken so long and they'd be confused for a while, but their minds would smooth over any cracks. Humans were ever so resilient that way.
She walked a few dozen feet back the way they'd come until she found an empty bench. It was set into a carved out hollow in the side of a large rock, opposite a little pool that was full almost to overflowing with frogspawn.
Her eyes drifted closed as she remembered the glimpse she'd taken of little Clara's mind back by the pond. It was bright and intelligent, for a human. Warm, alive. But nothing interesting. Nothing special. Just a little girl's mind.
"Who are you, Clara?" she muttered aloud. The bench and the sun and the little pond made no reply. She was no closer to working out the secret. How Clara had known those things that no-one in the universe but one could know. How she could know them when he had not told her.
Missy's cold eyes slowly flickered open.
Clara's mind wasn't the only one she'd touched. With a grimace, she allowed herself to remember the tall, broad, blonde man with the sweaty palms. Her finger on his temple, her mind breaching his. She'd seen into that cesspit, seen what he'd been planning to do to little Clara once he got her away from the public park. Red lips curled in disgust and a powerful, icy rage.
She'd also seen where he planned to go. His fetid pit of a home where he felt safe.
Her fingers twitched. It had been so long. So long since she'd killed someone who really deserved it.
She stood up from the bench and began to slowly walk back towards the playground where she'd left her TARDIS.
She had someone to visit.
Author's notes
Gratuitously set in Glasgow because it's my hometown and probably the best place on Earth. "Taps-aff" means tops off, by the way. It's what we say whenever it's over about nine degrees celsius. 1990 was the year we were named European City of Culture, which seemed a big deal back then. Go see the Fossil Grove if you're ever in town; it's an amazingly serene place. Shamelessly stole the line about Blackpool public toilets from a Bill Bryson book.