Donna stared at the paint swatch with a frown.
She'd recently discovered she was having a son—she was twelve weeks along, and progressing well, according to her doctor—and had decided impulsively to find a paint color right then.
She examined the blue shade, something squirming uncomfortably in the corner of her mind. That had happened—when she'd seen a man wearing a suit with plimsolls, walking around town with a blonde woman, the thought of the term Doctor, and she'd had the oddest dream the night before, of a land with an orange sky and silver leaves on the trees, the spires of the tallest buildings trapped in a small bubble, like a snowglobe.
But thinking of these things made her head ache, so she didn't.
She rubbed absentmindedly at her stomach, and turned to the nearest shop employee.
"What's this color called?"
The woman smiled. "Spaceman blue."
She frowned. There was that feeling again—but she ignored it.
"I'll take two gallons."
The color actually did make her think of space, and, oddly enough, of phone booths. But that made her head ache even more.
But it was the color her son's room was painted.
John Wilfred Noble-Temple grew up surrounded by space and time, by the bluest blue in the universe, but he never knew it.
And neither did Donna.