Chapter 2

The Doctor actually did more questioning than talking as he walked Millie home. Gradually, asking one question at a time, he heard about her modest suburban home, nondescript personal interests, average school, insignificant family background, lack-lustre grades… all in all, she was an unremarkable child.

This one could grow up to be a temp from Chiswick, the Doctor thought wryly to himself.

It made all the fuss at the mall seem uncharacteristic, from what he could gather about her.

"Sounds like you've had a very human upbringing," he said out loud. "So, why'd you go and tell a whole bunch of people you're an alien? Did your friends put you up to it? Or your sister perhaps?"

Millie coloured visibly. "Carrie doesn't associate with me in public; she'd be horrified if anyone thought we knew each other, let alone are related. And I don't have any friends… w-who were there today." The Doctor noticed her pause, and felt rather uncomfortable.

"Growing up can be tough, eh?" he murmured consolingly. "Look at me; I've been in this body for, oh, a fair while now, and I still get called a shrimp or a runt from time to time."

"Well, no one could call me that," Millie muttered darkly, looking down at where the waistband of her dress pulled across her middle. "I got cross with you earlier for saying I was stupid, but it's true, really. I don't look clever. I don't look much of anything, really."

"Oh, that's not true," the Doctor interjected. "I think you look nice… that dress… it's your colour, I think… and, uh, those shoes look good on you. Nice snug fit."

"You don't give compliments much, do you?" Millie observed, looking sideways at him with the tiniest of smiles.

"Er, no," he admitted haltingly.

"That's alright. If you had been as convincing when you said it as you were before, I'd still have known you were lying."

The Doctor said nothing. Being… well, the Doctor, he seldom suffered from a lack of confidence. Nevertheless, even he'd have to be a blind fool to see that this girl was pitifully under-confident. Why go around attracting attention to yourself like that then? he wondered to himself. He tried again.

"The world's a different place now. You say you're an alien these days, and people are bound to fly off the handle. Some of those people in the mall might have lost loved ones to an invasion. You can't blame them for being scared. So, why say something as dramatic as all that?"

Millie shrugged, looking sheepish. "I dunno. I was in the fashion show at Sue-Ellen's Clothing Emporium – Mum makes me and Carrie model. Well, she has to make me do it, anyway – and at the end of the runway my shoe flipped off my foot and I slipped. I fell right over, in front of everyone. A bunch of boys over near the food court started making rude noises–" Millie blushed bright red, and the Doctor could imagine what kind of Sliveen-ish noises the boys had made "-and I guess I overreacted. Carrie calls me an alien all the time, so I just blurted it out. It-it sounds silly, but… until they started chasing me, I rather enjoyed it." A small, wistful smile appeared on her face, making the Doctor feel slightly uneasy. "There was this big gasp, and everyone looked really afraid of me. It felt… good."

She was lost in contemplation for a moment, then seemed to come back to herself, as though she had been talking without realizing who was hearing it.

"Uh, t-this is my street, over here," she stammered, not looking at him. The Doctor followed her, wondering as he went.

The street they turned into, Pommerance Close, was a fairly common-place suburban street, and the houses were almost identical red-bricked pseudo-cottages, but the one they stopped in front of seemed to have a slight point of difference. Though it was exactly the same in design and layout as the other houses, the picket fence out the front seemed almost dazzlingly white, the green of its patch of lawn was that little bit more vivid, and the late roses blooming in the garden beds along the path had a delicious scent. In all, the little house, though modest, had the air of a suburban utopia.

A small, curvaceous silver hatch-back was pulled up in the driveway – no spot of oil or rubber tyre-marks there – and three people, a man, woman and child, were having an animated discussion beside it. The woman saw them approach; she gave a cry and tottered swiftly out to meet them. Her dark-red patent leather high-heeled pumps gave her a lurching gait, and her dead-straight ash-blonde hair was unnaturally still as she fluttered towards the Doctor and Millie.

Ah, this is what makes the saving-the-damsel job rewarding, the Doctor thought smugly to himself. The gratefulness of the rescued party at the end of the-

"Where have you been, you beastly child!"

This shrill shriek, like a flute being played at its highest note, cut short the Doctor's self-congratulations.

"Susie was beside herself! She thought my child had run off with the pride of her couture collection! Luckily Carrie was still there to show the people how lovely it could look-" the Doctor noted that the voice softened indulgently at the mention of the other daughter "-but it made such an ugly scene, most awkward, a lot of –" here she sniffed and looked at the Doctor with undisguised disdain "-very common people guffawing after you took off and left us there. What were you trying to do to us? I've never been so humiliated! And then you wandered the street looking like that! What will Susie say! She'll go into convulsions over the state of those shoes! Get indoors before someone sees you, for pretty's sake, and get rid of that ridiculous coat!"

She grabbed one of the jacket's sleeves and yanked it vehemently from Millie's shoulders, pinching it delicately between two pincer-like, crimson-tipped fingernails.

"Ah, that would be mine," the Doctor interjected, rushing forward to save his jacket from mistreatment.

Millie's mother handed it over with a false-looking smile that showed a lot of very-white teeth. "I'm Sylvie. And you are…?"

"Smith, John Smith. Hullo. Just thought I'd walk Millie home. Later, Millie," he called after the girl, who was making her way up the drive, shoulders stooped. Millie half-turned around. He could see that her chin was trembling and her eyes were rimmed with tears of humiliation.

"Later." Her voice sounded thick. Her mother watched her retreating back as though the mere sight of it offended her, then turned to face the Doctor.

"I hope she didn't bother you too much," she simpered in a patronizing tone of apology. "Such a disgraceful child!"

"Ah, it's alright," he returned carelessly, trying to dissipate her unwarranted outrage and wishing to himself that he could just back away as swiftly as possible. Women like this made him feel all prickly. They were far too… womanly. "We had a bit of trouble-"

"Children are always trouble," Sylvie replied, heaving a sigh that made her sound as though her daughter was the greatest vexation of her life, which she certainly seemed to be.

"Oh, not always, apparently," the Doctor rejoined, sounding distracted. "Blimey," he murmured despite himself.

He was watching the girl on the driveway. More specifically, the one named Carrie. She wore the same dress as Millie, but hers was almost half the width, and it floated around her slim form like a wisp of fog around a flag pole. That was just what Carrie looked like; she was all slender and white. Her cheekbones leant her face an elfin quality, and there was a delicate tint of pink in her cheeks. Her hair was blonde like her mother's, but so pale it was almost white, and it hung straight down like a curtain to her slender waist. Her looks were ethereally beautiful... almost otherworldly.

Sylvie's face changed dramatically. An indulgent smile was on her cerise-painted lips. "My other daughter, Carrie. She was a big hit at the fashion show today. Such an attractive child." She pawed her own perfectly-coiffed hair as she said so. It was obvious whom she credited with her daughter's fine looks.

As the Doctor watched, Millie stumbled up the drive, Carrie standing directly in her path; she had to stop and look up when she got to her, and as she did, Carrie's fine facial features twisted in a very cruel-looking sneer. She eyed poor Millie and leered, as though her state of disarray gave the girl the utmost satisfaction; then she turned on her heel and flounced away with a gait that would've better belonged to a minx twice her age. Millie, looking stung, stared after her, then followed dejectedly.

"Oh, very attractive," the Doctor muttered. Sylvie, beaming proudly, didn't detect the sarcasm.

"Daddy! I want the bathroom first! I just have to shower, I feel ghastly!" he heard the high piping voice of the slender child say.

"Not yet, pumpkin," the man, her father, replied. He was a nondescript guy, fairly decent-looking in a kind of anemic, pinched way. "Let your sister have one tonight. You can shower in the morning, like you usually do."

"But I want to have it nooooow!" he heard the girl whine in reply. Then the three of them passed inside. Millie was the last in; she gave the Doctor a doleful look as she closed the door behind her.

"Very conscientious of her appearance," Sylvie declared buoyantly as though this was the pinnacle of all virtues. She turned back to the Doctor, and her smile faltered as her glance swept over his unruly head of plentiful hair. His gaze followed hers upwards uncertainly; he shuffled on the spot, clearing his throat. "Well, I hope Millie's ok now. She was quite distressed when I saw her. She was being chased by a mob down the mall. Strange thing is, they seemed to think she was… well, an alien."

Sylvie looked at him as though he had said a vulgar word, then broke into a robust chuckle that seemed slightly forced. The Doctor joined in hesitantly.

"Children will say the silliest things to get attention," she purred. "Thank you, Mr. Smith, for your escort. We appreciate chivalry in these parts."

"Ye-ah, that's me, old-fashion, knight in shining armour, left my noble steed at home today," the Doctor replied, finally starting to back away like he wanted to. "Nice to meet you. Look after those daughters of yours."

"Oh, we will," Sylvie replied smoothly. Her very pale blue eyes looked almost cat-like as they watched his skinny figure dwindling down the street.


Odd family, the Doctor thought to himself as he strode down Pommerance Close. Very strange.

He can see now why Millie was like she was. The poor girl was the ugly duckling of the family. Compared to the rest of them, she was certainly the most… ordinary out of the lot of them.

And that bothered him.

Something was definitely off there. More than just a disturbing case of parental favouritism. The whole thing seemed… somehow false. That perfectly manicured front garden, the spotless pavement in front of the house, the picture-perfect little suburban cottage. It was all… somehow too good to be true.

"And I never trust things that are too good to be true," the Doctor murmured to himself.

What about the scene at the mall? Was there more to it, something below the surface? And was it alien?

Millie seemed beyond suspicion. From talking to her, she seemed a perfectly ordinary human adolescent. Almost too human. And yet…

The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and scrutinized it. He hadn't really been scanning her species with it in the alleyway. The sonic couldn't manipulate molecules that intricately, nor could it process the vast range of species variables it would need to store in order to match a reading. Only the Judoon were strong enough to carry such large database logs incorporated into their armour. The sonic had been used as just a prop in that situation, and yet… when he had scanned Millie's hand, it had picked up something. A very weak signal. Barely a blip on the radar, but just enough for the sonic to detect it. It was almost like…

"Contact with a reversed polarity," the Doctor murmured to himself thoughtfully. "But contact with what?"

Whatever it was, it must have somehow centered around the rigmarole at the mall. Which meant that it was time, the Doctor decided, that he visited the scene of the crime itself.