Many thanks to all the nice people who read Chapter 1, and especially those who've taken the time and trouble to review!
This is my "Christmas mood" chapter - we get back to plot in Chapter 3.
A very happy New Year to all my readers - I hope to get the next chapter posted at the end of this week.
Alex peeled off her clothes and dived into the shower, letting the play of the hot water on her body soothe and calm her. Emerging, she towelled herself dry and put on a nightshirt and her dressing gown. It was too early for her to go to bed yet, and she knew if she did, she wouldn't be able to sleep. Besides, she wasn't going to let that bastard ruin her pre-Christmas routine.
She had dreaded the thought of spending Christmas without Molly. Her sorrow was somewhat tempered by the knowledge that, in all probability, time in her fantasy world ran at a different speed to that in the real world, and that in 2008, Molly was more likely to be gorging herself on Easter eggs - if Evan lets her - or wearing a sunhat and eating ice lollies right now, than hanging up her Christmas stocking.
Alex had devised a routine which made her feel that she was sharing Christmas with her absent daughter as much as possible. She had bought a four-foot Christmas tree - a real one, as Molly was always scathing about artificial ones ("but you can't smell them, Mum") - and it stood by the window, hung with coloured fairy lights and shiny baubles which reflected the light. Molly was always so good at decorating the tree, and she always had an eye for decorations which caught the light. Watching Molly fastidiously considering and rejecting tree decorations, Alex had sometimes wondered if her daughter was destined to become an artist. Now she wondered if she would ever know what Molly would become.
She had bought a set of Nativity figures and arranged them on the left-hand side of the cabinet facing the sofa. At home, she and Molly had always had an Advent candle, marked with the days from 1 to 24 December, and every day they had burned the fraction of candle marked with that day's date. She hadn't realised how much more limited the array of Christmas decorations available would be in 1981 compared with 2008, with far fewer imported from the Continent. She had fairly ransacked London in a fruitless search for an Advent candle, and at last had been forced to compromise. She had bought a large box of long white household candles and an Advent calendar - fortunately for her waistline, one of the old-fashioned type without chocolates - which she placed on the right-hand side of the cabinet. She had found a large brass candlestick in an antique market and spent a Sunday lovingly polishing it to a gleaming shine, ignoring Gene's barbed comments about the smell of Brasso on her hands the following day. Now it took pride of place in the centre of the cabinet, and every night in December she opened a door on the Advent calendar, turned out every light in the flat except for the fairy lights on the tree, lit a candle, and sat gazing at it, letting her thoughts wander where they would, usually to Molly and to home.
She decided to light her candle early that night. She had even more than usual to think about.
As always, the sight of the clean golden-yellow flame, with its deep blue centre like a glowing crocus, calmed and focused her mind. She tried to think about Molly, but inevitably her mind turned on Gene's brutal rejection. When she had first awakened in 1981, she had tried to dismiss him, and all the others, as her imaginary constructs. But as time went on and she became more deeply involved in this world, they had all become intensely real to her, he most of all. For all their professional and personal differences, he had been the one true friend upon whom she had thought she could rely. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of requesting a transfer, but almost at once she abandoned it. She was convinced that she had been sent to this place and this time for a reason, just as Sam Tyler had been, and she dreaded that if she moved away, it might somehow impair her chances of returning home. That conviction had been strengthened by her discovery that it had been Gene who had shielded her from the bomb blast which had killed her parents when she was eight years old. Perhaps, in some way she had yet to understand, he was the key to the powers that held her here. She had to stay and face this out somehow. But the prospect of facing it without Gene's support, possibly with him as her enemy, frightened her. She felt utterly alone. She had not thought that losing him like this could hurt so much, and the realisation of how keenly she felt that loss made her acknowledge something which she had never been able to admit before, even to herself.
She loved him. She had held back for so long, knowing that an emotional commitment to someone in this world would make it harder for her to return home, but at the moment of losing him, without even understanding why he had rejected her, she could not deny this truth any longer. She knew that she loved him, needed him, and could not go on without him.
Perhaps it was better like this. At least there would be nothing to keep her here once she was able to go home at last. She had better start trying to hate him, if she could. Otherwise she would spend the rest of her time here vainly hoping for his love.
There was less noise from downstairs than usual, and she surmised that CID had sloped off to boozers new. She sighed and let the gentle flickering of the candle flame lull her, imagining Molly's cheeky little face behind it as she blew out the candles on her birthday cake. Now, more than ever, she longed for home.
She sat there for a long time before her reverie was interrupted by a light, insistent knock at the door. She cursed inwardly as she stood, picked up the candlestick, and went to answer. Probably it was Luigi, checking to see how she was.
"Who's there?" she called, her hand on the chain.
An all too familiar voice, strangely hesitant, answered.
"It's me."
TBC