Peggy Hayward has always been different.
She's not different—the kind that means novelty, that means something new and interesting. No, Peggy Hayward is different—the different of freaks and weirdos, the different of just a little too intelligent, just a little too cold, when she shouldn't be.
A little girl shouldn't speak like that, they say. It's unnatural.
Living with her grandparents in a small town after that day is worse than before with Mum and Dad. Grandmother is kind sometimes, but her grandfather is distant and seems to think that she's more trouble than she's worth.
When they die from the strange stone statue's touch, Peggy knows, distantly, that if she wasn't different, she would feel something.
She doesn't.
Peggy grows up, and decides to put her coldness and intelligence to use. She tries to go to college, but she's not just different now, she's a woman, which means odd looks and whispers, why doesn't she just settle down?
Until eventually, she's contacted by a shadowy group that calls itself UNIT. UNIT deals with the strange and unnatural, and UNIT is interested in the too-intelligent girl and her multiple psychiatrists that say you're certainly imaginative when she tells them about the blond woman who saved her from the angels in the graveyard.
And eventually, Peggy Hayward meets someone called the Doctor again.