Her father had quizzed her endlessly in the hospital and when they'd arrived home - the Doctor had conveniantly left shortly before her dad got there. "What did he look like?" "How old was he?" "Did he take you straight to the hospital?" until Roxanne thought she was going to scream. The only truth she'd told was his appearance and a rough guess at his age. Everything else she had twisted slightly, so it sounded more plausible, and to avoid any more questions. She definately didn't imply that it had been the Doctor who had blown up the factory and instead explained that he had seen the explosion and come to investigate before going to find a phone box to call help, and that he drove an old blue ford - maybe a focus. Half truths. The box the man had carried her into had been blue.
"Did he tell you his name?"John Tylor asked.
"Jim." Roxanne said promptly. "Jim Collins or Cowins...something like that...I don't remember." She'd feigned exhaustion and grogginess from the painkillers after they'd got back from the hospital, so her father let her go to bed, promising to get her some forms so she could apply for compensation from her work. Roxanne wasn't too fussed about that - when the managing director found some new premises they'd probably give her her job back with any backpay she was owed. In the meantime? She'd get a part time or temporary job no problem. She quite liked the idea of working in the butchers in town - a change of direction, and she had the shop experience anyway. so there was no ned to worry about anything for a few days. She slept, relaxing easily at the prospect of no work in the morning and being able to slob at home all day nursing her ankle.
As she slept she dreamed. She dreamed of man in a worn leather jacket who traveled thorugh time and space in an absurd looking 1960's blue police telephone box that wasn't a police box. On the inside it was infinately large and filled with the travellers life: souveneirs from every planet he'd visited in the course of his travels, thousands and thousands of them, books which told the whle history of everything, memories of the people he'd shared his life with. The dreams were comforting, but had an undertone of danger, as if the man carried death and suffering around with him wherever he went. Not in himself - Roxanne had never met someone who could radiate such a feeling of reasurance and the 'everything's going to be alright if you trust me' vibe - but as though death followed him from place to place, chasing him, never letting go of it's hold on the Doctor and those he cared about.
Roxanne sensed she was somehow linked to this man, by the dreams and the explosion that had destroyed her workplace but could remember nothing about the dreams when she awoke, except for a vague sense that she had 'gone home' in her sleep.
At last, around 6:15, the gentle dreams gave way to the worst nightmares Roxanne had ever had in her life. Even the ones about hot air balloons with horrible, gaping, smiley faces when she was a young child hadn't been like this. This was real.
She was being chased through darkened streets. She soon realised it was her own town after recognising several of the shops, including the butchers she'd been thinking about earlier. She turned her head unwillingly, to see a group - six or seven, maybe as many as eight. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the dream - of shop window mannequins dressed in wigs and lingerie (the factory made and sold women's underwear) running after her, plastic arms pumping the ground comically as they pursued her. They were the kind they use at the factory shop where Roxanne worked. The kind that had attacked her in the basement when she was locking up, before the Doctor had come to her rescue and seen her safely out fo the building before he blew it up. They were gaining on her and Roxanne could see the joints of their hips and knees moving inhumanly as they drew closer, and heard the plasticky clank of their feet "Doctor!" She heard herself cry in fright. Suddenly she was unable to run anymore.
That was where the dream ended, and Roxanne would find herself grappling with a pillow or her quilt as though trying to fend off an attacker. The nightmare recurred twice more that night, and at seven am, she decided to give up trying to sleep only to be confronted by the dream again, and settled down to read Harry Potter instead. The books she'd adored at age eleven were now her comfort books - like nan's saturday lunches, and the toffee apples her mum used to buy for her to take to bonfire parties. Her mother had been kiled in a car accident a few days before Roxanne's fourteenth birthday.
While reading she heard something scratching at the front door - a combination of scratching and knocking to be more accurate. She was reminded of a friends cat who used to throw himself at the door when he wanted to be let in. It used to frighten Roxanne to death when she stayed at Sharon's house and that racket would start up.
But that cat was long dead, this was not Sharon's house, and Roxanne was scared.
Carefully, holding her left foot in front of her and hopping on her right leg, Roxanne made her way slowly out of the room. She went down the stairs until she could see the glass of the front door. Even in the half light she could see that there was nobody there.
On the way back to her bedroom she knocked her strapped up ankle on the top stair, and let out a harsh gasp that turned into a yelp. "What the hell are you doing Roxanne?" Her father called, sleepily, a few seconds later. "I thought there was someone at the door." "Well, for God's sake keep it down, then. You've got all day to sleep." Roxanne glowered at her father's closed door and held on the banister as she hopped back to her room, ankle pulsing with pain with every beat of her heart.