There was a cautious, curious note in her voice as she said, "Hello?", but it certainly sounded like Sarah Jane.
The number that she had been given all that time ago was for a mobile, so it would be showing Rose's number. One that was, Rose presumed, unknown to the Sarah of this reality.
She swallowed her first words. She was never brilliant on the phone with strangers or people she didn't know very well, and she had spent quite a few minutes working up the courage to make this call and rehearsing in her mind what the hell she was going to say if Sarah herself answered. As soon as she heard her voice, Rose's mind froze and the opening she had planned got caught in the lump in her throat. "Hello, is that Sarah Jane Smith?" she managed.
"Sorry, who is this speaking, please?"
"Uh, you probably don't know me, but my name's Rose Tyler. I was wondering if you knew anything about the Doctor." Oh, brilliant.
"Could I ask how you got this number, if you don't mind?"
"Er, you gave it to me, a while back. We've met. Look, you're an investigative journalist, aren't you?"
"Sometimes," she said in what sounded to Rose like an amused tone.
"Well, I've got a story for you. When we met, you gave me this number, and you told me to get in touch if I ever needed to. If the Doctor, or the TARDIS, or – or – Daleks mean anything to you, then I think we should meet up."
There was such a long silence on the other end that Rose thought she might have hung up. She took the phone briefly from her ear to check the connection on the screen – realising as she did so that her hands were sticky with sweat – and it still said SJ SMITH.
"All right," said Sarah's voice, and Rose fumbled the phone back to her ear. "I can meet you this afternoon, if you can be in Chelsea at about five thirty."
"Yeah. That'll be great. Thanks."
"Carlucci's in Andover Square, SW3."
Rose scribbled down the address. "Half five, yeah."
"See you there." She broke the connection.
Rose squinted at the shifting, grainy shades of black and white and attempted to make out anything recognisable. It was like trying to see an image in one of those 'magic eye' pictures you got a few years ago, where something that looked like a random burst of coloured dots would turn into a three-dimensional roaring tiger if you crossed your eyes long enough. She'd never been able to make those work, either.
The radiologist was enthusiastic, anyway. "Oo, look, now there's its little foot, can you see?"
Rose could not.
"Oh yes!" said Jackie, doubtfully Rose thought. "So can you tell how far gone she is?"
"I'm just going to capture an image when I get a good one of the whole baby, head to toe, and then we can measure it, but just from its stage of development I'd say around twelve weeks? Would that seem right to you, Rose?"
"Um, yeah, I suppose." She had no clue. Twelve weeks, though – bloody hell, that was three months already.
She had spent a surreal half-hour with a brisk, jolly midwife, answering questions about her drinking and smoking habits and diet, and being told what her 'options for care and delivery' were. With Jackie at her elbow, chipping in with her contribution if Rose so much as hesitated, she felt nonetheless like she was here under false pretences. It was uncomfortable, unsettling.
"And was this a planned pregnancy?" the midwife asked, from a ticklist.
Rose shook her head.
"Here, don't put that down," said Jackie. "I don't want that on her record."
"Don't worry, Mrs Tyler, it's just for the statistics. You've no idea when your last period was?"
"No. Sorry. A while ago, that's all."
"Well, I think the best thing then would be to do a scan straight away, and then we can establish the probable gestation of the foetus pretty accurately. Then we can get you a delivery date to work to, and we'll know where we are! If that's OK with you?"
It was all, really, that Rose had wanted to get out of the appointment, but when it came to it, she was scared. Particularly as there turned out to be an almost immediate slot with the radiologist, so she and her mother were sent straight through to wait in another ante-room. Rose gazed around at the posters informing her of the inadvisability of smoking during pregnancy and the virtues of breastfeeding afterwards. There was a hugely pregnant woman sitting opposite her, holding hands with a good-looking young man. The pair were murmuring together and patting at her engorged stomach.
To her horror, she felt her eyes filling with tears and she hardly dared blink or breathe in case she sniffed and her mother noticed.
The spilled silent tears had dried down the sides of her cheeks by the time they were called in, and now Rose was still pretending to be moved by her first glimpse of a baby that looked to her like a few black blurs.
"Let me just try over here to get a better top to toe picture of the little chap," said the radiologist, chirpily. "Oo, look, there's a really good angle. Look, can you see? There's its head, there's its chest, and there's a little hand giving us a wave!"
And suddenly, Rose did see. The ink-test blots leapt into focus and became a tiny human – humanoid form.
"And there's a good strong heartbeat! Can you see it pulsing?"
"Oh yes, Rose! Look!"
The radiologist carried on probing with the cold sticky scanner, and the clear picture melted away.
"Any history of twins in the family?" said the radiologist, after what Rose then realised had been quite a silence, and her tone was suddenly less breezy.
"No," said Jackie, then, "Oh my God."
"Don't panic just yet! Just thought I could detect a second heartbeat there. Hang on!" She removed the scanner, squirted more jelly onto it, and reapplied it.
"Oh my God," said Jackie again. "We've only got a two bedroom flat as it is!"
"Hush a moment, please."
The blurry baby, with its oversized head and chest, swam back onto the screen, and the radiologist turned a knob on the machine. The room was filled with a rapid pit-pat like the heartbeat of a tiny bird.
"That's one…" muttered the radiologist.
She moved the probe along, and the sound stopped. Back, and it started again, louder. But this time, there was a clear second, slightly asynchronous beat alongside it.
Jackie drew in a sharp breath. "Oh! Rose! There it is! Oh my God, twins."
"I can't find the twin," said the radiologist, not in the least cheerful now. "Don't worry, stay here, I'm going to get some colleagues to come and take a look."
The double heartbeat, the distinctive rhythm that she had listened to in fascination many times, one ear lying against the right side of his chest and her hand pressed over the left to catch the ping-pong like echo. The numbness broke like ice, and relief and excitement and fear and loneliness, all at once, gushed out in a flood of tears.
It didn't matter that she was crying, because it was what everyone expected. Her mother sat with her arms around her, mopping her with tissues, and Dr Hawthorne was terribly kind.
"There may be nothing wrong at all," she said, several times. "There probably isn't a twin, or not a viable one at any rate, because I'm sure it would be possible to see it on a scan with the equipment we have here if there were a fully-formed second foetus in there. There are a number of explanations for the apparent second heartbeat, including the possibility of simple instrument error. I'm a GP, not an obstetrician or an embryologist, so I don't want to speculate too much. Mr Hussein at St Mary's is probably the country's leading antenatal cardiologist, and they have better equipment up there anyway which will be able to get a much clearer picture of what's going on. You'll be in good hands there. And please don't spend the next week worrying. There may be nothing wrong at all."
Rose let her mother huddle her out of the clinic, like she needed to be shielded from the weather and supported, but she broke away as they reached the street. "I'm OK now, Mum. Really."
"Well, I'm not sure I am."
Impulsively, guilty, Rose folded her into a hug. "It might be nothing, like Dr Hawthorne said."
"God knows, I never wanted you to end up like me with a baby at your age, but Rose love, now it's happened… I couldn't bear anything to go wrong."
"I know," said Rose, moved but composed. The stormburst of tears had cleared the air inside her, and she felt calm and, in fact, elated. Whatever was going on, she was certain now that the baby was all right – that it was the Doctor's. The knowledge had given her renewed courage and determination to get out of here, and find a way back to him.
Carlucci's was between an interior décor shop displaying hand-made tiles and hand-painted lampshades, and a French patisserie. She walked into an intense odour of newly-ground coffee and expensive bakery, and took in the gleaming, spitting cappuchino machine that seemed to cover the entire back counter. The place was busy, mostly with thin women in their late thirties, wearing smart casuals and perfect make-up, chatting and cuddling designer-clad babies on their laps. No way would anyone call this a caff.
Feeling conspicuous and scruffy, Rose looked around for Sarah Jane. It took her a few moments to spot her, because she had positioned herself at a table in a little nook by the bar and was wearing dark glasses. Indoors. Maybe that was what you did round these posh parts, but Rose thought she looked daft.
No-one paid any attention to Rose as she made her way between the Sloaney mums and slipped into the chair opposite Sarah.
"Hi," she muttered uncomfortably. "I'm Rose."
Rose had the feeling that Sarah was appraising her for a few moments with hidden eyes, before she removed the shades, unsmiling. "We haven't met before," she said.
Rose stared helplessly at the woman who, more than thirty years ago, had been her. Still stunning in her fifties, Sarah Jane might have been better educated than Rose and from a different class, but in the ways that mattered to the Doctor, three decades ago she must have been just the same. Very young, very pretty, with only a small foothold on adult life and prepared to throw any plans of her own aside to be with him.
Rose didn't know how many others there had been. She reckoned, loads. And she reckoned that the girls, at any rate, were always pretty much like that.
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry, this is going to sound really, really odd, but I wanted to know if you remember anything about the Doctor."
"The Doctor," Sarah repeated, with slow emphasis.
She seemed to be waiting for more, so Rose ploughed on. "He doesn't have another name, not that anyone knows. He's a traveller. He has something called the TARDIS."
"Describe it."
"It's a big blue box, a bit like those old phone booths except a bit larger and made all of wood. The police used to use them like fifty years ago or something. It has a light on top? Anyway." She floundered.
Sarah sipped her coffee. "Anything else you can tell me about this Doctor?"
"Yes. He used to have a, er, dog called K9. And he's been involved with the Daleks. Cybermen. Does all this just sound stupid or do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"
Sarah looked as though she was struggling to keep her face neutral, but her eyes grew wide with a curious expression between amazement and eagarness. She shook her head slowly. "I never told anyone," she said, almost in a whisper.
"Excuse me?"
Rose jumped, tingling with hope and excitement, as two teenaged boys banged up to the table. Although they were wearing baggy trousers and hoodies, their hair was neat, their cheeks were ruddy, and their accents were plummy. "Could I have your autograph, please?" asked the taller of the two boys.
"Your programme on international pornography masterminds was awesome," said the other, politely.
"You shouldn't have been watching that, boys," said Sarah Jane as she signed the napkins they each gave her.
The boys grinned and ambled off.
"Come on." She stood up. "There's too much chance of being interrupted, even in here. Let's go back to my house, and we can talk properly."