Chapter One
The explosion happened at around midday. I remember that much because I was heading off to lunch at a little pub near the bookstore with a boy from class. Seeing how I'd been working on this bloke for ages and ages, that day was supposed to have been one of the happiest days of my life to my recollection.
We were sitting at the window, happily pecking our way through fish and chips and flirting when a rumble shook the floor and windows. James looked at me quizzically, and we both jumped up from our seats and ran outside along with the rest of the lunchtime crowd.
At first, we couldn't see anything – just crowds of people coming out of shops and bistros and pubs all down the street, looking to the sky for…something.
And then London Bridge burst into pieces.
I don't know what direction I turned to, I don't know what instilled in me the desire, the primal instinctual feral desire to just run and run and keep going until either Earth or legs gave way beneath me. But I turned in a direction that was away from that bone-chilling, heart-stopping, gut-wrenching site of flaming stone and steel, and let my legs take me where my instinct wished.
The streets where in chaos, with people streaming down pavement in all directions, but somehow I managed to run a clear path. It was this strip of blessedly unobstructed pavement that brought me to him.
I supposed I noticed him because he was unusual in so many ways. First of all, he wasn't running away from anything…but he wasn't running towards anything, either. He was just leaning up against a big blue police box, whatever that was (I only knew its name on first glance because it said so in big white letters over the doorway), on a street corner, watching the chaos unfold.
There was something about him that made me run towards him. I don't know why, but I felt as if I could be safe with him – safe with a strange man who leaned against a police box while all hell broke loose in London, dressed in a navy blue pinstripe suit, a brown trench, and red Converse trainers. He was staring at the world over thick-rimmed glasses, unruly hair blowing in the late autumn wind, mouth puckered oddly.
As I drew nearer, I realised he was puckering up because he was whistling.
London Bridge is...
"…falling down!" I exclaimed, cutting him off in midwhistle.
"What?" he asked, looking at me with a startled expression.
"London Bridge is falling down!" I said.
"Well, yes, that's what I'm whistling," he replied. "Good for you. You know your nursery rhymes."
"No, you blind twit!" I exploded. "The real London Bridge! It's really falling down!"
"Well, certainly, if the real London Bridge is indeed falling, it's really falling down."
"I am NOT amused."
"And who are you, then, hmm? You don't look like the Queen. Only she's allowed to say that." He scrutinized me over the tops of his spectacles.
"My name's Connie," I said, "and who are you? Why are you just standing there acting like a daft old bat?"
"Pleased to meet you, Connie," he replied, sticking out his hand cordially. Dumbly and automatically, I took it and we shook.
"I," he said, straightening up and beginning to walk back in the direction I'd come from, "am the Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
"Just…just the Doctor." He said this with a tone of resigned exasperation, as if it was one of those questions that simply got asked way too many times for him to care about explaining such an unusual alias.
"The Mad Doctor, more like," I insisted, grabbing his hand and turning him around. Pointing in the direction he was heading, I added, "London Bridge is that way, Doctor. This way – " – jerking my thumb over my shoulder back towards the police box – " – is where the help is, and where it's safe."
The Doctor pursed his lips, then shook is head. "Nah. I think I want to go back this way," he told me, jerking his head over his shoulder. "But don't let that stop you from going on to help and safety. Actually, you shouldn't. You should go there."
"But Doctor, what about you?" The man was clearly deranged, and I wasn't about to let a poor fellow with no sense of what he was doing head into certain death.
"What about me?" he repeated. "Well. I'm the Doctor, and London's got a boo-boo."
He walked off, leaving me standing in his wake, dumbfounded as I stared at his jaunty back. He was treating this as if it were a children's game, I decided, and knew I couldn't leave him on his own. No, sir, I did not want this man's life on my hands.
"Doctor!" I yelled, running to catch up.
He turned. "Yes, Connie?"
"I'm coming with you!"
His face broke out in a huge, slightly manic grin. "Well, I thought you'd never insist. Come on!"
And so we ran.