SPOOKY HOLLOW

Rewritten May 2024

The Mysterious Hat

-Part One-

"May the nineteenth," said Sally Sparrow, scribbling the date onto the back of Esther's shopping list while she talked on the phone. "Castley Vineyard. Ten per cent deposit." A pause. "Yes, ninety… No, no; I'll email an invoice… The end of the week is fine… I'm not selling the Vantage, no."

"Oh, but darling, you absolutely must do something with it!" That, Esther was able to hear.

"I'll email, Cecilia," said Sally, desperate to get off the phone. "Give my best to Lucy." The woman on the phone kept on talking, though. Esther couldn't hear very much, idling with the shopping trolley. Finally, Sally wrapped things up and was able to end the call, pressing a hand to the bridge of her nose.

"Everything okay?" asked Esther.

"Fine. Remind me to get some more ibuprofen."

"You got a job, though?"

"Yes, a wedding of someone I went to school with, but not for months," she sighed. "It's something, though."

"Do you know her well? She called you 'darling'," said Esther.

"When you're posh enough, you call everybody darling, darling," Sally smiled at her. "But that wasn't the bride, it was the mother of the bride, the Viscountess Hambridge – Cecilia Curzon-Smythe. She's very involved."

"And a viscountess is more important than you?"

"No. I outrank them, and yet, they're paying me nine hundred quid to do their wedding photos," said Sally. "I'm amazed they hired me at all and didn't assume it was beneath me. See, this is why I prefer normal people. What were we talking about before she called?"

"Toilet paper," said Esther.

"I'm buying the cheapest," said Sally.

"But it's not as-"

"It's the cheapest, and I'm paying today." Esther was tired of arguing about it, so she let Sally pick out the cheapest multipack of toilet roll and drop it into the trolley, nearly crushing Esther's fruits and vegetables. For once, Sally had money, because she'd managed to sell her eerie photographs of Witley Park's ballroom.

"We don't have to do a joint shop, you know. We're not married," said Esther.

"It's pointless having two different types of toilet paper! I'm not going over this again."

"Fine, fine," Esther rolled her eyes. "She's right about the car, though; you should do something with it. Fix it and bring it up here."

"No. It was Dad's favourite car, and it stays in the garage where he left it. I've had to sell all the others, but I draw the line there. I'd rather sell more of great-granny's whiskey. Anyway, Nobby – the viscount – used to be the editor of one of the tabloids, I can't remember which. They always need photographers, this is networking."

"Uh-huh. What do you mean, it stays in the 'garage where he left it'?" Esther asked. "Are you paying to lease garage space somewhere?"

"Er… Blimey, would you look at that? Cheesecake's on offer."

"But what did you mean?" Esther implored.

"It's in a garage, and I'm paying for that garage via council tax, but… Well, alright. The car's in my house, in London. Just like the rest of my stuff."

"Hang on, house? You haven't mentioned a house before. You're renting two different places?"

"Er…" She faltered again, picking an entire, caramel cheesecake off the shelf. "You see… it's complicated. I needed to get away from the city after everything with Larry fell apart."

"And you didn't give notice?"

"I don't need to give notice. It's my house. Larry's still there at the moment, anyway; he is moving, but I'm in no rush to go back," she said. But Esther couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"We've been living together for weeks, and this is the first I'm hearing of you owning a house? In London? Isn't London one of the most expensive cities in the world?"

"I don't think it quite compares to New York," said Sally. "It's my family home. We've had it for… a while."

"Sally. How long is 'a while'?"

"Oh, um, just, I suppose, since it was built. Or thereabouts. Sometime in the eighteenth century."

"I don't understand," Esther shook her head, still pushing the trolley and trying to ignore how much she disliked the fluorescent lights and the transitions between the cold aisles and the normal aisles while she followed her list. "Are you rich or not?"

"No! Look. Fine." She was clearly annoyed but went on. "My parents died in 2005, and I inherited everything. Usually, you would put a house like that in a trust to avoid the inheritance taxes – yes, I know – but they… it was sudden. I inherited a seventeen-million-pound house in London and had to sell nearly everything to pay the taxes on it and keep it. It was a lot of shares and bonds. Now, all I have is a house and a title. No other assets, no cash, nothing tied up in dividends anywhere, no savings left – that's it."

"But you're up here just… Can't you lease it out?" said Esther.

"No. It's my family home, and I'm not a parasite. I'll want to move back in eventually, and I'm not going to evict anybody to do that. In the meantime, I have to pay the council tax for it, and the council tax for the house here." That explained the strange letters she kept getting from Westminster Council and hid in her room. But Esther still couldn't believe it. "So, now you know. But I don't like talking about any of it."

"I can't believe you're basically royal and here we're arguing over what kind of toilet paper to buy."

"I'm not royal. I'm nowhere near royal."

"You're a lot nearer to royal than I am. But look, if you have all those extra bills to pay, I… I'm going to regret this, but do you want me to put you on the insurance for the Mini?" said Esther. "At least then, you can drive somewhere to work without needing to beg me to do it."

"I thought you were dead against that."

"I'll do it on one condition."

"What?"

"Get your eyes tested. I don't trust your vision. You squint at everything."

"They don't need testing; I just need to order new contacts and I haven't gotten around to it. I don't like my glasses. I'll wear them for driving, though – thank you. But I don't think I need glasses to spot who we're about to run into," she said, nodding ahead of them. Jenny and Clara were hovering around the juice aisle, with Jenny struggling to decide what to get.

"I really don't know why this is so complicated, Jen," said Clara. She spotted Sally and Esther behind them and smiled a little, but continued speaking to Jenny, who was leaning down to inspect the juice cartons. "You can buy more than one type of juice. It's fine."

"I just don't know what kind of mood I'm in," said Jenny quietly. It was only when they drew nearer that they saw Jenny's right wrist was in a cast, the plaster leaving only her fingers free; her thumb was nearly entirely encased. Pale blue bandages were wrapped around it. Clara elbowed her and she looked over. "Oh, hello."

"Yeah, hi – what's happened to your arm?" asked Esther. She sensed, from the way Sally shifted next to her, that she shouldn't have asked that so bluntly, but she couldn't help it.

"It's not my arm, it's my thumb," said Jenny. "I've broken it."

"How?"

"That's not important."

"No, but-"

"I don't think she wants to talk about it," said Sally. Esther realised she was being (nicely) told off for prying.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's fine to ask questions," said Jenny. "Just like it's fine for me to decline to answer them. But don't go to Chernobyl anytime soon, that's my advice."

"I wasn't planning on it, but thanks," said Sally.

"Is either of you good at cooking, actually?" said Jenny. "Or at following instructions?"

"I love following instructions," said Esther.

"We should have dinner, then," said Jenny. "The four of us. Sometime soon. I can barely cook a thing with this on my arm, and Clara's useless – she can't even boil an egg."

"I just get confused about how to avoid burning my hands when I put the egg in the water," said Clara.

"I've told you a thousand times – use the tongs," said Jenny. She shook her head, "Honestly."

Sally frowned at Clara. "How are you still alive?"

"I'm not," said Clara. "But I don't think I died in a cooking-related faux pas, at any rate.

"Oh," said Sally, nodding. She'd put her foot in her mouth – although Esther doubted that this would do anything to stop Clara from being in love with her.

"You were saying about dinner?" Esther prompted Jenny.

"Yes, I'm staying in the village with Clara for the foreseeable, and it's always nice being around people who don't live on the TARDIS," said Jenny, finally deciding that it was apple juice she wanted and picking up a carton with her uninjured hand. "But if I'm going to cook anything real, I need someone to help chop things up."

"I'll help, I like cooking," said Esther.

"But you eat the same thing for dinner every day," said Sally.

"Okay, that's not true, I rotate between three things," Esther corrected her. "And I like cooking those three things. So, your point is completely redundant."

"I'm gonna do a big, shepherd's pie," said Jenny.

"I don't eat meat anymore," said Esther quickly. Jenny looked over at her and Esther automatically looked away, at her hands on the shopping cart. "Not since the thing with the grinder."

"Maybe not a shepherd's pie, then. A veggie curry, perhaps…" She lost herself in thought, leaving Clara to continue the conversation.

"Do you eat meat?" she asked Sally.

"Only chicken and fish. Although, none of it's good for the environment, so I should probably stop."

"Don't you eat all the venison when you go out shooting?" Clara went on, grinning. Sally glared at her. "Or, actually, I've always wondered whether you eat the fox after the hunt or not."

"I've never been on a fox hunt," said Sally. "Although, I don't believe that acquiring a fox for human consumption is the aim."

"Wish I could go hunting, I could go for some venison," said Jenny with a sigh. "Can't shoot properly with my hand like this."

"Just buy some venison," said Clara.

"It's not as nice. You don't get the sense of accomplishment."

"I see," said Sally. "One minute, I'm getting the piss taken out of me for potentially knowing people who might go fox hunting, and the next, you're silent while your beloved girlfriend laments the fact that she's currently unable to kill a deer?"

"You should try having sex with me, maybe then I won't take the piss so much," said Clara.

Sally cleared her throat. "So, what did you want to know about fox hunting?"

"Ouch," said Clara. Jenny tittered next to her. "What are you two doing, anyway? A joint shop? That's odd, isn't it?"

"That's what I said," said Esther.

"I think it's fine," Sally insisted. "We both needed to get out of the house, anyway, after that fire."

"Oh, yeah, I heard about that," said Jenny. "Darren, the butcher, mentioned it."

"It was number thirteen, across the street from us," said Esther. "Sally's the one who called the fire department."

"Really?" said Clara, smiling at Sally. "How heroic of you."

"Hardly," said Sally, looking grave. "I just happened to be awake. But we saw them taking bodies away in an ambulance earlier – even though the fire was put out quickly. I don't know what happened."

"Blimey," said Clara. "Did you know them?"

"Mr and Mrs Leyland, I think?" she said. "I got some of their post by accident when I first moved in and passed it along. Never spoke to them otherwise."

"How awful," said Clara. "At least the fire was put out before it spread anywhere else."

"I suppose," said Sally. "It's still a tragedy."

"Of course," said Clara.

After that, nobody was in the mood for much more small talk; Esther was glad she had Sally there to identify when it was time to go. They said their goodbyes and arranged that Jenny would come to theirs and cook the following evening, once she'd worked out what to make. It would be a pleasant enough way to spend a weeknight.

"Thank god," said Esther. "We're running out of time to finish my list."

"Are we?" said Sally. "Do you have somewhere to be?"

"If I'm still out of the house after seven I'm gonna be very late making dinner," said Esther. "And what happens then? The whole evening is thrown off!"

"Yes, right," Sally nodded. In the few weeks they'd lived together, she'd already become aware that Esther shouldn't be stopped from doing things when she wanted to do them.

They continued going around the store, with Esther meticulously arranging the shopping trolley's contents as they went.

"I don't understand your organisational technique," said Sally as she did this. "Do you have some kind of criteria you're following?"

"No, I'm just… neatening it up."

"I know, but you do this with the fridge as well, and it makes it very hard to work out where I'm meant to put everything back," said Sally.

"Just remember where it was. What do you think happened to her hand, anyhow?"

"She said she broke her thumb in Chernobyl," said Sally. "It's probably good that you left. You wouldn't want to have broken your thumb in Chernobyl, would you?"

"I don't think I'd have gone to Chernobyl even if I had still been on the ship," said Esther. "Why would anybody?"

"I'd go."

"Why?"

"Photos," she said with a shrug. "Places like that are the best way to break into wildlife photography. You've got the wildlife and the juxtaposition of the decaying urbanity of it all, and that appeals to people. Plus, it's easier than the espionage you'd usually have to do for traditional wildlife photography. I'll show you something." Esther would have preferred to hurry up and leave the store, but Sally paused, taking out her phone.

She presented Esther with an image of a deer leaning down to drink from a river, with Tower Bridge visible in the background. A wild deer sipping from the Thames on the slimy riverbank.

"Can you believe that?" said Sally. "That was just before five o'clock in the morning and I was on one of my walks, and there was this deer, right there. How it even got all the way into London like that – and why – is beyond me. And I don't fancy its chances after drinking that water. But a place like Chernobyl is rife with opportunities like that, to just… pause. Contemplate the world. Pictures like this are strange because they're tragic and euphoric at once. That's the story they tell." She put her phone away. "I was shortlisted for an award for that one, actually. The theme was just 'urban sorrow', and I was runner-up to a picture of an eight-year-old girl on a beach in Grimsby with a lollipop in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Which, for the record, I think was staged."

"What's sorrowful about the deer drinking from the river?"

"River's disgusting, we've ruined it," said Sally. "Dreadful to see the industrial wounds of London inflicted on an innocent deer."

"…Wouldn't the other person have been disqualified for staging a photo?" They kept walking, heading towards the bread aisle.

"No, it was Rodney Harrington, an Etonian. He knows people."

"Don't you know people? Some tabloid editor? That's what you just said."

Sally sighed. "I suppose. But the difference is that I'm not using the advantages I've had in life to exploit poor people and win photography competitions."

"This country doesn't make any sense to me," said Esther, shaking her head.

"It's all clahss, darling," said Sally, making her 'As' longer. But Esther was still at a loss where the UK's accents were concerned. She thought Sally and Clara sounded the same, but going by the way they traded barbs about it, that apparently wasn't the case. Like the fact that none of them ever pronounced the letter 'R' wasn't bad enough.

They did eventually make it out of the store. Though Sally offered to pay for everything, Esther ultimately bargained her down, paying for her own items and packing them separately – other than their few, communal products, like the recycled toilet paper.

The drive back from Halifax, where the nearest 'big' supermarket (as Sally called it) was, was relatively fast. Though they got stuck behind some buses and at least one tractor on the narrow, country lanes, they were back in Hollowmire proper in less than half an hour.

There was a car Esther didn't recognise parked outside of their house, though, leaving her to parallel park somewhat awkwardly in a way she didn't usually have to since the village was so small.

"Is that a Lexus?" said Sally, craning her neck to see it.

"Uh, I think so," said Esther. "I don't know much about cars."

"I can see that by the fact you drive a Mini," said Sally.

"I'm not the one who sold my Beamer," Esther countered. Sally was distracted, though, because someone had just gotten out of the Lexus, shoulders hunched against the drizzle that had been tumbling down for most of the day. The emergency vehicles were all gone, leaving number thirteen empty and scorched over the road.

"I don't believe it…" said Sally, frowning. "I know him, that's…" She got out of the car quickly as Esther cut the gas, having to walk around because the right side opened onto the road. "Elliott, isn't it?" she called out to him. "Detective Inspector?"

"I usually go by 'James' to people who have met me more than once, but Elliott's fine," he said, managing to flash a smile at her while he locked his shiny Lexus. "And it's not so much 'DI' these days, either." He was Welsh, one of the only British accents Esther had learned to pick up on.

"What is it, then?" asked Sally.

"Special ops," he said. "They don't really recognise police ranks."

"I see," said Sally. "Not here with UNIT, are you?"

"No. A new group, Undercoll."

"Undercoll?" asked Esther, opening the trunk to take out the bags, holding one out very pointedly to Sally. When she did that, Sally couldn't refuse to help. She smiled again at Elliott but dutifully came to take the bag from Esther, taking out her house keys with her other hand. "What's Undercoll?"

"Nothing for civilians to know about, I'm afraid," he said.

"Uh-huh," said Esther, frowning at him as she followed Sally to the front door. He hadn't said what he was doing there, but he remained outside while they dropped the bags in the kitchen. Esther was torn: did she go back outside to try and work out who he was, or did she stay and organise the groceries?

"Don't unpack those bags yet," said Sally. "I need to watch you do it so that I know where to put everything. You flipped out at me the last time I didn't put something back properly."

"Fine, fine," said Esther, still not understanding what was so hard about just remembering where she took the items from in the first place and putting them back where they came from. Subsequently, Esther was relegated to lingering in the front hallway while Sally went back outside, unfazed by the rain.

"What brings you to Hollowmire, then?" she asked him. "You're a long way from Cardiff."

"Looking into this fire," he said. "And Undercoll came with a big pay rise and a move to London."

"Even further, then," said Sally. "And all for a fire. Here I thought you might be stalking me."

"No, you're not interesting enough," he smiled at her again. This guy. "Unless you're saying you set the fire over the road?"

"Er, no," she said. "I did call it in, though. Saw it through the window."

"At four in the morning?" he asked.

"I'm usually awake at four in the morning."

"Why's that?"

"It's the best time to start fires," she said coolly, her affability fading a little. "Sorry, detective. Are you interviewing me?"

"…I did come here to do that, actually," he said. "The local boys said they had a witness statement from a woman over the road about when the fire started, and I couldn't believe it when I saw it was you. Well, you or somebody else with your name. But I don't think there are that many Sally Sparrows around."

"And you think I started it?"

"No, sorry. Gallows humour, that's all. But I do have some questions about what happened."

"…Alright," she agreed after a moment. "How about a tea, then?"

"Tea's lush, if there's one going."

"If I've learned anything, it's that there's always tea going around here," said Esther, leaving the doorway so that they could come in without risk of electrocution.

"You two haven't met, have you?" asked Sally when they'd finished bringing in all the shopping, Esther double-checking that the car was locked before letting her close the front door. "This is Esther, she's my housemate as of a few weeks ago."

"Hello," said Esther, managing a smile of her own despite the fact she was nearly forty-five minutes later than she'd like to be making dinner.

"Esther Drummond?" he asked.

"Uh… Depends who's asking," she said, feeling exposed.

"I've read your UNIT file – Blue Finch," he said. "It's got 'do not pursue' written all over it now. How did you escape the Tower of London?"

"The Doctor. But how, exactly, does this 'Undercoll' thing grant you access to classified UNIT records?" she went on, trying to ignore Sally watching over her shoulder as she put things in the fridge.

"You're ex-Torchwood, aren't you?"

"Yes…"

"Undercoll's its replacement," he explained. "It's just five of us working down in London."

"In what way were you qualified to join Torchwood?" asked Sally. "Because you met the Doctor once? I've met the Doctor, and nobody asked me."

"Ah, but you're at the top of my list if we ever need some pictures taken," he said, smoothing things over with her effortlessly. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"And how were you planning on contacting me for these hypothetical pictures?" asked Sally.

"Business email," he said. "It's on your website, isn't it?"

"I didn't know you had a website," said Esther.

"You've never tried to hire me as a photographer," said Sally, and then she went back to Elliott. "You were looking at my website?"

"The Captain said something about you selling classified photos to the tabloids."

"Just trying to make ends meet," she said.

"But I saw those pictures of that, er, ballroom, was it?" he went on. "I don't know a lot about photos, but I liked them." Esther had liked them, too; they'd come out very well. "Isn't Witley Park private property?"

"Are you here to arrest me or not?" she asked.

"I liked your pictures, Sally," he reiterated. "Can I sit down?"

"Sure." As he pulled out the chair, they both noticed him flinch. He paused to rub his shoulder. "Everything okay?"

"Knocked my shoulder a bit playing rugby at the weekend, that's all," he answered, stretching his arm carefully before sitting down. Still at a loss as to what Esther's system in the fridge was, Sally gave up all hope of learning it and decided to make the tea, instead. Esther didn't want a cup.

"Rugby. I see."

"I don't think the type of people I play rugby with are the kind of people you think play rugby," he said.

"And what kind of people would those be?" she said.

"Ones who play Quidditch, and do things with pigs," he said.

"Mmhm. And who do you play rugby with?"

"It's, uh… It's a queer team, actually. I only joined recently, with the move to London. Trying to make friends in a new place," he said. To Sally's great surprise, she noticed James go ever-so-slightly pink when he admitted this. A queer team. "Just to put you out of the misery of having to come up with a way to ask politely, I'm bi."

"Everybody seems to be these days," said Esther, collecting her ingredients on the counter.

"It's not a fad," said James.

"I didn't say it was a fad. I said I know a lot of bisexual people."

"There do seem to be a lot on the TARDIS," said Sally. "But it's none of my business. What does being on a queer rugby team entail, though?"

"It's just an inclusive space," he said. "All genders and sexualities welcome. Although, I've so far been given a lot of abuse for being in the police."

"Well, that's to be expected," said Sally. "Why don't you get a real job?"

He laughed a little. "This from a member of the gentry."

"You've looked up more than just my website, then?"

"Maybe. Or maybe it's your airs and graces."

"The what, sorry?" Esther interrupted them again. "Gentry, did you say?"

"The landed gentry – the aristocracy," said Sally. "He's making fun of me for being posh, that's all."

"Is that the only thing people talk about here?" said Esther.

"Well, what else can we do?" said Elliott. "People like her love to step all over people like me."

"Only if they ask nicely," said Sally. He looked at her for a moment, then collected himself.

"This interview, then?" he said when she set a cup of tea down in front of him.

"I'll do your interview. And then I'd like the contact details of your line manager so that I can report you for unprofessionalism," said Sally.

"And what have I done that's so unprofessional?" he countered.

"Okay," said Esther a little too loud. "If all you're gonna do is flirt with each other, do you mind going into the sitting room? I have things to do in here."

"Sorry," said Sally. "I'll be good."

"…I'm not sharing my enchiladas," said Esther after a pause, taking Sally by surprise.

"I wasn't going to ask you to," said Sally, who was planning to make herself a stir fry later on. "What did you want to know about the fire, then?" She made up her mind to try and ignore the fact that she now didn't want to take her eyes off James– made all the harder by him being midway through growing out his beard. He'd been clean-shaven when they last met, and as such, she'd barely noticed him.

Finally, he took out a notepad and a pen.

"Tell me about the fire, then," he said.

"There isn't much to tell. If you have the statement I gave to the constable this morning, I can't add anything to it."

"I've got additional questions," he said, sipping his tea. "But we'll start with the basics."

"I was down here making a cheese toastie at just after four o'clock this morning and saw lights in the house over the road. I kept an eye on it while I finished the toastie, and then realised it was a fire, so I called nine-nine-nine," said Sally. "They put the fire out quickly enough. But I was surprised to see the body bags."

"Yes," Elliott nodded. "Unfortunately, both of your neighbours, Kate and Oliver Leyland, have passed away. And going by what the fire inspectors told me, everybody here is lucky there wasn't a gas explosion."

"Gas?"

"Preliminary reports from the coroner suggested gas inhalation as the cause of death. Dodgy wiring sent the house up before it was full enough to explode completely," he explained.

"Christ. Was the boiler not working properly?" asked Sally. Esther was now listening intently, even as she tried to make her dinner.

"It… I'm sorry to say, it appears to have been intentional."

"Murder-suicide? Here?" said Esther. She sighed. "I came here to get away from all that."

"Bad things will happen wherever you go," Sally told her.

"But a murder-suicide across the street, Sal."

"I know. It's… Do they have family? Who's doing the funeral?" asked Sally.

"Their son's the next of kin, he's coming from Manchester," said Elliott. "Did you ever speak to them? Either of you?"

"Not really," said Sally. "I got some of their post once by accident and dropped it round. And I had a parcel a few weeks ago that they took while I was out, so I collected that. But that's all."

"I think I saw them when I was taking out the trash a few times?" said Esther. "I haven't been here for long, though."

"And how did they seem, when you spoke to them?" Elliott asked.

"Like I said, we barely spoke," said Sally.

"No detail is too small," he said.

"I suppose they seemed fine. Normal. Retired, pottering about. I think I told Mrs Leyland that I liked her rose boxes." She glanced out of the kitchen window; the roses had survived the fire, visible in the small, front garden. She made up her mind that, whenever the son arrived to take care of things, she'd ask if she could have them.

"Did they seem happy?"

"They certainly didn't seem unhappy. But you never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you? If one of them's… It doesn't bear thinking about."

"Did you ever see Mrs Leyland wearing a hat?" he asked.

"Wearing… excuse me? A hat?"

"Yes, a hat."

"What kind of hat?"

"Any hat."

"It sounds like you have a particular hat in mind," said Sally.

"I'm trying not to lead the witness – either of the witnesses." Sally looked to Esther, at a loss.

"Well, I don't think I ever saw a hat," said Esther.

"Me either," said Sally.

"A top hat," he clarified.

"I definitely didn't see a top hat," said Esther. "That, I'd remember." He looked at Sally, who shrugged.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Because, this hat is of particular interest to Undercoll, and I'm aware that it was at the crime scene this morning and was photographed but hasn't been bagged and tagged. It isn't in the house now. Top hats aren't the easiest things to lose, you understand."

"…Sorry," said Sally. "Are you accusing me of stealing a hat from a house fire?"

"I know you fancy yourself an investigator of sorts-"

"Oh, I do, do I?" she challenged. She wasn't flirting anymore.

"-but it's very important that Undercoll gets possession of this hat. It's the only common factor in a long series of suspicious house fires, often involving uncharacteristic murder-suicides."

"That's why you're here?" said Esther. "New Torchwood is investigating a hat?"

"This hat is the only link between a dozen different fires, all with multiple fatalities, and nearly always disappearing afterwards. It later reappears after another fire and has usually been taken from the scene by somebody who denied having done so when it first went missing," said Elliott.

"I haven't nicked any dodgy hats," said Sally. "Feel free to search the house. I won't even make a fuss about you not having a warrant."

"Undercoll doesn't need warrants," he said. "But I won't search your house. It's just that if you did take it, you'd be in danger, both of you. There have been three of these fires in the last two months, since the hat went missing from an evidence lockup in Scotland Yard. That's what finally got our attention and made us realise the connection."

"I'll call the police if I see any top hats, how about that?" said Sally.

"I really didn't mean to offend you."

"By suggesting I steal evidence from crime scenes?"

"I…" He paused. "I'm sorry." She thought this over, then sighed.

"Fine. But I still haven't seen anything, I'm not lying."

"I believe you," he said. "If it turns up, though, don't go near it, alright?"

"I promise I won't go near any sinister top hats," she said dryly. He looked at Esther.

"Uh, me either," she said. "I don't want any trouble. Or for my house to burn down." He put his notebook away and withdrew from the same pocket a business card, giving it to Sally.

"If either of you see anything, get in touch."

"Yes," said Sally. "I'll be sure to do that, if and only if I see a funny hat somewhere." She was still bristling from the accusation of theft. He looked at his hands for a moment and then finished his tea, standing up.

"I'll get out of your hair, then. It was nice to see you, Sally."

"Sure. Oh, but were you wearing a hat when you came in? I might've stolen it – I'm always doing that," she said.

"Like I said," he ignored this. "Nice to see you. And good to meet you, Esther; congratulations on escaping from Kate Stewart. Hwyl." With that, Sally showed him out, and Esther could finally relax. She was always tense with other people in the kitchen with her, but it was getting easier to manage when it was only Sally.

Card in hand, Sally watched him get into his Lexus and drive away through the kitchen window.

"You didn't actually take the hat this morning, did you?" said Esther.

"I haven't seen any bloody top hats, no. You don't trust me, either?"

"I trust you to tell the truth to me. I don't necessarily trust that you'd have told it to him. That's all. And how do you know him?"

"We ran into each other just before I sold my car, in Cardiff," she said. "People were being lobotomised by these aliens using an interdimensional portal, I think. I was looking into it, too, and we ran into the TARDIS crew plus Gwen Cooper. He's a DI in South Wales Police. Heddlu de Cymru."

"Excuse me?"

"That's how you say it in Welsh."

"You speak Welsh?" said Esther.

"No, no. I only know a few words; Wales isn't far from where I went to school, in Gloucestershire."

"You were flirting with him a lot, to say you've only met him once," said Esther, still cooking.

"Yeah, until he tried to say I'd nicked his special hat," she shook her head. "But he didn't have stubble when I saw him last…"

"And that turns your head?"

"It turned it ever-so-slightly until he started acting like a wanker."

"He did apologise," Esther pointed out.

"I suppose." She was still staring out of the window. "It's dreadful if it's true, though. If Mrs Leyland just picked up some hat thinking somebody had lost it, and then… How can a hat cause fires and murder-suicides? Do you think it's cursed?"

"Do curses exist?" said Esther.

Sally shrugged. "Vampires and ghosts exist, why not curses?"

"Do you want me to try and get the TARDIS down here? I'm sure one of the Doctors will be tempted," said Esther.

"Maybe if the hat turns up and we have something to show them," said Sally.

"Sal," said Esther seriously. "Don't go looking for that hat."

"I won't!" she said. Esther narrowed her eyes. "I swear. I swear."

"Okay…" Esther remained unconvinced. Annoyed, Sally rinsed Elliott's mug and left it on the side to wash later, sitting back down.

In near-silence, Esther finished preparing her dinner, frying up the ingredients and then layering them all into an oven dish. By the time she'd put them into the oven to finish, Sally had retrieved her MacBook from her bedroom and was poring over it at the dining table.

"You don't have to stay in here, you know," said Esther. "You can go watch TV."

"I like your company," said Sally with a shrug, eyes on the screen. "What do you put in those enchiladas, anyway?"

"Beans, mainly," said Esther, setting a timer on her phone and sitting down on the opposite side of the table to Sally. "They'll reheat for tomorrow."

"So, you do have enough for more than one person?" asked Sally, smirking at her.

"I'm not sharing," said Esther. Sally had learnt the hard way that when Esther said she wasn't sharing her food, she meant it, after an incident involving some curly fries a fortnight ago.

"Sent my invoice along to Lucy for that wedding," said Sally. "And I've just received an inquiry for another wedding, in March."

"Is that what you used to do in London? Weddings?" asked Esther.

"I was resistant to it for a few years, but I had to swallow my pride eventually. They're good, though. Quite fun, as long as the couple is genuinely happy. And they usually are," she said.

"I'd've expected you to be more cynical, after you cut and run from your own wedding," said Esther.

"The writing was on the wall for a long time," said Sally. "Sometimes, you can just end up with someone without really meaning to. I was sleepwalking for six years with Larry. It wasn't his fault, though. I think he was doing the same thing."

"Has he not tried to contact you?"

"At first, but everybody's got the message now that I'm not coming back. And it was last week, anyway."

"What was?"

"My wedding day."

"What? You didn't say anything."

"What's there to say? The wedding's cancelled. But that's why I had that sponge cake. I thought I should mark it somehow."

"Tell me," Esther began. "Why did all that happen? Why were you with him for so long if neither of you really wanted it?" She'd always been at a loss to decipher the way allosexuals behaved.

"I suppose… we felt like we owed it to each other," said Sally. She bit her lip. "Actually, that's not true. We felt like we owed it to Kathy, his sister – my best friend. She died, in a way. Weeping Angels."

"Weeping what?" asked Esther, glancing at the enchiladas, cooking away in the oven.

"They're these statues, but they're not really statues. They're quantum-locked, the Doctor said. When anybody or anything is observing them, they're statues. But if you look away for a moment – if you blink – they move like lightning."

"And then what…?" asked Esther.

"They touch you and send you back in time. The Doctor said they feed on 'potential energy' – all the time in the present that you lose, that they steal from you. That's what happened to Kathy, because I led her into this old house. Wester Drumlins. They sent her back to 1920, and I never saw her again – but she did manage to get a letter to me. Me and Larry dealt with the angels and helped the Doctor – he and Martha were stuck in the sixties because the angels got them, too – and then… Well, we ran a shop for a year. Sparrow and Nightingale. Just fell into it, being together, until I got out. When he asked me to marry him, I only said yes because I didn't know how to say no, and it… felt like it's what Kathy would have wanted. But I don't think it is. She would have wanted both of us to be happy, and we definitely weren't that."

"Is that why you're letting him live in your house?" said Esther.

"I trust him completely, even though we shouldn't be together. He says he's working on leaving and getting his life back on track, and I believe him," said Sally. "So, yes, I'm letting him in live in my house while I run away from everything. It's the last I can do since he took care of most of the admin of cancelling all the vendors and letting our friends know. Well, his friends. I only had Dylan to tell, and Dylan's a bit of an arsehole anyway."

"Wester Drumlins, huh?" said Esther. Sally nodded. "That is kind of spooky."

Esther processed this new information while the enchiladas finished cooking. Maybe jilting someone weeks before your wedding wasn't an act of cowardice, but an act of bravery. She thought a lot of people would ignore their severe cold feet and go through with it anyway, but not Sally Sparrow.

"Maybe it isn't true," said Sally as Esther plated up her enchiladas and brought them over to the table.

"What's not?"

"This hat. I can't find anything about an arsonist top hat on any of my regular forums," said Sally. "Maybe it's a sick prank."

"On who?"

"On James. A hazing ritual. Send him all the way to Yorkshire on a fool's errand to find a funny hat and bring it back," she explained her reasoning.

"Then what caused the fire? The murder-suicide? Is that a prank, too?"

"Well… I suppose that would be a stretch. Unless the Leylands aren't dead and are in on it?" said Sally.

"That's wishful thinking," said Esther. A little softer, she went on, "They're gone, Sal."

"And that's hideous," she said. "I can't find anything online about Undercoll, either."

"I'm not surprised, if it's like Torchwood. I'll look it up later."

"Isn't that a crime?" said Sally. "Hacking into clandestine, government records?"

Esther frowned. "I guess. But weren't you trying to that?"

"Yes, but I'm not the one who needs to be wary of not upsetting UNIT. What would happen if you got caught?"

"I think Jack would stage another breakout, honestly," said Esther. "But I'm good with computers, I won't get caught. CyTech pays me to do white hat runs for them every day."

"I don't actually know what that means," Sally admitted.

"So much for your 'usual forums'," said Esther. "They're paying me to hack into their systems and identify vulnerabilities and exploits. It's very fun."

"That's your job?"

"Yes."

"It blows my mind that you can sit up there and do that all day without being high."

"I'm already high on the satisfaction of a job well done," said Esther.

"I bet you're a lot of fun at parties, aren't you?" said Sally. Esther glared at her.

"Do you want me to help you research it, or not? Because I'm happy to put Torchwood and its descendants behind me."

"…Yes, thank you," said Sally.

"I'll get on that after I finish these enchiladas. Which I'm still not sharing."

"What is it about me that makes everyone think I'm trying to nick things all the time? Hats, Mexican food – what is it?"

"Maybe it's your – what was it he said? Airs and graces?"

"Very good," said Sally, grimacing. Esther smiled.

"I'll look it up for you later."

"You can do it while I go hat-hunting." Esther looked up from her plate, alarmed. "Joking."

"You'd better be."

Rewritten May/June 2024

The Mysterious Hat

-Part Two-

In the end, Sally Sparrow didn't need to go looking for the haunted top hat, because the hat found her. After another night where she was able to claim a scant four hours of sleep between one and five o'clock in the morning, she was up and about, going through her houseplants in accordance with the detailed notebook she kept so that she remembered which needed feeding and watering and when. The plants were one of the only aspects of her life she thought she had a handle on, and the fact she'd kept them alive for years now was a point of pride. She looked fondly at the snake plant on the kitchen windowsill, thriving. Even the mushrooms in the attic were doing well.

Thankfully, there was no fire on the street that morning. Everything was quiet and shrouded in fog. It was almost picturesque enough up there in the dales that she forgot what the early mornings were like at home in Mayfair. Almost.

She pottered about for most of the morning, making herself a latte (laced with a sliver of powdered mushrooms) with Esther's ludicrously high-end coffee machine and eating a bowl of cornflakes as the sun began to rise. Through the window, the world went by, but the world felt a little smaller with number thirteen over the road.

She was still down there minding her own business when the Royal Mail van pulled up outside, earlier than she usually expected the postie. Odder yet, he hauled an enormous, cardboard box out of the back and brought it right up to the front door, knocking, even though it was barely after seven o'clock. Upstairs, she could hear Esther moving around.

"Bit early, isn't it?" said Sally when she opened the door.

"Guaranteed delivery," said the postman, Anthony. "I'll bring this in for you." It wasn't really his job description to bring things in for her, but he was young and did have a habit of stopping to chat to her when he was delivering letters – which he was meant to just put through the letterbox. He always knocked, though.

"Just in here, then," she said, letting him set the heavy box down on the kitchen table. It was then that Esther appeared, also earlier than usual, coming downstairs in running gear. Sally was just glad she hadn't been woken up.

"What's in the box?" she asked. "Gwyneth Paltrow?"

"Something somebody was desperate to get here from London first thing this morning," said Anthony. "Special delivery for you, Miss Sparrow." She frowned at the box. Heavy, large; oh, no. Her heart sank when she realised that she knew what it was.

"You don't usually deliver at this time in the morning," said Esther, talking to Anthony while Sally fetched a pair of scissors to hack through the tape on the box.

"Well, this seemed important; I thought I'd come before my usual round began."

"I'm sure Sally appreciates that," said Esther.

"Yes, thank you," Sally mumbled while she opened the box. There it was: half of a wedding cake. On top of it was a wedding invitation with the names and dates crossed out. There was one word written on the crisp, white card in biro: "back". She flipped it over, and there was the message.

Sally, SORRY ABOUT THE INVITATION, couldn't find any other scrap paper. Your half of the wedding cake, can't eat it all myself. Convinced Dylan to give me your address. Won't send anything else. Larry.

She let out a deep sigh.

"What is it?" asked Esther.

"Wedding cake, and a wedding invitation," she said.

"Oh, a wedding?" said Anthony. "That'll be nice."

"…Yes," Sally decided to agree, not wanting to explain her cancelled wedding to the postman she saw nearly every day. She forced a smile and then turned the tables on Esther. "Where are you going at this time?"

"Jogging," she said. Sally stared at her. "What? It's good for you. You should try it."

"No, thank you."

"I'd better head out before it starts raining, anyhow." How was she so chipper at seven o'clock in the morning? "Unless you want me to stick around?" Esther glanced at the box of wedding cake.

"It's fine. Enjoy yourself. You can have some cake when you get back."

"Uh, sure," said Esther, who Sally knew would refuse to have cake for breakfast on principle. She smiled uneasily at Sally and then at Anthony the postman, still there, and slipped out of the house, setting off for a morning run on the foggy moors.

"Did you have anything else to deliver?" asked Sally.

"Oh, no, just…" He paused. "Is there anywhere nice to eat around here, do you know?" He was trying to ask her out.

"I don't think so," she said, still forcing herself to smile.

"Right you are."

To her relief, he got the message without her having to tell him to leave outright. He nodded at her politely and went to leave, while she turned her attention back on the wedding cake. It was three tiers, each cleaved in half. The top was fruit cake, and the bottom two were chocolate; she'd wanted sponge but had resigned herself to what Larry wanted because she'd become so detached from the whole thing. They'd ordered it a year ago, to be ready the day before the wedding.

There was another knock at the door. The Royal Mail van was still there. Sally clenched her jaw and went to answer.

"Sorry to bother you again," said Anthony on the doorstep. "I just found this in the garden here, and was wondering if it's yours?" Her blood went cold. In his hands was an old, moth-eaten top hat.

"You… pardon?"

"In the grass, down there," he pointed to the ground. "This hat. I didn't know if it was yours. Doesn't seem like your thing, but, you never know with…"

"With what?" she asked him.

"Well, you know. The upper crust." Like all the northerners she encountered, he'd lasered in on her accent and identified her class. It didn't matter that she had no money, that she was renting, that she worked – class was immutable. "Is it not yours?"

"It's not, it was the Leylands'," said Sally, nodding over his shoulder at number thirteen.

"Oh… I heard about that. Awful thing to have happened."

"Yes," said Sally. "I'll take it, though. I think their son's coming across today, he might want it." She had no intention of giving it to their son.

"Happy to help," said Anthony.

She didn't sit back down until she'd seen him get in his van and drive away, presumably to go pick up the day's actual post. A brief episode of decision paralysis followed, where she had the hat in her hands but a clingfilm-covered cake to deal with. She thought it all through and set the hat down on the table, then shoved the cake into the fridge, decimating Esther's meticulously arranged food. She would deal with the repercussions of that later, for now, it was just her and that hat.

Crossing her arms, she stared at it on the table. To her, it just looked like a hat. But how could it just be a hat when it had done so much damage? How had it even gotten into their garden? Had it been there yesterday? Wouldn't James have spotted it if it had?

James. She had to call him and let him know, but she was still in her stand-off. There was something about it gnawing at her, as if it was looking right back while she scrutinised it. It was like it could see her. Nerves shot to pieces because of the arrival of both her wedding cake and the ominous hat, Sally resolved to go upstairs and roll herself a joint – early as it was – and then try to get hold of James and let him know she had his prey. But she couldn't move.

It was only when she heard the front door go that she realised that time had been passing, with her locked onto the hat in the kitchen, the minutes slipping away from her. Esther coming back startled her out of whatever had been happening. She rubbed her eyes, feeling like she hadn't blinked in a while.

"Is everything okay?" asked Esther, looking thoroughly exhausted.

"I… How long were you gone for?"

"Thirty-five minutes," said Esther. "Seriously, what's… Oh, for – you didn't go out looking for that thing, did you?" She'd spotted the hat.

"No! Anthony found it just after you left, in our garden," she said. "I just brought it in and put it down, and… Something's wrong with it. Really. It was like… I don't know. Hypnosis."

"You've been hypnotised by a hat?" asked Esther.

"I'm serious, just look at it," said Sally. Esther came to stand next to her and did, narrowing her eyes as she studied it. Sally avoided it this time, but saw Esther clearly spacing out, too. Sally snapped her fingers in front of Esther's face.

"Whoa. Okay, uh, sure. Did you call Elliott?"

"I was going to, but I got stuck down here, for all that time you were gone," said Sally. "What should we do with it? Put it back outside?"

"Yes," said Esther. "If it wasn't bothering you out there all morning, and it is now that it's inside, put it back outside, and then clean the table."

"That's a bit much, isn't it?"

"People might have died wearing that thing, if those stories are to be believed," said Esther. "I'm going to clean the table."

"Fine," said Sally. As long as she wasn't going to have to do the cleaning, she didn't care. But though they'd agreed that the hat belonged outside, neither of them moved. "Are you going to-?"

"I thought you were gonna do it."

"I don't want to touch it again."

"Well, I don't want to touch it either," said Esther. "You should call him and get him to come and get it."

Sally nodded and tried to collect herself, ignoring the invisible eyes of the hat boring into her. She retrieved James's card, which she'd left in the living room, and dialled the number. It rang for a while, but then cut off; he'd declined the call. She called back immediately, and this time he declined even faster.

"He's not answering," she said to Esther, still on hat-watch in the kitchen.

"Did you text him and let him know it's your number?" she asked.

"Well, no – he should just answer the phone," said Sally. She'd never been a good texter.

"Somehow, I get the feeling that if he knows it's you, he will answer," said Esther. Sally grimaced; she was probably right. So, she sent a text.

It's Sally Sparrow, call me back.

"I'm not happy about him having my number," she said. "You should've rung him."

"I don't think he has a crush on me, though," said Esther.

"What makes you think he has a crush on me?" said Sally. But Esther didn't need to answer. When Elliott called her back almost immediately, the smug smile on her face was enough.

"Sally!" he said when she answered. "Sorry I didn't pick up – I'm in the middle of something. Family emergency." Over the phone, he sounded even more Welsh.

"Is 'family emergency' code for 'alien invasion'?" she asked. "Do I need to be worried?"

"Not unless aliens have invaded and given my mam gallstones," he said. She bit her cheek; why had she tried to make a joke? "What's the matter, though?"

"We've found your hat," she said. "The postman brought it in this morning, it turned up in our front garden."

"Christ… Of course it turns up when I've had to drive all the way back to bloody Cardiff," he complained. "Where to's it gone?"

"It's in our kitchen," she said.

"Alright, I'll be there now," he said.

"What? Cardiff's just as far as London, shouldn't you send somebody else? You said you had an emergency."

"No, she's had the gallstones out now, she's fine," he said. "Got a call last night from my sister thinking it's a bloody heart attack and I have to rush back."

"But, still, if you haven't slept-"

"I'll be alright," he said, but she still felt a pang of worry. Driving on no sleep was no laughing matter. "And how will it look if I have to send somebody else to collect a hat for me? This is the first thing the bastards have trusted me with. I'll set off now – don't let that hat get to you."

"Are you sure? We can probably send the TARDIS, if-" But he'd hung up. She stared at the phone and sighed. "Men."

"Is he coming?"

"Yes, but he's still over four hours away," said Sally. "Didn't you say you were going to research this thing? Find out what it is?"

"Well, it never came to Torchwood's notice – which tracks, since Elliott said they only started looking into it when it disappeared from the Met a few months ago," said Esther. "And Undercoll has about as much information as we do. Details on all the fires, sure, and what survived, but not much about how it does it."

"You hit a dead end?"

"Nearly. I found a denied FOIA request in the CIA's systems, submitted by this guy, Hector Diaz, an LA Times journalist. The only document in any online archive relevant to his request was heavily redacted and dates back to 1969, but it does mention a 'hat'," said Esther. "Specifically, the request was denied on the basis that the information Diaz was looking for doesn't exist, which is a catch-all excuse for anything the CIA doesn't want to release. And when you see the stuff that it does release, well, it sure does look bad."

"What was the information?"

"I don't know yet. Something about a house fire in Palo Alto in 1970. He ended up running a story about men in black sightings in 1970's California," said Esther. "I was gonna go back to it today, take a human approach instead of a data approach."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning I look into Diaz. Often, people submit a FOIA request to confirm things they already know. I'm gonna go through his work with a fine-tooth comb."

"His work reporting men in black to local newspapers?"

"The LA Times is a big paper, actually," said Esther. "It did a huge investigation into wildfire management a few years – now, that's fascinating."

"Is it?" asked Sally.

"Yes! I could talk about fire and forestry mismanagement for hours," said Esther.

"Uh… Maybe another time."

"Sure. You should put that thing outside, though," said Esther.

Sally finally got it together with the hat, picking it up and dumping it back into the grass while Esther observed to make sure it was gone. It lingered in their garden, but hopefully, nobody else would bring it to the door before James got there. Sally didn't like the idea of him having it in his car to take it all the way back to London, though…

"I'm gonna shower, and then I'll keep researching," said Esther.

"Don't you have work?"

"I'm a little ahead this week, I can spare a few hours," she shrugged. With the front door firmly locked, Sally yawned. She tried to supress it, but it still came out very loud indeed. "Why don't you go upstairs? Take a nap?"

"I've never been good at naps."

"Isn't that what all the pot is for?" said Esther.

Sally sighed. "It clears my head. You don't want to know what I'm like when I'm not regularly smoking, believe me."

"What…" Esther started, then paused. But she went on. "What if I do want to know?"

"Well, there was an incident a few years ago." Sally crossed her arms and leant against the counters. "Police were called when somebody saw me lingering around a railway bridge in the middle of the night."

"You were-? God, are you okay?"

"I am now."

"Were you going to…?"

"What? Jump off?" said Sally. "Honestly, I don't know. I wasn't really lucid; I was sleeping for about four hours each week for a while. Now, I'm sleeping for three or four hours every day, and that is thanks to the weed and the mushrooms. It was a last resort, but it worked. And yes, I should go to therapy, but I can't afford it right now."

"No, I guess you can't," said Esther. She looked at Sally in a way she never had before: full of sympathy, but also a strange sort of affection. "Sometimes, you remind me of my sister."

"Your sister who killed herself?"

"Yeah."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Neither. It just is. Go and get some rest – even if you can't sleep," said Esther. "Or go for a walk, maybe."

"I'll be fine. Don't mollycoddle me – Larry was always doing that, and I couldn't stand it."

"Sorry. You just seem shaken. More shaken than the time there was a ghost in the house."

Sally sighed. "I'm fine. I promise." Esther clearly didn't believe her. "I promise. If you need anything, I'll be in my room, alright?"

"Alright," said Esther as she left the room, shuffling up the stairs. Sally was going stay in the loft and smoke that joint she'd been planning on making; suddenly, the fact that it was only eight in the morning didn't matter at all.

After sluicing off the sweat from her early jog in the shower, Esther spent the rest of the morning tumbling deeper down a rabbit hole full of men in black, arson, and top hats.

As well as being a go-to reporter for gonzo journalism at the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s, Hector Diaz had written extensively on men in black sightings – specifically, around Palo Alto and Stanford. His uncle, Antonio Diaz, had been a janitor at Stanford University in the sixties, but come 1970, Antonio died in a house fire – with a strange top hat being the only thing that survived. Hector had only been a kid, but it must have left an imprint on him because he never stopped chasing the story. He'd only been twelve when the fire had happened.

Esther found that Hector also remembered and wrote about seeing men in black around the smouldering remains of his uncle's house, and diligently recorded other sightings when they cropped up in the community – according to one article he wrote, stories about men in black prowling Palo Alto's neighbourhoods were commonplace among the kids at his high school.

In 1973, there was another fire on Stanford's campus in one of the old labs, but the next one Hector wrote about as being of any interest was in 1976. It had somehow made it all the way to Albuquerque, burning down a house in Sandia Heights. Hector charted the path of this hat as it managed to disappear from crime scenes, apparently pursued by elusive government men. He even connected it to the death of an old G-man in another fire in Newark in 1991. By 2000, it seemed to appear in London. Diaz wrote on his hat-centric blog that it had taken years for him to connect it to a suburban fire in Bromley, where it was finally recovered by the Metropolitan Police – the blog wasn't updated until 2006, and the entire self-hosted site was still distressingly web 1.0. A brief diversion found, much to her sadness, an obituary for Diaz in the LA Times: he'd died in 2011, only fifty-three years old, while trying to intervene in a gas station hold-up. The Times had featured an article he'd written from within the chaos of Woodstock '99.

But Diaz had a contact in the Met and an inside tip that the CIA had sent a request to Scotland Yard to have the hat brought back to the States on the grounds that it was related to a matter of 'national security'. Bizarrely, Diaz claimed that somebody higher had intervened and refused it – somebody working out of Thames House. MI5.

She hadn't checked MI5's records yet – hadn't known that they might be involved. But the research continued, and though there were some issues with the digital archives being in bad shape, Esther found at least something interesting: the notorious hat being withdrawn from Scotland Yard a handful of times to be transported to RAF Daws Hill, outside of London, under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence. But Daws Hill had been decommissioned completely in 2007, and she couldn't find any records that anything had been happening there since.

But here was this hat, making its way across two countries and an ocean, apparently an object of such great import to both the CIA and MoD that its existence had been kept confidential even from UNIT, burning down buildings in its wake. What was it?

Hitting another wall and realising she'd ended up skipping breakfast, Esther – about two hours after she saw Sally up to the attic – headed down into the kitchen. She'd printed off her notes and all the crucial articles to show to Sally, whom she'd heard go back downstairs earlier, and was flipping through them when she came into the room.

"Hey – so, I've found a lot, but also not a lot – not a lot I can make sense of, anyhow. I was wondering if you…"

She looked up.

There was Sally Sparrow, standing in front of the gas stove, turning the dials with that thing on her head. Esther froze. Straining her ears, she heard the hiss of the rings, gas pouring out.

"…Sally?" she asked slowly. "Were you gonna cook something?"

Sally had a lighter – the one she used for her joints, Esther assumed – in one hand, open and ready to strike. Esther sniffed; she couldn't smell gas, so the room couldn't have been filling up for long. The shut-off valve was down in the cellar, though. Would Sally try to stop her from going for it? If she touched Esther and even the tiniest spark of electricity got into the air, the house could go up in flames. But if Esther didn't stop her, that was going to happen anyway. She had to take the risk and do something before the gas increased too much.

"Sal… Sally…. Hey, Sally!" Esther resorted to shouting at her and finally got a response. She shook her head just slightly, but that was all.

Carefully, Esther crept around the side of the dining table to see if she could get her attention visually, but what she saw sent a shiver down her spine. Her eyes were open but going haywire, flickering all over the place. It was REM: Sally was fast asleep.

"Okay, it looks like it's just you and me, hat," said Esther. "I don't know if you can be reasoned with because I don't know how this works, but just in case, it'd be a big help to me if you didn't force my roommate to burn our house down, so, do you think you can let her go?"

Sally blinked. She was trying to fight it, but it quickly regained control. But then Sally's attention snapped towards Esther, lighter in hand. It wasn't her, it was the hat, but she took a woozy step in Esther's direction. Esther put down her papers and backed away.

"Listen, let's all just slow down and talk about this and – who knows? Maybe you can bring me around to thinking our house should be burned down. Isn't there something to be said for spirited, intelligent debate? I was head of my high school debate club, and-"

She had to duck. Sally swung for her with the lighter. It was very meek, but Esther wasn't wearing her gloves, and her arms were exposed. Any contact could release a lethal spark.

"Just hold on a second there, didn't I just challenge you to a debate? It's not exactly polite to refuse to engage like that. I'm sure you can hold off on murdering us for a little bit, right?" She kept backing away, but then she got an idea. The fruit bowl on the side, near the door.

Hat-controlled Sally Sparrow continued to advance, waving the lighter around recklessly. If her thumb slipped, the kitchen could explode… Would Esther be able to get her out of the house in time?

"Sally's got a lot of flaws, but I don't think it's anything she needs to die for, okay!? And I don't think the Leylands did anything wrong, either – or Antonio Diaz!" She threw out that name like the hat would remember, but it made no impact. It would help if she knew what it was doing to control people, if it was some sort of sentient, alien entity that only happened to look like a hat and was a hobbyist firebug. "Seriously, we can resolve this peacefully! How about we all go outside, and I'll set the house on fire! At least then, nobody would have to die!"

Whatever it was couldn't be reasoned with, but Esther had reached her last resort. She'd never been a good throw, but she pulled the fruit bowl towards her and picked out an apple, hurling it at Sally to knock the hat from her head. Unfortunately, she missed and hit her on the nose, making her stagger backwards. She dropped the lighter and Esther held her breath, but it wasn't enough to get it to spark. Esther found an orange next and threw that, missing completely and hitting the cellar door. There was only one thing left in the fruit bowl, and it was a banana. Not the easiest thing to throw, but she had to try.

The third time was the charm. She struck the hat with enough force to knock it from Sally's head, landing softly on the floor. Sally, meanwhile, did not land softly. As soon as it was gone, she collapsed, crashing onto the kitchen tiles. Esther acted quickly, shutting off the gas and kicking the hat away, hoping that Sally hadn't hit her head.

"Darn it… I knew I shouldn't have left you alone, trying to burn down the house," she grumbled. She couldn't risk touching Sally to get her out of the room, so had to wake her up. Not bothering to stop and think about the best way to do it, she did the first thing she could think off. Esther filled up a glass of water at the sink and tipped it over Sally's head. She awoke immediately, coughing.

"Bloody hell!" she spluttered. "What are you trying to do – waterboard me!?"

"Uh, try saving your life!" said Esther. "Get up, we have to get out of this room; it's full of gas."

"Gas? What…" Dazed, Sally sat up, seeing the hat in the corner. "How did that get back in the house?"

"I assume you brought it back in since I just walked in on you trying to set the kitchen on fire with it on your head," said Esther. "I'm serious, gas! Get up!"

Eventually, she corralled Sally into the living room, then opened all the kitchen windows and shut the door tightly so that it could air out. It would be safe in a few hours, especially considering she still couldn't smell any gas.

"From now on, we stay together," said Esther. "It's not like we can both wear the hat at once."

"Why is my nose bleeding?" asked Sally, still half asleep – or maybe she was just stoned.

"I hit you in the face with an apple, sorry," said Esther.

"You what?"

"I was aiming for that hat. But look. You're fine now, I'm fine, the hat… That hat won't be fine for much longer…"

Esther was right about that. Half an hour after rescuing Sally and apologising profusely for her bloody nose, Esther braved the kitchen again to go and get it. For a second, this could have all gone sideways and rendered her earlier heroics completely useless. When she touched the hat, she felt something inside. There was energy flowing through it, but at her touch, it hissed, and she heard a small bang. Smoke curled away while she was still in the gaseous kitchen. Luckily, nothing ignited.

"Does it still bother you?" said Esther, showing it to Sally when she brought it back into the living room.

"What? I…" Sally frowned at it. "Well, no, I suppose not."

Esther fetched a pair of scissors and her printed-out notes. She gave the notes to Sally and used the scissors herself. While Sally read everything Esther had found, Esther cut into the hat's fabric, tearing it to pieces until she revealed a circuit module attached to a tiny, lithium battery. It was the battery that had ruptured at Esther's touch; she could smell the burning acid.

"What's in it?" asked Sally.

"A circuit board. Going by the design, I'd say it's from the sixties – early computing. It's wired up to an old transmitter and a long-living lithium battery which is now, sadly, deceased." Esther dropped the battery on the rug.

"Transmitter?" asked Sally. "What kind of transmitter?"

"Not a type I recognise. Maybe Jack or the Doctor could-"

"Wait…" said Sally. "God, it's so obvious with all these notes!"

"It is?" asked Esther.

"It's MKUltra."

"It-? Don't be ridiculous," said Esther, almost laughing. "MKUltra has all been declassified, and it was mainly about drugs anyway, so…" She stopped when she found a piece of paper rolled up tightly in the lining of the hat, sewn inside with the rest of the electronics. Unrolling it, she found a chemical formula and a few instructions about how to extract lysergic acid amide from seeds. "Okay, you might be onto something. Whoever made that hat was also trying to make LSD." Esther showed her the piece of paper, yellow and falling apart after fifty years inside an old hat, surviving fire after fire.

"Did you say it came from Stanford? That's where a lot of the experiments happened," said Sally. "I've read all about this. And it would explain why this bloke, Diaz, was seeing men in black everywhere. Probably the CIA trying to get their hat back."

"I find it hard to believe that the CIA built a mind-control device inside a top hat."

"Weren't they also trying to surgically implant listening devices in cats at around the same time?" asked Sally.

"I suppose," said Esther. Sally was right. Not only that, but the lithium battery did look like the old images she'd seen of the first lithium batteries on computer enthusiast forums – which had been invented by the CIA.

"And the top hat makes sense," said Sally.

"Does it?"

"It's easy to identify since most people – especially in America – don't just have top hats lying around, and you definitely won't get it confused with another hat and put it on by accident. It might be a prototype, built in Stanford. His uncle was a cleaner there, that's how it got out."

"Hm… I don't know how the CIA was unable to track it down for so long."

"Maybe it just hides in plain sight."

"Meaning what?"

"It was out there in our garden, and we didn't notice it until Anthony pointed it out," said Sally. "Maybe it was there since the fire and James missed it, too. Speaking of which, he should be here by now."

"I'm sure he'll get here any minute," said Esther. "But why make a hat that forces people to set fires?"

"Assassinations," said Sally.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, come on. You're American, America loves to assassinate people. This is the same CIA that had all those plans to publicly discredit and assassinate Fidel Castro, is it not? And the one that deposed Vietnam's last democratically elected leader."

"You're right about Castro, I guess, but are you talking about Diem?" she asked. Sally nodded. "Diem wasn't elected by anybody; he was appointed by the emperor."

"Still assassinated by the CIA."

"I…"

"Think about it," said Sally. "You build this thing, a piece of clothing, that you can just give to somebody you don't like or hide in their house, and as soon as they see it, they get compelled to put it on and immolate themselves. Maybe they're meant to destroy the hat, too, or chuck it out of the window so it can be found and used again like this one must have been. What if all those fires where you thought the CIA wasn't able to find it was them finding it, and passing it out to enemies of the state? Potential terrorists? They could've been sending it after Black Panthers or Soviet spies."

"You're just imagining things," said Esther.

"Really? That's why they wouldn't declassify anything about it? That's why the Ministry of Defence was also using it in experiments? And refusing to give it back to the CIA when asked?" said Sally. "I know you used to work for them, but didn't they also try to frame you for being involved with the Miracle and kill you?"

"I guess – but that was PhiCorp infiltrating the CIA, it didn't come from the Agency. The Agency helped end the Miracle."

"And then they buried you in their fancy, war hero cemetery to say thanks for dying for them," said Sally.

"Okay, that's not very nice," said Esther.

"You hit me in the face with an apple."

"To save you!"

"And you're being wilfully ignorant about that hat. It makes sense, it…" She stopped when they heard a car pulling up outside. Sally was on her feet in an instant to look through the curtains. "That's James now. Maybe he can tell us what he thinks the hat is."

"But he's just going to agree with anything you say."

"Yes, because I'm right," said Sally. Esther rolled her eyes and followed Sally to the door, greeting James as he ran from his Lexus to greet them.

"Are you okay? Are you both okay?" he asked. All thoughts of the hat went out of the window, though, when they saw he was wearing a green, knitted sweater with a big frog's head pattern.

"We're fine," said Sally. "All the better for seeing you in this jumper."

"In-? Oh. I forgot I had it on." He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

"You shouldn't have driven," said Sally.

"It's fine. Life's about taking risks, isn't it?"

"Not those kinds of risks," said Sally, more sincere than Esther had ever seen her before. "But, sure. You seem to be in one piece. Which is more than can be said for me, with my head injury. Esther threw an apple at me."

They let him into the living room and recapped the morning's events: hat possession, apple incident, and Hector Diaz. Sally went through Esther's notes now she was familiar with them, and Esther showed him the circuit board and the remains of the hat.

"You've done my job for me, then?" he said, examining the circuit board.

"Stopped the hat's reign of terror? I believe so," said Sally.

"An MKUltra top hat?" he said.

"That's what she thinks," said Esther.

"And I've yet to hear you come up with an alternative."

"Someone could've just built it, I don't know, for fun," Esther shrugged.

"Just a fun spot of lethal arson?" said Sally dryly.

"Most serial arsonists do it because they get some kind of enjoyment out of it, I'm sure," said Esther. "Have you heard of Thomas Sweatt?"

"No."

"He set hundreds of fires around D.C. when I was growing up – they didn't manage to arrest him until 2005," said Esther. "He said he did it for stress relief, but people died. Lives were ruined. People like that exist – it could be another lone operator. Like him, or like the Unabomber."

"Wasn't the Unabomber also an MKUltra test subject?" said Sally.

"There's no proof that the experiments he was subjected to were mandated by the CIA," said Esther.

"I don't know why you defend them."

"What, my former employers? I'm an American."

"And I don't see you rushing to go back," said Sally. Esther shut up. "I just mean, you can be critical of the country you're from. The MoD is also involved in trying to hijack this thing – and here's a secret agent tasked with recovering it for a clandestine organisation that has absolutely no oversight or accountability to the public, sanctioned by the monarchy. No offence."

"You're too anti-government," said Esther.

"I'm-? I'm not a libertarian."

"You're some kind of socialist."

"I don't vote at all, actually," said Sally.

"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive – and how can you not vote? You have an obligation to exercise any and all democratic rights you have. Everybody does."

Sally shook her head and geared up to keep arguing with Esther, but Esther's phone dinged loudly. It was an urgent email about a malware attack on a CyTech data centre.

"Much as I'd love to stay here and debate politics with you, I have a work emergency," said Esther. "Cyber-attack to deal with. Try not to set the house on fire while I'm gone."

"I'll do my best," said Sally, watching her go. "It'll be nice to air out all the America – it's starting to smell of burgers and guns down here!"

"Yeah, yeah! Whatever." Esther was gone. Sally crossed her arms and slouched deeper on the armchair, James sitting very awkwardly on the sofa.

"Everything alright?" he asked.

"She's American," said Sally.

"I had noticed that, yeah."

"Then you see my point."

"Not entirely. You really don't vote?"

"Who do you expect me to vote for?" she challenged. He faltered and couldn't get a word out. "Actually, don't answer that."

"I don't mean-"

"You mean that you think I'm a Tory. That's bloody typical. For the record, I'm not."

"So, you choose not to vote?" he said. "You're not so posh that you're not allowed?"

"Being as I'm not a member of the royal family, no. But I do sometimes wish that people would find something else to make fun of me for."

"What would you suggest?" he asked.

"Work it out yourself."

"I'd have to get to know you better," he said. He had her there, and she couldn't come up with a clever response right away. But she didn't have to, because he yawned again.

"Are you a big fan of frogs, then?" she changed the subject, watching him rub his eyes, and then scratch his chin. "Or is it a gift you feel too guilty to give back?"

"It's not a gift, I knit when I'm stressed," he said.

"You… You knit? And you knit things with frogs on them?" she asked.

"It was the only spare jumper at my mam's when I got there yesterday to pick up some things for her," he explained. "Didn't realise I was still wearing it."

"What else do you knit?"

"Oh, this and that," he said dismissively. "Little hats, recently."

"More hats?"

"I was already in the hospital, wasn't I? Took the knitting with me, did a few hats, sent them down to the NICU. They're always needing hats down there, for the babies."

"Are you joking?" she frowned.

"Why would I joke about premature babies?"

"Because that can't be real, surely."

"I see how it is. If I was a woman, you wouldn't bat an eyelash about me knitting hats and boots for the NICU, but because I'm a bloke and I play rugby and used to be a copper, I'm not real?" he challenged her.

"I… No, you're right, I suppose I wouldn't," she admitted. He smiled at her. "Do you want something to eat? I've got a cake that needs getting rid of, and the kitchen shouldn't be flammable anymore."

"Go on, then," he said. She smiled and stood up, passing him on her way out of the living room.

"It's chocolate," she said. "Full disclosure, I think it's been frozen for a while and defrosted overnight."

"Why did you buy a frozen cake?" he asked, following her into the kitchen. It was chilly in there now with the windows open, but better than risking a fire.

"It wasn't meant to be frozen, it…" She didn't want to tell him where the cake was from, but the very fact that she didn't want to tell him was probably a reason that she should. "It's my wedding cake."

"'Scuse me?"

"My wedding cake, from my wedding that I'm not having," she explained, taking a big, clingfilm-wrapped cake tier out of the fridge and setting it on the table to hack up. "The note's over there." She pointed out the wedding invitation to him where she'd left it next to the toaster, against her better judgment. He picked it up and read both sides, the one with Larry's message and the one with the cancelled date on it.

"Lawrence Nightingale," said James. "Sounds fancy."

"Larry? Not at all. Just a normal boy from Lancashire."

"Who called it off?"

"It was mutual. We just didn't fit, really. Now, he's in London, and I'm here."

"It was mutual, but you've run away to the other side of the country? To this weird village that doesn't show up on maps?" he quizzed her, still eyeing the wedding invitation.

"I went to uni with Dylan Danvers, he owns the bookshop here," Sally explained. "He knew there was a house to lease, and I wanted to go off-grid, just a bit. It was lucky, too, since Esther's here as well."

"Here with her plants?" he asked, nodding at them on the windowsill.

"Those would be my plants."

"Really?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"You don't seem the type."

"The type to be capable of keeping houseplants alive?" she said, meeting his eyes.

He sighed and then yawned again. "I'm too tired to flirt with you properly, I'm sorry."

"That's okay," she said, plating up a big slab of chocolate cake and setting it down for him, and then doing the same for herself. "I can do both bits. You see, I said that you don't think I can keep a houseplant alive. But then you should say, 'Well, I just didn't think you liked tired, old weeds, Sally.' And I'll say, 'Tired, old weeds? You're being a bit harsh on yourself, aren't you?'" He laughed.

"What next?"

"Hm… I imagine that you'd try to persuade me to go for a drink with you."

"And how would that go?"

"I'd have to decline, I'm afraid. I just left someone else at the altar, you see, after six years together."

"That is a sensible reason to say no."

"And I'm usually not sensible at all, so I'm turning over a new leaf here," said Sally. Yet again, he yawned loudly. Was he going to fall asleep at the kitchen table?

"I should find a hotel around here, I suppose."

"There aren't any that I know of. You'd probably have to go down to Halifax, or over to Keighley," she said.

"I'll be alright to do that."

"No," she said. There were a lot of things in life that Sally Sparrow didn't take seriously, but cars were not one of them. "That's ridiculous, you… You can rest here for a while."

"Thanks, but I can never get to sleep on sofas."

"You…" She was going to regret this. "You can have my bed."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not using it, am I? It's the middle of the day. I'll just have to tidy a bit."

"And by 'tidy', you mean you're going to hide your weed?" he asked. She froze. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna arrest you."

"It's medicinal."

"Do you have a prescription?"

"Um…"

"Sally, it's fine. It's not worth any court's time or money to prosecute people for possession of a personal supply of weed."

"Mm. And where do the courts stand on mushrooms? Hypothetically."

"Are the mushrooms only for you? Hypothetically."

"Yes."

"Then it's also not worth it. I'm not technically a police officer anymore, though – and even if I was, that was in Wales; I wouldn't have the jurisdiction here." When he yawned for a fourth time she put her foot down.

"You're staying. I can't let you drive if you're this tired, it's not safe."

"Are you sure? I can probably get a cab to a nearby hotel."

"What's the point? Save the money, just… it's fine. I insist."

"…Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet; my room's a state." He smiled at her and went on with his cake. It wasn't the best, thanks to being frozen and poorly thawed out, but she'd never been fussy where cake was concerned. James didn't seem to mind, either.

"What do you know about this village?" he asked when he'd nearly finished.

"Hollowmire? It's hard to find, not on any maps, not in local histories. But Royal Mail manages," said Sally.

"What are the people like?"

"Honestly? Quite nice. I've not been here long, but they all know me and say hello – and Esther, too. Although, I suppose she's a bit more novel."

"You don't think it's odd that there's a roller rink but no fishmonger?" he asked.

"I didn't say it wasn't odd," said Sally. "But odd people can still be nice and welcoming, can't they?"

"If you see anything strange, though…"

"I suppose I'll let Undercoll know. Is there another number for them I can call? So that I don't have to speak to you, obviously."

"I'm afraid I can't give out the numbers of my colleagues."

"I'm stuck with you, then?"

"It looks that…" He cut himself off with a yawn.

"Go on, go upstairs and have a nap," she said.

He was too tired to even argue, only nodding through another yawn as she led him out of the kitchen and all the way up to the loft. She made him wait outside for a minute so that she could give everything a very generous dousing of the Febreze she kept up there and hide her half-finished joint from earlier, and then excused herself as quickly as possible after retrieving her computer.

Readying herself to apologise, she took her laptop and knocked on Esther's bedroom door.

"What's up?" Esther called.

"It's only me, can I come in?"

"Uh, sure." Esther was at her desk in the middle of writing code when Sally came in. "Is something wrong?"

"No, I've just sent him up to my room to get some sleep, and now I'm on my own."

"He's in your room?"

"I'm not gonna let anyone drive when they're in that state – it's a miracle he didn't crash on the way here," said Sally. "I'm just nervous about that hat still being here." Its desiccated remains were on their living room rug. "Don't really want to be on my own. And I'm sorry about earlier – I'm sorry for saying that you're American."

"That's not exactly what the issue was, but I accept that you've attempted to make an apology."

"Can I stay in here for a bit?"

"If it's a choice between you staying in here or burning the house down, sure. This hack is amateur work, anyway; easily contained."

"Thanks."

"He's really in your room, though?" asked Esther as Sally sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed. Esther had already given up arguing with her about how she preferred to sit on the floor.

"Yes, but I'm not up there with him, am I?" said Sally.

"Do you want to be?" asked Esther. Sally gave her a look. "What? It's an honest question."

"I barely know him. I'm just doing him a favour."

"I don't care what you do as long as you persuade him to take that hat with him when he leaves," said Esther.

"I'm not sure we should be letting 'New Torchwood' have a mind-control, arson assassination device, but fine. Whatever you want."