Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28 Read Online Free Page B
Author: Beautiful Chaos # Gary Russell
together.
*
Donna stood at the end of Brookside Road and took a deep breath. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been here last (indeed, for her mum, it was probably slightly less time), but every time she ‘came home’ there were awkward moments. ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘Are you still hanging around with that awful Doctor person?’ and ‘Why don’t you call?’ and ‘Have you got a job yet?’
Of course, Granddad Wilf knew where she was, she’d told him everything right from the off. But her mum, well, she wasn’t someone who’d understand. Wasn’t someone who’d think saving Oods, stopping generational wars or ensuring Charlemagne met the Pope actually equated with a ‘good’ job typing up notes or placing stationery orders.
Taking a deep breath, she walked towards the house that hadn’t actually been her home for too long.
After her disastrous wedding and slightly less disastrous trip to Egypt, her parents had moved from their terraced house where Donna had grown up into this new semi. It had been an upheaval, compounded as it was by Donna not having a job and Wilf originally being cross because he thought he’d have to leave his astronomer buddies behind. As it turned out, of course, the allotments were easier to get to from the new house, so he was happy after all.
But Donna’s dad hadn’t been well for a long time, and in many ways the move had been his idea, his desire to find somewhere new to be, to give him a bit of challenge.
He’d got bored in the old house. He’d built all the cupboards, shelved all the walls, painted all the ceilings he was ever able to do, and he needed something new to keep him active since his illness had made him take early retirement. Doing up the new place to Mum’s quite stringent specifications would be exactly the right challenge.
They had been there three months before Dad passed.
Donna and Wilf had taken on the mantle of doing all those odd jobs Dad had been going to do, but they were never quite right, they were never ‘how your dad would have done it’. Which wasn’t altogether surprising – Wilf was twenty-odd years older, and Donna had never lifted a paintbrush or hammer in her life before.
God. How shallow was Donna Noble before she met the Doctor again? Before she learned not just to stand on her own two feet but realise that she could. Her family life was a real chicken and egg situation. Had she been useless at home because her parents had always let her be, or did her mum think she was useless because she was?
And talking about it, talking about anything, with Sylvia Noble was rarely a positive experience. Donna would love to say that her mum’s bitterness and resentment was because of Dad’s death, but the truth was Sylvia had always been disappointed in her daughter. She rarely hid it. And Donna never understood why. Had she wanted a son? Had she wanted a high-flying lawyer or
company executive daughter who would be rich enough to send her parents off to live in the country in a little sixteenth-century cottage where they could keep goats?
Had it got worse since Dad had died? Would it have been better if she had got married to Lance? Should she have told Mum the truth about that day? Like she had Granddad recently? Probably not, because Sylvia didn’t like people being open and honest. ‘Those bleeding hearts who wear their hearts on their sleeves’ was an analogy she’d tortured once, and it summed up her opinion of people actually being honest.
Donna remembered reading a magazine article once about how parents could never truly hope to understand teenaged offspring and their best bet for harmonious living was just to tolerate those three or four nightmare years. But was there a manual for sons and daughters on how to deal with negative parents? It was impossible to actually argue with a mother – they had an inbuilt ‘guilt trip’ button to press that forbade you saying all the things you wanted to say to
*
Donna stood at the end of Brookside Road and took a deep breath. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been here last (indeed, for her mum, it was probably slightly less time), but every time she ‘came home’ there were awkward moments. ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘Are you still hanging around with that awful Doctor person?’ and ‘Why don’t you call?’ and ‘Have you got a job yet?’
Of course, Granddad Wilf knew where she was, she’d told him everything right from the off. But her mum, well, she wasn’t someone who’d understand. Wasn’t someone who’d think saving Oods, stopping generational wars or ensuring Charlemagne met the Pope actually equated with a ‘good’ job typing up notes or placing stationery orders.
Taking a deep breath, she walked towards the house that hadn’t actually been her home for too long.
After her disastrous wedding and slightly less disastrous trip to Egypt, her parents had moved from their terraced house where Donna had grown up into this new semi. It had been an upheaval, compounded as it was by Donna not having a job and Wilf originally being cross because he thought he’d have to leave his astronomer buddies behind. As it turned out, of course, the allotments were easier to get to from the new house, so he was happy after all.
But Donna’s dad hadn’t been well for a long time, and in many ways the move had been his idea, his desire to find somewhere new to be, to give him a bit of challenge.
He’d got bored in the old house. He’d built all the cupboards, shelved all the walls, painted all the ceilings he was ever able to do, and he needed something new to keep him active since his illness had made him take early retirement. Doing up the new place to Mum’s quite stringent specifications would be exactly the right challenge.
They had been there three months before Dad passed.
Donna and Wilf had taken on the mantle of doing all those odd jobs Dad had been going to do, but they were never quite right, they were never ‘how your dad would have done it’. Which wasn’t altogether surprising – Wilf was twenty-odd years older, and Donna had never lifted a paintbrush or hammer in her life before.
God. How shallow was Donna Noble before she met the Doctor again? Before she learned not just to stand on her own two feet but realise that she could. Her family life was a real chicken and egg situation. Had she been useless at home because her parents had always let her be, or did her mum think she was useless because she was?
And talking about it, talking about anything, with Sylvia Noble was rarely a positive experience. Donna would love to say that her mum’s bitterness and resentment was because of Dad’s death, but the truth was Sylvia had always been disappointed in her daughter. She rarely hid it. And Donna never understood why. Had she wanted a son? Had she wanted a high-flying lawyer or
company executive daughter who would be rich enough to send her parents off to live in the country in a little sixteenth-century cottage where they could keep goats?
Had it got worse since Dad had died? Would it have been better if she had got married to Lance? Should she have told Mum the truth about that day? Like she had Granddad recently? Probably not, because Sylvia didn’t like people being open and honest. ‘Those bleeding hearts who wear their hearts on their sleeves’ was an analogy she’d tortured once, and it summed up her opinion of people actually being honest.
Donna remembered reading a magazine article once about how parents could never truly hope to understand teenaged offspring and their best bet for harmonious living was just to tolerate those three or four nightmare years. But was there a manual for sons and daughters on how to deal with negative parents? It was impossible to actually argue with a mother – they had an inbuilt ‘guilt trip’ button to press that forbade you saying all the things you wanted to say to
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