Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28 by Beautiful Chaos # Gary Russell Read Free Book Online

Sylvia was saying. ‘Not in a bloody filling station.
    Alone.’
    At which point, with timing for which both the words ‘impeccable’ and ‘inconvenient’ were invented, the doorbell rang.
    Wordlessly, Wilf went to answer it, and Donna heard him say ‘Ah, not a good time.’ Donna knew, without hearing the response, exactly who was on the doorstep.
    And so did Sylvia.
    She looked with red, teary eyes at her daughter.
    And, for the first time that Donna could remember, Sylvia Noble stroked Donna’s face, a soft caress of pure maternal love. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Then she called, ‘Come in, Doctor.’
    A moment later, the Doctor’s face popped round the sitting room door, brainy specs in place, hair madder than normal.
    ‘Hullo,’ he said to all of them. ‘Do you know the Carnes family by any chance? I think they’ve got aliens in the family.’
    The tourist trade in Moscatelli was mainly based around olive groves, orangeries, a nice vineyard and the annual motorcycle race that started thirteen miles away in Florence and ended up the other side of the mountains in
    this small but oft-visited little town.
    The people who lived in Moscatelli were mostly Italians who had been there for thirty or so generations.
    Everyone knew everyone and it was friendly, welcoming and cheerful.
    It was also, in the middle of May, the recipient of stunningly good weather, and Jayne Greene thought it brought out the best in the locals. Not least of which was that Tonio was spending most of the day during the dig wearing nothing but a pair of tight denim cut-offs that left very little to the imagination (and Jayne could imagine quite a lot). The Professor had employed Tonio and his family to help them set up the dig a week or so back.
    Jayne and her two fellow students, Sean and Ben, had agreed to accompany the Professor there for the summer because it would give them really good marks in the end-of-course assessments, it’d be an adventure to travel to a nice part of Italy and it was a great way to get a tan.
    ‘Got it!’ Sean yelled excitedly.
    ‘How much?’ asked Ben, sifting soil a couple of feet away from where the laptop was set up by the food tent.
    ‘Seventy-eight euro.’
    ‘Sixty-something quid. Not bad.’ Ben nodded. ‘Well done.’
    ‘I bloody love eBay,’ Sean smiled at Jayne. ‘Yaay me!’
    ‘Was it the Egyptian pot?’
    Sean looked at her and shook his head, slowly.
    ‘Not the Iron Age spade?’
    More head shaking.
    Jayne dropped her own tools and wandered over to the
    laptop and looked at what Sean had just committed sixty pounds to.
    ‘That?’
    ‘That.’
    ‘It’s a toy.’
    ‘Course it’s a toy,’ Ben yelled as Tonio poured some more earth into his sieve. ‘What else does Sean ever buy off eBay?’
    Jayne couldn’t understand it. ‘You mean, you spent all that money, and seven days’ frustrated watching the auction, for a mass-produced toy?’
    ‘Action figure,’ Sean corrected her. ‘Limited edition.
    Only five hundred produced, and that was eight years ago.
    It’s a variant paint job, y’see, she’s wearing her red Dark Period costume instead of the traditional green one.’
    Jayne just looked at Sean. ‘You are an adult. You are a grown man getting excited about a plastic toy. A figure for kids. A…’
    ‘Don’t say “dolly”,’ Ben muttered to himself.
    ‘… a dolly?’
    Sean slammed the laptop shut. ‘My money, my choice.
    You get excited about Roman pins and earthenware.’
    ‘So do you!’
    ‘Yeah, cos that’s a job. That’s what I do here and at uni.
    But in my spare time, I have other hobbies. I have…’
    ‘Don’t say “a life”,’ Ben muttered to himself again.
    ‘… a life,’ Sean finished. ‘You should try getting one before you criticise everyone else.’
    Jayne stared at Sean, then across at Ben, who made sure he caught no one’s eye and started to run his finger
    pointlessly through the dirt, in an effort to pretend he had something to