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It had all seemed like such a good idea at the time. Left to their own devices, Jamie and Zoë tended not to handle Midsummer's Day terribly well. Jamie would almost certainly mope and tell anyone who asked that he was wounded and would never really heal, while Zoë had developed an annoying tendency to overcompensate, dress up as a jester, and hit people with a bladder on a stick. So when Isobel had suggested that they all spend the day at a music festival, to "take people's minds off things" as she'd rather tactlessly put it, everyone had jumped at the idea. Setting aside any differences in musical taste, they'd all managed to enjoy themselves, the rain had mostly held off, and there had been a complete lack of alien invasions. As Gia was obviously the most sensible person among them (not to mention the only one who could canonically drive a car) it was completely logical that she be the designated driver for the journey there and the journey back... ... which was why she was now driving a hired people-carrier along a single- track road in the pitch darkness, with four young women in the back who'd spent the entire journey either talking utter nonsense or inventing a game called 'Four songs to the tunes of four other songs' and then playing it at the tops of their voices. That would have been quite enough to wear Gia's patience down, but then there'd also been Jamie and his struggles with the unfamiliar world of cartography. "We should be coming onto the Barchester bypass about now," he said, peering at the map. Gia looked out into unrelieved blackness. "That would be a big dual carriageway, I take it?" she said. "Because I don't see anything like that here." "Aye, well, maybe it'll be the next turning." "Or maybe not." She glared at the dashboard. "Why didn't I insist on a car with Satnav?" "Sat-what?" Jamie asked, struggling to hear over the raucous sounds from the back seats. "Satellite nav-- Oh, forget it." Out of the tail of her eye, she saw something white drift past. "Was that a signpost?" "Aye, but I couldna' make it out," Jamie admitted. Victoria broke off halfway through her spirited mangling of "Baby One More Time." "It said 'No Through Road'," she said. "Rubbish," Samantha countered. "It was 'Unbridged Ford'." The vehicle shuddered over a cattle grid, giving rise to delighted screams and shouts of "Whoa there." "Oh, great," Gia muttered. "It just gets better and better." "Is that why that light on yon dashboard thing just lit up?" Jamie asked, pointing innocently. Gia looked. The indicator Jamie was referring to did not seem to have been designed to reassure; rather than being a stylised image of a vehicle component, such as a battery, oil can or fuel pump, it was merely an enigmatic question mark, now glowing with amber light. "Look it up in the manual," she commanded him. "I'll pull over and--" "There you are," Samantha interrupted. "Told you so. Unbridged ford." Sure enough, the road ahead was crossed by a watercourse, which in the light of the headlamps looked dangerously deep and wide. Gia slammed on the brakes, causing the vehicle to shudder to a halt. The engine spluttered and cut out. "Dratted museum piece," Gia grumbled, and turned the ignition key. The engine started and ran for a few seconds; then once more the question mark light glowed triumphantly and the engine stalled. "What's going on?" Jamie asked. "I rather think we've broken down. Give me that manual." Gia flipped through the pages until she reached the 'Troubleshooting' section. "Look at this. 'Consult a dealer'. Hopeless. How are we supposed to find a dealer out here?" The extraneous noise was beginning to die down, now, as even the most cheerful members of the party began to realise that something was amiss. "What's up?" Isobel asked. "We've broken down," Gia announced. "Have you all got that? You don't want it repeated? The car's broken down and we don't know where we are either." She turned the interior light on and looked over her shoulder. Behind her, in two rows of two, her passengers gazed back. They were just starting to look concerned. "So if you've got any ideas, now would be a good time," she concluded. "Call a breakdown service," Isobel said. "Or a garage." "Fine. Has anyone got a mobile phone?" Zoë began to delve in her trouser pocket. "Preferably one which doesn't rely on satellites that won't be launched for another few decades?" Zoë stopped delving. "What about that T-Mat thing you're always playing with?" Jamie asked. "Couldn't you just, well, beam us all out of here?" "Funny you should say that," said Gia. "I have been experimenting with a portable base station." "And?" "And at the moment it weighs seven tonnes." "Not something you could carry in your handbag, then." Isobel shrugged elegantly. "We'll have to wait for someone to pass and then act like damsels in distress. That's really going to do wonders for the cause of female equality." "Actually, it will," Zoë said. "Because Jamie's in just as much distress as we are." "If anyone comes they'll have to stop anyway," Samantha pointed out. "We're blocking the road." "We might wait an awfully long time for anyone to come, though." "We could just stay in the car until morning and try to get some sleep," Victoria suggested. "No way," Samantha retorted. "I'm much too wakeful to get any sleep now. And even if I could, you snore." "I do not snore." Victoria narrowed her eyes. "How would you know, anyway?" "Never you mind." Samantha opened her door, letting in a gust of cool night air. "Look, there's a light over there." "Is that the sea?" Victoria asked. "I'm sure I can hear it." "Yeah. Perhaps that light's a lighthouse or a coastguard station. Let's go and find out. It doesn't look too far." "Stumbling around uncharted waste at the dead of night doesn't sound like my idea of fun," Isobel complained. "This is all your fault, Jamie." "My fault? What did I do?" "I don't know if you noticed, Jamie, but you were supposed to be reading the map. In fact you insisted on it, on the grounds that, I quote, 'It's well known that lassies are no good at the mapreading.'" "Actually, he said we were 'hopeless' at mapreading," Zoë pedantically corrected her. "Same difference. But my point was that when it comes down to it, it looks like Jamies are hopeless at the mapreading as well." "Look, if I get any more lip from you--" Jamie began. "Couldn't we try to repair the car?" Victoria asked, trying to defuse the incipient argument. "That depends what's wrong," Gia said. "But I think the short answer is: Very unlikely. This thing doesn't come with the spares for anything more complicated than a puncture. Not to mention that even if we could take the engine to bits and manage to bypass whatever's failed, the car doesn't belong to us and the hiring company would have something to say about it." "So, are we going to check this light out?" Samantha repeated. "Or are we just going to spend the night cooped up in here?" "One of us has to stay with the car, in case someone does show up," Victoria said. "Then I'll stay here too, and make sure you're all right," Jamie said. "That's very kind of you, Jamie. This whole thing makes me nervous. It reminds me of a story, and not a nice one." There was a general chorus of agreement. "It starts with a group of people," Victoria continued. "And their carriage--" "Spaceship." "Car." "Horse." "Van." "Skimmer." "Well, whatever their transport is, it comes to grief somehow. They're out in the middle of nowhere, and they go to the nearest house--" "Asteroid." "For help. And then, the inhabitants all turn out to be--" "Space pirates." "Vampires." "Cannibals." "Werewolves." "Leftpathers." "And the people whose car broke down are never seen again." Isobel shivered. "Are you sure going out there's a good idea?" "Look, it's just a story," Samantha reminded them. "It doesn't really happen like that. What are Leftpathers anyway?" "The Little Flowers of the Left Hand Path," Gia said. "They believe in the sanctity of the Earth and the inherent sinfulness of waste. So they purify the motorists with knives. Lots of knives." "You really ken how tae cheer us all up," Jamie said. "Sorry. She did ask." "I'm staying in the car with Jamie and Victoria," Isobel said firmly. "Really?" Victoria raised her eyebrows. "I wouldn't have expected someone from your time to insist that I need a chaperone." "That's nothing to do with it. For all I care you two can spend the whole night smooching. But you need someone here who knows what they're doing." "Aye," Jamie said automatically, and then realised what he'd just agreed with. "Now hang on a minute. You say one more thing like that and I'll--" Isobel managed a faint echo of her usual superior smile. "Oh, promises, promises." - * - Soon afterwards, Gia, Samantha and Zoë were making their way along the road, heading roughly in the direction of the light ahead of them. Perhaps because of their past experiences with the Doctor, each of the Angels routinely carried a number of items that 'might come in handy'; Samantha had quickly produced a torch to light their way. When they'd actually come to cross it, the ford had proved to be wide but shallow, hardly enough to wet their boots. On the far side, though, the road quickly dwindled to a rutted track. "I wonder where we are," Samantha said, picking her way between the puddles. "At least a hundred miles off course," Gia said. "I'm never using Jamie as a navigator again." "And we're nowhere near civilisation," Zoë added. As usual when delivering bad news she was certain of, she sounded infuriatingly cheerful. "How d'you work that out?" Samantha asked. "Street lights," Gia said, before Zoë could embark on a long lecture designed to showcase her deductive skills. "You'd expect some sort of glow on the horizon. There isn't." "Particularly with this cloud cover," Zoë added. She looked up. "It looks like rain. I hope we can find shelter." "I daresay we'll end up sleeping under a hedge," Gia said gloomily. "Or in a ditch." "I've never slept in a ditch. It might be an educational experience." Samantha shone her torch into the ditch beside which they were currently walking. "Yeah, I bet," she said. "I'm sure all those frogs will move over if you ask them nicely." "Well, maybe not that particular ditch. And it could be worse. At least it's summer." "Midsummer night." Samantha looked around. "The last thing we need right now is any Shakespeare. So I'd prefer it if no-one turned into a donkey or fell in love with someone they're not supposed to. All right?" The other two nodded. In a few more minutes the land on either side of the track dropped away, leaving the three walking along a low embankment. A little further, and the embankment was replaced by a wooden bridge, its timbers ancient and slippery, which creaked with protest as they crossed. Now and again Samantha shone her torch to either side, illuminating an expanse of glistening mud and pools of water, varied now and again by clumps of reeds. Ahead of them, the silhouette of some kind of building could be made out against the near-darkness of the sky and the sea. It obviously wasn't a lighthouse; its complicated outline gave a vague impression of chimneys and gables. The light they'd seen appeared to be shining from a glass structure at the top of the building, and as they came closer they could see occasional chinks of light from shuttered windows lower down. The bridge seemed to last forever, but eventually the marsh it crossed gave way to shingle and rose up to rejoin them. At the end of the bridge, a paved path led onward. It swung to the left to avoid the large building, running past a cluster of smaller, darkened structures. In the light of Samantha's faithful torch these proved to be single-storey buildings, pebbledashed, flat-roofed and mostly windowless. The large building, now on their right, could be nothing other than Victorian, with its patterns of multicoloured brick, its elaborate though eroded ornamented stonework, its pointed arches and its leaded windows. The path ran round two sides of the building and then came to a halt. A flight of steps led up to what was presumably the front door, solid, studded with iron bolts, and freshly painted. A tarnished brass plate beside the door announced that this was the Daneswarren Hotel, while more recent notices added the promising "full en suite accommodation" and the less cheering "closed for refurbishment." Looking back from the top of the steps, all they could see was an expanse of shingle, and beyond that the sea. "It doesn't look hopeful," said Gia. "Rubbish," Samantha said. "There's a light on, so there's someone there. We'd be stupid not to knock and see if they've got any rooms." "Go on, then." "It might sound better coming from one of you. You both sound posh -- I'm as common as muck." "We're not really dressed for it, though," Zoë said. "Neither am I, if it comes to that." This was true. Samantha was dressed in the exuberant style of her native 1966; Zoë was sporting a bright red T-shirt with the legend ADRENALINE JUNKIE; and Gia had not only stayed with a jumpsuit, but chosen one with an eye-hurting black and white spiral design. After their day at the festival and their nocturnal walk, all three also looked grubby, untidy, and vaguely disreputable. Gia took a deep breath. "We'll just have to do the best we can." She stepped forward and rang the bell. Chapter 2: Some Fantastic, Far-Off Hotel
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