9. More Of The World
"We weren't his favourites," Dad said thoughtfully as they cleared away the half-eaten food, the remains of the unfinished dinner. "We could never be his favourites, it's not him, he can't have them."
"Yeah," Mum said. "He likes us all. He loves us all. And there's a hundred different kinds of good families and we've seen most of them."
Something stirred in Alec's memory. "Oh, Mum, Dad, I met Sarah Jane Smith."
"Really?" said Mum.
"Yeah. On the phone. She helped us, she sent the transmat to the TARDIS. She said to call when it was all over."
Dad picked up the nearest phone, but Aunt Sharon held out her hand.
"I'll do it," she said. "I'll...I'll introduce myself."
Dad placed the phone in her hand. "You go ahead, Aunt Sharon," he said, and watched her leave the room.
Alec piled some plates up and took a mouthful of cold lasagne. It still tasted good.
"Mum, Dad, she's not..."
"Not what?" Mum asked.
"Aunt Sharon isn't going to carry on with what she was doing."
"No," Mum said, and they saw her through the glass doors, laughing on the phone to a person she'd only just met. "Look at her."
"She's a changed person," Dad said.
Alec remembered his flash of hatred for her, and realised it had gone utterly away. Aunt Sharon had changed so completely that he had begun to wonder if the whole thing hadn't been some strange consequence of the Doctor being in her mind...
He went to the kitchen carrying plates, and Mum was right behind him so he said quietly, "Mum, I'm sorry I said I was the Doctor's kid, cos I know that that kinda meant...that I thought you cheated on Dad. Even though you didn't."
"Oh, Alec, I knew what you were doing," Mum said, hugging him. "I knew you read the diary. It's okay, I don't mind that you said it, just please, please don't risk your life like that again."
"Okay," said Alec. "And you're not crazy," he added, because he felt like he ought to.
Mum just smiled.
"Thank you, sweety."
The plates out of the way, they all sat down at the table.
"We just want to say how...grateful we are that you're alive," Mum said, blinking back tears as she held Dad's hand. "So many times today we thought...we thought our lives were over."
"And when we say lives we mean you," said Dad.
Alec found himself blinking back tears too, his only tears of the day, tears of love and exhaustion and relief. He was embarassed and hid them, but Mum saw. "Alec, sweety, let's have dessert. Why don't you grab some ice cream from the freezer?"
So he went- he heard Aunt Sharon still talking on the phone, discussing bow ties and weddings and love and monsters- and got the ice cream and five spoons, and returned to the table. Johnny had squeezed in between Mum and Dad. And the world seemed warm, and kind, and more.
Alec sat down with his family.
"Mum," said Johnny, breaking open the ice cream, "Dad, will we see the Doctor again?"
Mum and Dad looked at each other.
"I don't know, Johnny," Dad said.
"But I think it's likely," Mum said thoughtfully.
Johnny slurped the ice-cream from his spoon. "I want to see him. But I don't want the bad things, I don't want..." He was far away for a moment. And Alec knew he was thinking of the cage and the fire and the sheer terror that children's stories always left out.
"Oh Johnny, they come together, all that good and bad," Mum said. "In the end, you just have to count on...well, you know, you knew from the stories we told you ."
Aunt Sharon came bursting into the room. "Sarah Jane Smith is lovely, and she has a robot dog! And it talks! Come on, come and say hello!"
As they walked through to the other room where the video screen was, Alec said, "Dad, you were immortal. Right? You...died and then came back?"
"Yeah," Dad said. "But I'm not immortal now, Alec, I'm human."
"But you were the Centurion," Johnny said in awe. He gave a grin of delight at the sight of Sarah Jane, a woman he'd never met with stories of her own to tell, and ran to the middle of the room.
"Your father guarded me for two thousand years," Mum said proudly.
"I wanna hear that story," said Alec.
"And you will," said Mum.
They went through to the other room, they sat on the sofa and talked with old friends, and they all lived happily ever after.