THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD
DOCTOR WHO THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD
THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD
Based on the BBC television adventure
by Russell T Davies
BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Novelisation copyright © Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson 2024
Original script copyright © Russell T Davies 2023
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Doctor Who is produced in Wales by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios Productions
Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins & Phil Collinson
First published by BBC Books in 2024 Paperback edition published in 2024 www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785948701
Editorial Director: Albert DePetrillo
Project Editor: Steve Cole
Cover Design: Two Associates
Cover Illustration: Dan Liles
Typeset by Rocket Editorial Ltd
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
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Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
To my dear parents, Pamela and Adam, for always encouraging me to dream big.
Chapter One
Manchester, 24 December, 2004
Once upon a time, late on Christmas Eve, a stranger came to the church on Ruby Road.
It was an old church, the grand kind one usually finds in small villages, with a tower and a clockface. Gravestones stood in the front churchyard: great stone crosses made blurry and indistinct by the snow which fell in heavy flakes from the night sky, blanketing the whole scene in white, muffling the sounds of the stranger’s frantic footsteps. Beyond the church, in the middle distance, houses stretched out in neat rows, their windows flickering with warm light.
But in the churchyard, the only illumination came from old-fashioned streetlamps, the sort you might read about in a children’s story, their yellow light struggling out from behind dusty panes.
Indeed, you might be forgiven for thinking this is a children’s story. Alas, it is not.
The stranger was dressed for snow – wrapped in a shawl all the way up to her eyes and ears, shuffling down the icy street, and clutching a bundle in her hands. She might have wanted to stop and catch her breath, but she gave
no sign of it. The stranger just kept walking, her precious bundle pressed to her chest as she made her way towards the church. Determined, steady.
When she reached the grand, arching wooden doors, she placed the bundle before them, on the ground. In the light of the streetlamp, her daughter’s face was visible, peeking out of the swaddling blankets, a pale circle with a button nose, eyes squeezed shut.
Above her, the minute hand on the clocktower ticked closer to the hour.
By the time it struck midnight, the stranger was gone, swallowed by the snow and the dark of the night, vanished completely into the wideness of the world.
Had the stranger turned back, perhaps to raise her hand in farewell to her daughter, she would have seen the door open just as the rolling tolls of the church bell rang the hour, a flood of light and warmth like a river spilling across the stone, the merry sound of the choir carrying out into the freezing air of the night. She would have watched from afar as the vicar glanced around, his face wrinkling at the sight of the bundle on the doorstep. The small, waving hands, the little nose and wisps of blonde hair peeking out from beneath the child’s little cap. She would have seen him scoop up the child, his robes ruffling in the cold evening air, before shaking his head, and placing a kiss on the newborn’s brow.
But the stranger did not see any of those things, though she might have, if only she had turned. Instead, she moved forward, onward, and disappeared into the snow.
Now, if this were a true Christmas fairy tale, the stranger might have been reunited with her daughter, many years later. She might have been a rich duchess, or a pirate queen, or a snow fairy come to take her child back to her icy realm. But this story isn’t a fairy tale, and the stranger was never seen again. No one ever even knew her name.
This is what happened instead.
Across the snowy square, frozen still as a statue, was a man. In the darkness, his long coat shrouded him in shadow. Behind him, a blue police box stood in the snow, its door open, the interior glowing softly. The man’s sad, clever eyes followed the stranger down the road, watching as she hurried off; a hooded figure, dark and lonely against the snow, which had begun to fall heavier and heavier, piling in small drifts by the side of the road. For one moment, it seemed as though he might call to her. Say something. But the man wasn’t here for her, and the mere minutes he had left to do what he needed were trickling away. Something had gone wrong in the future, terribly wrong, and the cracks in time had chased him all the way back to this night. To this very corner, on the street named Ruby Road.
The Doctor turned towards the church.
Its thin, pointed spire was gothic in the soft glow of the streetlamps, and as he stood, seen by no one, like a lonely statue amongst the falling snow, the light caught his face. And his eyes were filled with tears.
Chapter Two
London, 1 December, 2023
‘ . . . And that’s my name.’ Ruby smiled, trying not to squint against the harsh glare of the lights they’d set up around her to illuminate the scene, even though they were so bright she felt like her face – along with all the makeup that had been put on it – was melting off. ‘Ruby, named after Ruby Road, where I was found. Almost nineteen years ago, now.’
Shifting in her seat, she looked across at Davina McCall – Davina McCall, for god’s sake, a proper famous TV presenter! – who was currently perched on a seat facing her, and wondered not for the first time if this was all an elaborate hallucination.
Ruby had grown up watching shows where celebrity hosts helped children in the care system to track down their birth families, but never in a million years did she think she’d ever go on one. The thought of staring down a camera lens and sharing all the things that had happened to her since she was found by a vicar on the steps of a church – basically, explaining her whole life – made her feel vaguely sick with anxiety. And yet here she was.
Davina shook her dark, glossy hair and nodded understandingly. ‘So, you were a foundling. And you were fostered by Carla, who then adopted you, is that right?’
At the mention of her mum’s name, Ruby felt herself relax. Carla had given her a stern talking to before she’d come on the show. Your story belongs to you. Don’t let anyone tell it for you, she’d said before squeezing Ruby in a hug so tight she’d thought she might burst.
‘Yeah, my mum’s amazing.’ Ruby laughed. ‘I mean, she’s completely nuts. But she’s the best mum I could ever have, yeah.’ She wanted to say, Without her, I don’t know what I’d do. Where I’d be. I love her more than anything. But the words felt too personal for the glitzy London club where the interview was being filmed. The seats at the black marble bar were velvet, for crying out loud. A drink here probably cost more money than Ruby earned working two entire hours at her part-time job.
‘So life’s been good, would you say?’ Davina asked.
‘Well! Not bad. I mean, we’ve had the pandemic, of course, and the recession, and the Giggle.’ She ticked things off her on her fingers. ‘And my A levels weren’t the best, cos we had to leave Manchester and move down here. We came to look after my gran – she wouldn’t move north, not in a million years! And we couldn’t pay for care. So that’s been tricky,’ she laughed awkwardly. ‘And expensive.’
Davina nodded sagely again. ‘I bet! No one moves to London these days!’
She was a good interviewer, Ruby thought. Kind, and calm. I keep forgetting I’m on camera. ‘To be honest, it’s left
me a bit stranded, really. I think, well to be honest, I think I’m still waiting for my life to begin—’
‘Sorry – sorry, can we stop?’ A male voice interrupted her. One of the sound guys. He was frowning at his monitor, pressing his set of headphones tighter to his head, as though trying to listen in on a very faint sound. ‘Is there a radio or something? I’m getting a noise – like a whisper. Could be an open door?’
Ruby blinked, the chic surroundings of the bar around her coming back into focus. Crystal lights and crystal glasses, the assembled crew, all linked via headsets and wires. She’d been so immersed in the interview that the interruption felt like a splash of cold water to the face.
Davina leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘Don’t worry, stuff like this happens all the time, won’t take long.’ She shuffled her notes. ‘Oh, you don’t mind me using the word “foundling”, do you? Some people think it sounds a bit old-fashioned.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Like a fairy tale.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘No, I don’t mind. It’s what I am.’ Honestly, she didn’t. Davina was right, it did sound a tad old-fashioned and maybe a little strange, but what was life without a little strangeness? She laughed. ‘I was found. I was foundled!’
Davina eyes crinkled in a smile. ‘I love that.’
At a signal from the sound guy, Davina beamed at Ruby again. ‘Wonderful. Right, everything seems to have been sorted. Let’s pick it up at . . . So! Ruby! The whole point of this show is to see if we can help you reconnect with your family . . .’
There was a small, flickering movement out of the corner of Ruby’s eye. Trying her best to focus on the interview, she blinked hard. But it flickered into view again. A small grey shape. She blinked again. Probably a wire moving, or someone’s shoe, she told herself, and refocused her attention on Davina.
‘ . . . In the old days, foundlings were left without a trace, and there was nothing we could do. But now we can work magic with DNA. We’ve taken your swabs and we can start the search . . .’
The flicker was back. And now there was a sound, like hissing, right at the limits of her hearing. Ruby tried to concentrate on Davina’s face, or even just her voice, but the strange, eerie sound cut right through.
Darting a look at the sound guy, she noticed he was frowning again, looking at his monitor in confusion. Could he hear it too?
Snicker-snacker-ticker-tacker.
‘Now, Ruby,’ Davina was saying. Ruby wrenched her focus back to the interview. The sound faded to nothing, disappearing as swiftly as it had interrupted her. Relief flooded through her. She needed to stay present; this could be her only chance of ever tracking down her birth parents. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by vague, whispering noises.
‘We can’t promise miracles,’ Davina continued. ‘And even if we do make contact with someone, your mum or dad, or even a cousin, they might not want to be found. And we have to respect that.’
Ruby nodded, smiling. ‘I understand.’ ‘Can I ask, if we find someone . . . what are you hoping for?’
‘Just the truth,’ Ruby said, and she meant it. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’m from royalty or anything!’ She laughed, but Davina didn’t, just kept staring at her, earnestly, as if waiting for Ruby to elaborate. ‘I just think . . . if I’m waiting for my life to begin, then knowing where I came from is a good place to start.’
In the back of the room, unseen by everyone, including Ruby, a thin grey hand reached towards a cup of coffee, recently set down by one of the crew. Spidery fingers wrapped around the cardboard and moved the coffee a few inches to the left, quiet as a whisper, subtle as a breeze.
The lines on the sound monitor jumped, pinging upward, picking up the faintest murmur. A hiss, barely audible. Snicker-snacker-ticker-tacker.
Another hand. There! By a plug in the wall, disconnecting it from the socket.
At the front of the room, Ruby and Davina chatted away, none the wiser.
Then several unexplainable things happened within the space of only a few seconds.
The thin grey hand pulled the wire taut, lifting it off the ground just as the crewmember noticed her coffee had inexplicably moved. She stepped forward to get it, careful not to make a sound and disturb the set, which was silent but for the sound of Davina and Ruby’s voices.