Doctor Who: The Girl Who Said No

Chapter 8 - Siobhan Murray

Olivia had never been so protective of the locket till Amy whispered to her its importance and yet she still wouldn’t let me look at it.  Sometimes I wonder if she’s afraid she’ll find out the secret it holds.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not as scared of it myself.

“Will you take me home?” she asks two days after meeting the Ponds.  “Take me home please.”

“Fine.” My reply is short.

She sniggers suddenly.  “I didn’t mean like that, Doctor.” She says, joining me by the TARDIS console.  “Unless you want me to go?”

“No!”

“Okay, good.”

“Why do you want to go home though?”

“There’s this box of crap that I took from the orphanage with me once I turned eighteen.  I never really looked into it.  May be there’s something in there that will help translate this.” She says, tapping on the locket hidden under her cream and red lace dress.

“Do you know what’s in the box?”

“Not much.  Some paperwork and my birth certificate, stuff like that.  But I figure it can’t hurt to look.”

So we set out for Ollie’s apartment in Edinburgh near Haymarket.  The flat she shared with another girl from the orphanage was tiny and felt even more cramped since there were things everywhere in places it shouldn’t be.  Books overflowing the book shelf now littered the floor at its feet.  A microwave sat beside the living room TV and two bikes took up most of the room in the long narrow corridor.

“Mind the clutter.” Ollie said absent minded, leading the way to her room towards the back of the flat.

Three walls of the room were painted a pale sand colour whilst the wall her bed stood pressed against was blue.  TARDIS blue in fact.  She rolled her eyes at me when I smiled at the blue wall.  Her furniture was all oak but mismatched, hand-me-downs or bought from thrift stores on the cheap.

A vanity table with a large mirror stood to the right of the door as we entered.  It was tidily littered with cosmetics and creams as well as various hair products and other feminine… things.  Ollie walked past the bed and mirror, heading straight for the tall wardrobe where she pulled out a regular cardboard box from beneath some shoe boxes.

“Hmm…” she sighed.  “Nothing.”

“Might I take a look?”

“Sure, I’m just going to see if Shiv is about.”

“Shiv?” I asked.  “What’s a Shiv?”

“Shiv’s not a what but a who.  It’s short for Siobhan, my flatmate.  Won’t be a minute.”

There really was nothing useful in Olly’s orphanage box.  A birth certificate with a potentially made up birthday, the doll Amelia gave her, some trinkets and ticket stubs but not much else.  I gave up looking through the box and looked for other clues in her room that might help her.

Her bed was neatly made, lavender coloured satin sheets and a few throw pillows with dark iron foot and headboard.  The mirror on the vanity table was framed with lots of pictures of Olivia and her friends attached to it with tape or blue-tac. The ones near the top were clearly the more recent images as the further down the mirror the younger she began to look.  Near the bottom there were a few rare snapshots as the kid we met at the orphanage.  But the very last one at the bottom-most part of the mirrors’ frame was a picture of her as a baby.