Chapter 12: I didn’t do what David Tennant told me to do, and someone is going to die because of it

‘Hey, lass,’ said Freddie Flintoff in his soft, Lancashire accent, his cornflower blue eyes bearing gently down on me. ‘You look knackered. You need a seat. You’ve had a hell of a day.’ He took my shoulder gently in his huge right hand and guided me out of the lobby and into an astonishingly bright room. David Tennant had told me I had to go home and not speak to anyone at all, but I had been dragged here by my boss, so it wasn’t my fault.

I sat numbly in a black leather armchair while a selection of mostly famous faces arranged themselves around me. They were trying not to stare, but I felt like the first worm surrounded by a group of very polite early birds deciding who should go first. ‘Stop staring at her, you pelicans!’ said Kylie Minogue, shaking her head, and then looking at me. ‘They’ve got no manners. Do you want some tea? I put the kettle on five minutes ago?’ I nodded, and she skipped out of the room, saying, as she went, ‘Don’t frighten her, you great galahs.’

‘Er, yes, of course,’ said Sir Trevor McDonald gruffly. ‘Sorry about that. I appreciate it must be intimidating. When we heard about what happened, we felt it would be best to know that there are people on your side in all this. David Tennant did explain?’

‘He started to,’ I said. ‘But I am still very confused.’

‘Naturally,’ said a young, smooth man, who was one of the ones I didn’t recognise. ‘What did he tell you?’

‘I hardly know. That history was a battle between good and evil, between angels and demons, and that I was the Chosen One, and I am on the side of the angels. It made no sense.’
They looked at each other. ‘Was Tennant with anyone?’ asked the smooth man. The room I was in must have been forty metres along each side. It was a corner, windows on two sides, high up in Centrepoint. It didn’t seem like the kind of place anyone lived, but it didn’t seem like an office either. It was more like a private club. I still hadn’t answered the smooth man’s question. David Tennant had been very emphatic that I must not tell anyone about Miss Smallbone, who had been with him, and who he said would find me and tell me what to do next. But that had been before my lawyer and boss, Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, had lost the police and brought me here. I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I shook my head.

Sir Connaught said, ‘Good girl. Even if The Teacher was with him, that’s something we don’t need to know.’

‘But…’ started the smooth man.

‘The Teacher might be real, might be a myth, might be any of us. But whoever he is…’

‘Or she,’ said Davina Mccall.

‘Of course, old sausage. Whoever he or she is, his or her security is that no one knows.’
The others nodded. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Is this a penthouse?’ I ventured.

‘No,’ said the smooth man. ‘That would be too obvious. This is a couple of floors down. No one knows it’s here, apart from us.’

‘I’m glad it’s not all famous people here,’ I said to the smooth man. There was some stifled giggling and I knew I’d said something wrong.

‘He’s David Mitchell, the novelist,’ said Kylie Minogue, bringing me a mug of tea. ‘He hates it that no one recognises him, and especially now that there’s this other David Mitchell, the comedian, who everyone does recognise.’

‘I assumed that David Mitchell the comedian wrote the novels,’ I said. ‘He seems so clever on the telly.’

Kylie broke into a peal of laughter as David Mitchell the novelist sulked. ‘Loads of people think that. It’s really funny.’

‘Sorry, lads and lasses,’ said Freddie Flintoff. ‘Much as I’m enjoying t’banter, I’ve got a Twenty20 international cricket match to play at t’Oval. Can we get a move on?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Sir Trevor McDonald. ‘Seventy million years ago, in a distant galaxy, there was a war so terrible you cannot imagine. It lasted five million years, and it destroyed the planet of Traxltl, a place so beautiful you cannot imagine it. The energies unleashed were also so terrible you cannot imagine them, and the few survivors were flung by a wave of power across space and landed up on earth of all places, having suffered in ways that are so terrible you cannot imagine what they were.’

‘You really are a wizard with words, Trevor,’ said David Mitchell the novelist, still sulking.

‘Harrumph’ grunted McDonald. ‘Well, We landed on earth in this huge explosion of energy, which darkened the sky for hundreds of years and destroyed the dinosaurs, and we have been here ever since. We are immortal,’ he added, ‘like the elves in Lord of the Rings.’

‘No, Trevor!’ said David Mitchell with a pained expression. ‘If you’re going to use contemporary references, you have to get them right!’

‘The elves do live forever, don’t they?’ muttered the newsreader, mutinously.

‘Yes, but they don’t get reborn in new bodies when they die?’

‘What? They just stay looking the same?’ He asked. I nodded. ‘Harrumph. Anyway…’

‘So you’re not really angels?’

‘It’s tricky trying to explain what we are. Some of us have come to love the earth, and we seek to protect it. Others, our enemies, who are the baddies, basically, by any rational standard, are bent on dominating everything.’

‘Do you have special powers?’

‘That’s the thing. We are not stronger or cleverer than humans. But, like I say, if we are killed, we are instantly reborn in another body. We can only be truly killed by having our heads cut off with the sword of Zsarkon, which David Tennant has.’

‘So, Gavin…’ I began.

‘Yes. Your husband won’t trouble you again. And the other way we can be killed is by being thrown into a black hole. But even though we have no superpowers, so-called, we have always been present in the great human struggles, fighting the Demons. We were Churchill and Wellington against Hitler and Napoleon, and so on. We have been involved in all the big conspiracies, like JFK, et cetera. Do you see?’

‘It’s all so surprising,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, pet,’ said Freddie Flintoff. ‘We’re here to protect you. No one know about us, or this place. Only us. You’re completely safe.’ He sounded as if he was trying to persuade himself.

CRASH! Everything juddered and we all fell to the floor apart from Freddie Flintoff, who looked angrily around him. Everyone flashed significant, horrified looks at everyone else.

‘So,’ said Trevor McDonald grimly. ‘David Tennant was right. The prophecy is true. We have a traitor in our midst!’

‘Or someone followed you,’ said David Mitchell the novelist to me and Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson. ‘And now we have to fight to save her life.’ I swallowed guiltily.