Rose Tyler's New Life

Chapter 26

Mickey didn't know what had happened to him. He had suddenly found himself in Leeds running a small office in one of the suburbs with a whole history behind him and he didn't know how it had happened. It started slowly, certain memories creeping through like suddenly remembering his old Gran and places that weren't familiar.

He didn't know that Torchwood had set everything up for him, given him a new background story, going back all his adult life.

Then he'd been on the internet one day, looking at the news and came across a small town paper in Dorset and seen the pictures of a Police Detective Inspector who had just got engaged to a young woman from out of town who ran a shop there. The announcement came with a half page story about the couple, who had met in the town after Detective Inspector Alec Hardy had been there for the best part of a year and the woman had been there just over three months and they had met at her shop. It went on to say the woman, a Miss Rose Tyler, was the step-daughter of a well known London businessman who had married her mother just over eight years ago and the Inspector was the Detective who had solved the murder of a young boy in the town last year. One picture showed the couple holding hands and showing off her engagement ring.

Something about the story stuck in the back of his mind. He was sure he had seen the woman somewhere before but she was from London and he'd never heard of the town, Broadchurch so where had he come across her? He thought more about her, certain he'd known her in the past. The couple had looked happy in the pictures and made Mickey think how miserable he was, no girlfriend or even friends and a dead-end job solving petty problems of anyone who could afford his measly fee who wanted someone following or to settle a domestic problem. Still, somehow he was making ends meet and surviving courtesy of Torchwood which was unbeknown to him. He remembered arriving in Leeds but was there trying to forget his past.

He woke up a few days after seeing the article and it was like he'd been hit with a ten tonne truck. Rose Tyler. He knew that name. Then 'The Powell Estate' suddenly popped into his mind for some strange reason so he looked it up and found it had been a council estate in London but had been knocked down eight years ago.

Other names and places started to emerge, Hendricks Department Store, walking plastic dummies, green blobby creatures, bats of the flying variety, Madame Du Pompadour, Cybermen. He stopped at the name of Cyberman, those metal creatures that a long time ago had tried to take over and convert people in London and other places and had visions of other small, rounder metal creatures and a battle going on inside a building and Zeppelins.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he did a search for this Rose Tyler and got redirected to something called Torchwood so he did one for this Alec Hardy and got the same. "Must be some glitch on the internet," he thought. He decided he would take a few days off and go visit Broadchurch and see this Powell Estate and see if he could remember who this Rose Tyler was, maybe seeing her would jog his memory. He didn't know his searches had created an alert and someone would be watching out for him.

So he drove down to London, seeing a large space where tower blocks had once been and new houses and it didn't ring any bells. He drove around for a while thinking he could either drive straight down to Broadchurch or stay the night. He chose a cheap hotel and thought it better to drive down the following day, Saturday.

He arrived in Broadchurch and booked into a hotel on the main street and thought it strange that the woman at the reception desk said, "Hello, Mr Smith, back again?" and dismissed it thinking she had mistaken him for someone else. He walked across to the local newspaper office and asked if they had a copy of the paper announcing the engagement of Rose Tyler and Alec Hardy, saying he was a friend from out of town. He got a copy and sat in the corner of the Tourist Information Office and a woman came over to him. He asked her if she knew the couple and she said only that he was a Police Detective and she ran a picture gallery down the road and told him where it was. He walked down and found the shop only to see a woman and a young girl inside and went in and enquired about Rose Tyler, saying again he was a friend of hers. The woman said she no longer worked on Saturday's and she was probably at home with her fiancé as her family had just arrived from London.