Second paragraph of third chapter:
She was lying in a hospital bed, which admittedly came as no great surprise. On waking, Anne had thought she’d recognised the particular combination of not-too-comfortable mattress and highly starched linen, which only came with institutional bedding; the old-fashioned brushed nylon nightie she was wearing was something of a giveaway, too. She was not in a ward, however, but a private room – and a quite recently decorated one at that, judging by the faint smell of fresh paint lingering beneath the sharp tang of disinfectant. To her left was a small wooden bedside cabinet, on which was placed a carafe of water, a somewhat ‘retro’ (Anne hated that word!) Sony Digimatic digital clock, displaying the time of 10:23, and a hideously large bouquet of red-orange roses in a vase. To her right there was a solitary modern-style armchair upholstered in cream leather-effect vinyl, and a window gave her a view of what looked like a sort of urban green or common, over the far side of which stood a Victorian gothic church with a square tower. Her immediate surroundings seemed quiet, the muffled sound of human voices and movement coming distantly from elsewhere in the building, while outside she could just about discern the steady rumble of traffic, albeit deadened by the thick glass of the window.
The next in the Lethbridge-Stewart series of spinoff novels, and the second in the Laughing Gnome sub-series. The author wrote a good short story in one of the earlier collections.
I have generally enjoyed this whole sequence, and was a bit dismayed when I rather bounced off the previous installment, Scary Monsters; but I’m glad to say that order has been restored, and I very much enjoyed this rewriting of what is already alternative history, where the Brigadier and Anne Travers find themselves projected back in time to the events of The Web of Fear, with a danger that Doctor Who continuity history could go off the rails. You can get it here.
