Samantha Stewart

It's odd how even the most bizarre things become routine, given enough time.

As dusk falls, she and Jenny make sure the blackout curtains are properly pulled over all of the windows, and that there's fresh candles in their holders - the sirens have sounded almost every night for the last few weeks, and they learned quickly that there's nothing quite so awkward as stumbling about in the dark in your own house while the world sounds like it's ending outside.  

The evening passes fairly quietly - they both have darning and patching to do, and the radio provides distraction with music and comedy. They gossip about their landlady and her turtle, about strangers in town, about the rich American who has been touring the area. Jenny practices on the piano, while Sam curls up with a good book.

It's nothing special.

It's getting cooler every evening, so they go to bed early, both to hopefully catch enough sleep before the sirens begin again, and to save a little money to perhaps splurge later. Girls can dream, right?

Sam's woken from a perfectly lovely dream (something about having as much food as she could possibly eat and being warm)  by a hand on her shoulder, shaking her hard.

"Sam! Sam, wake up! We have to go down to the cellar!" The voice is accompanied by the eerie, annoying wail of the air-raid siren, and Sam groans in heart-felt frustration.

"Can't we just tell Jerry to come back later?" She gripes at Jenny, who looks frazzled in her nightgown, and doesn't get a reply other than a huff of frustration at her lack of urgency. The flickering light of Jenny's lit candle fades away as Jenny hurries out of the room, evidently abandoning Sam to her fate if she's so determined not to get up.

Sam sighs. The floor is going to be absolutely frigid and she just knows that going to work later on in the more proper morning hours is going to be dreadful. Still, she'd better get up and -

There's a crash, a thunderous burst of noise with a high-pitched agonized scream over top of it that jack-knifes Sam up from her reluctant sprawl, and there isn't time to think before the window is blasted in and the world starts to burn down around her ears.

Despite everything, she pulls up next to the kerb bang on time. There's a kindly-looking older Sergeant behind the desk who waves her through once she explains why she's here, though he looks amused at her salute. He shows her to the proper door, and abandons her there to her own devices.

There's a heavy, official-looking plaque just above her eye-level just trying to be intimidating, but she squares her shoulders and knocks smartly anyway. The mumbled 'come in' she gets isn't encouraging, but it has to be better than being back in the MTC, right? Cautiously she opens the door and peers inside.

"Chief Superintendent Foyle?" She asks, and at his affirmative sounds a tiny bit poleaxed. Sam does her best to ignore this too, and takes her place front and center, offering another sharp salute. He doesn't look amused. He looks flabbergasted.

"I've been assigned as your new driver." She informs him with her cheeriest smile.

".... Oh." That look just isn't going away. "Stewart?"

"Samantha Stewart, sir. You can call me Sam." She assures him, but somehow he fails to look assured.
Instead he rises, grabbing his hat and coat as he passes her, and she falls in hopefully.

"Um. I-I was hoping to be assigned to the WAAF, but I ended up in the MTC." She informs him, trying to reassure him of... well. Something. "The mechanized transport corp. I was in the the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but then they said they were looking for someone with knowledge of the South Downs."

"And... you have knowledge of the South Downs?"

"Oh yes - I was born in Lyminster, just outside Arundel, my father is actually the vicar at St Stephens, do you know it?" He demurs, and she plows ahead, too full of nerves to listen to that tiny voice of good judgment that says she really ought to be silent just about now. "No. No, I don't suppose there's any reason why you should, anyway, it's not much fun being a vicar's daughter, being on your best behavior all the time. Personally I couldn't wait for the war to come along, it's a chance to get out."

That... sounded a bit daft, actually.

"It's... very unusual for a ranking officer to be assigned a driver from outside the force." Foyle observes, and she's not entirely sure what to say to that... not that she can't find anything to say anyway.

"Yes, yes that's what I said, but they told me they couldn't get anyone else, so here I am!" He heads for the car without another word, leaving her to trail behind. __________________________________________________________________________

She tries to find out what he's working on during the drive out to the docks, show an interest in her new job, and nearly gets her head bitten off for her troubles. The docks are practically deserted when they get there, and he abandons the car and her to go wandering out amongst the buildings without a word of explanation. She expects her new job is going to be terribly dull, at this rate.

She first checks over the interior of the car - checks the mirrors, shines the buttons, dusts off the dash. And then she's still bored and nothing is happening, so she gets out of the car, and industriously shines the side mirrors, and checks the headlamps.

And then she hears it, the sound of footsteps, running footsteps in the gravel. A man tears around the corner of a nearby building, looking back towards where Foyle had wandered off to as if the very hounds of hell were after him, and... well.

That's a bit suspicious, isn't it?

It's practically her duty to stop him, and he isn't really looking where he's going. It's easy as anything to wallop him across the face with the lid of a nearby trash bin, and it makes the most satisfying ringing sound. The man collapses into the loose gravel, closely followed by the dented lid, just as Foyle rounds the corner.

They eye each other for a long moment.

"Sam?"

"Yes sir?" She's going back to the MTC tonight, isn't she? He straightens his tie, which had come loose in the chase.

"Thank you." And just like that, he wanders off back to the car. Well. Maybe this new assignment won't be so bad after all.
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It is day two of her great police adventure, and she thinks she's getting the hang of it. She has to practically bite her tongue to avoid asking questions as she drives, but it's worth it - she hasn't had her head bit off today. Today he wants to go to a pub, which... well. It's still not terribly interesting. Two days on the job and not a single gruesomely murdered body.

"Um... may I come in? I need to powder my nose." Sam asks as she parks the car. He doesn't say no (mostly because she doesn't give him the chance, she really does need to go), so she actually beats him inside the tavern by a mile.

She's just finishing up when a sound she has only heard in practice echos through the building - the eerie wail of an air raid siren. Sam abandons decorum to dash through the pub like a startled hare to find Foyle.

"Sir! It has to be a false alarm, hasn't it?" She practically demands, but he's not looking at her - no one is looking at her, they're all looking up, as if they can see through the timbered ceiling to spot what earned that horrid sound.

For a moment all is silence except for the constant wail of the alarm... and then other sounds break in. Panicked screams. The faint roar of an engine - and then a piercing whistle unlike anything she's ever heard in her life. There's arms pushing her down, and Foyle's voice in her ear telling her to get down, and then a horrendous rush of noise that swallows the world whole.