NINETEEN
The sodium glare from the streetlights cast a jaundiced pall across the sodden T-junction. Owen sat listening to the howl of the wind and the battering percussion of rain above the Boxter, and wondering if the roof latch would hold. No wonder he’d got a deal on the car. Too good to be true at 18K, even with 40,000 miles and schlepping all the way out to Colchester for it. He should have bought the Honda S2000, like he’d first thought. But he’d gone for style and speed, so now he found that the windstop on this 1997 model Boxter didn’t hook properly and ended up rattling.
And windstop was what he needed right now. The storm outside buffeted the car, and rain lashed the windscreen until it was awash. Owen flicked on the wipers. They swiped the water aside so that he could peer through the glass at Megan’s place across the road. Her maisonette was the top floor, up an L-shaped flight of steps at the gable-end of the house. Two windows were visible. One was unlit, with opaque glass. The other was much wider, bold red curtains illuminated. He thought he saw a shadow at one point, but through the downpour it was hard to be sure. The window was partly obscured by a large plane tree, that must have been planted by a pessimistic urban planner who’d not expected the houses to still be there once the tree had reached its final size.
He’d sat here for ten minutes already, kidding himself that he was just waiting for the rainstorm to ease off, just rehearsing what he was going to say, devising the best and most logical explanation for Megan. In reality he felt like he was a student again, the first time he’d arranged to meet her. Then, he’d stood outside the Angus halls of residence, uncertain, nervous.
She’d made all the running in the refectory earlier that day, and he’d hardly believed his luck in persuading her to go out that evening. Actually, she’d persuaded him to persuade her, he’d work out afterwards. And thus, his fresher insecurities fuelled, he’d worried about everything from then on – was he wearing the right T-shirt, was he heading for the right room in the hall, would he pronounce her name right, should he rehearse his line or would that sound too rehearsed, had he chosen the right film, was she allergic to Chinese food…
Another wild gust rocked the Porsche. The sallow glow of the streetlight revealed where he’d been tapping his fingertips. He noticed with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance that it looked like he’d been doodling in the dust on the dashboard. Did that shape look like a heart? Not what he’d intended, at any rate. And what would Megan think if he ended up giving her a lift somewhere later and she saw it? He scuffed over the doodle with his palm. The result was a great smeared patch in the dust that somehow made the dashboard look even grubbier. Owen tugged a cuff up over the heel of his hand, and swiped over it. That looked better, at least. But now he’d got a tidemark of greyish dust over his left sleeve.
He blew an exasperated sigh, leaned back against the head restraint, and looked around the rest of the Porsche. Under his coat, the passenger seat had three old crisp packets on it, one only half-finished. Beside them was a bent plastic teaspoon with an uneaten raspberry yoghurt that he’d grabbed off his desk at the Hub thinking he might finish it on the way out. He slipped off his seat belt to look in the footwell, where he found bits of gravel, three Post-it notes containing grid references, plus a couple of forgotten AA batteries. Probably dead, but he stuffed them in his jacket pocket just in case.
He was experimenting with doing the same with the crisp packets when he thought: that’s just stupid. He’s arranged to see her for the first time in over five years, and he’s bringing her a pocketful of empty crisp packets and a raspberry yoghurt. He should have stopped off to get her flowers. Roses, she liked roses, didn’t she? Or was that too cheesy? A bottle of wine, at least. But he’d never been very good on vintages, always went for the third least expensive bottle in Threshers. Megan used to tease him about it, because she’d been to a wine appreciation group at Uni and could tell her Merlot from her Camembert. He recalled little about it now, except stuff about macerating the must, and how cross Megan got when he joked about ‘length’.
Owen unlocked the glove compartment. The light flicked on, and he could see the dull sheen of the Bekaran tool. That was a better idea. Never mind the wine and roses. The alien device felt cool in his palm as he slipped it into his jacket pocket. He shoved the crisp packets and the plastic spoon into the compartment, and shut it.
He hadn’t changed before leaving the Hub, and was still in his Torchwood standard: black jacket, dark trousers and shirt. Probably ideal for getting knocked down in the dark by a careless driver racing through Whitchurch on his way home to Cyncoed. Owen hadn’t driven home for different clothes either, because that would have delayed him getting to Megan. So it seemed daft to sit here, just peering up at her room. He wasn’t that uncertain undergraduate now, no way. He certainly hadn’t been that awkward kid any more when he and Megan had split up. When he’d left her.
He struggled into his coat, determined not to get out of the car before putting it on because he knew he’d be drenched within seconds. The maisonette was thirty metres away. Owen popped the car door, levered himself out, double locked the Boxter with a flick of his wrist. The wind and rain formed an almost physical barrier as he ran for the cover of the tree. He huddled against the trunk, his feet straddling where the tree’s roots had cracked the pavement. Then he scurried over to the L-shaped steps.
The house end offered protection from the worst of the storm, and so despite the rain he took the steps slowly, one by one. At the top, he pressed the doorbell, a button indicated by a small backlit circle. There was a ‘ding’, and then a prolonged hum as the button refused to pop back out. Owen pressed it again, to no effect. He slapped at it with his palm. He was whacking it with the heel of his clenched fist when the door opened, light spilled out all around him, and Megan stood in the doorway studying him. Appraising him.
‘No dong,’ he said to her apologetically. He pointed to the doorbell, which was still buzzing furiously.
She broke into her familiar chuckle. ‘I hope you don’t say that to all the girls.’ She flicked at the doorbell with her fingernail, and the button popped back out again.
Owen looked at her for a few seconds that lasted forever. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’ he asked.
Megan stepped aside and held the door open. ‘What are you, some kind of vampire?’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ said Owen as she beckoned him in. ‘I mean it.’
Megan told him to remove his wet shoes and, when she saw his socks, those too. She peeled off his sopping coat to drape on a wall-hanging peg, before making him stand barefoot on the cold linoleum while she went to fetch him something to dry his hair.
He watched her disappear through the nearest doorway, her thin cardigan flapping behind her. Megan was still as slim as he remembered, accentuated by her Wrangler jeans. He discovered the raspberry yoghurt in his jacket pocket, so he set it down beside a pile of junk mail on a small table by the door.
Megan’s voice echoed from the little bathroom, telling him how he would have to take her as he found her and that she’d barely had time to tidy up her paperwork, let alone run a Hoover around the place. Owen thought about how he’d been imagining her South Wales accent all the time they’d been talking in the Second Reality game, and now that he could hear it for real it was exactly as he remembered it. He closed his eyes, and imagined himself back in their Balham flat, calling from one side to the other as they caught up on the events of their day at the university.
When he opened them again, she was waggling a green crotchet-edged hand towel at him. ‘Cleanest one I’ve got, I’m afraid.’ She watched him towel his hair for a bit. ‘I’ll put the kettle on now you’re here. Go on through. Thank you for the yoghurt.’ She waved in the opposite direction as she disappeared into an unseen kitchen on the right.
Owen half-stepped into the bedroom. Big double bed with a pink paisley-patterned duvet, matching pillows. Picture of a piano in a sunlit room on the wall above. Piles of paperwork on one bedside table, just a simple lamp on another. A square wicker laundry basket stuffed so full that its hinged lid poked up.
He padded straight out again, barefoot, and into the room she’d meant. The lounge-diner was evidently the largest room in the maisonette, but felt cramped because of the amount of stuff crammed into it. He could smell the remains of a Chinese meal, not quite disguised by floral air freshener. A paper globe shade in the centre of the ceiling was unlit, but two art deco lamps on opposite walls cast a warm glow across the room
On the outer wall, pushed up near the window, a gate-leg dining table was unfolded and covered with a cream damask tablecloth. Four fabric-covered chairs, blue with no arms, were pressed up against three sides.
A small portable with a circular aerial sat in one corner. Owen noted that it made a little ‘crack’ noise that suggested the plastic case was cooling down because it had only just been switched off. The rest of the room was dominated by a battered leather sofa that dwarfed a tiny glass-topped wicker coffee table, and a crumpled green armchair so huge that he couldn’t work out how it could originally have been brought into the room. He saw his own reflection wrinkling its nose in an octagonal mirror above the sofa.
He dropped into the green armchair. It faced the TV, and he wondered if it was Megan’s regular seat. So he got up again and walked over to the dining table. In front of one of the blue chairs were perched a dusty flat-screen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse. The computer itself was tucked under the table. ‘This where you connect to the game?’ Owen called over his shoulder into the room, in the expectation Megan would hear him in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out her shouted reply. He flicked through a nearby magazine rack – Radio Times, Guardian, pages torn from the BMJ. ‘Can’t tell if you live here on your own or not,’ he added in his normal voice.
‘Mind your own bloody business,’ Megan retorted mildly.
While he’d been looking at the magazines, she had walked into the room behind him. She carried a circular tray that held an opened bottle and two large wine glasses. She’d removed her thin cardigan, and the ribbed cream top she wore accentuated her slender arms and the roundness of her breasts. He pretended to look at her hair instead. ‘You’ve cut it a lot shorter. Than I remember, I mean.’
‘Easier for A&E.’
‘And I like your necklace.’
‘Do sit down, Owen, I don’t charge people to use the furniture.’
He perched on the sofa. The leather cushion creaked. Megan set the tray down on the glass-topped table. She handed him a little white and yellow item that was also on the tray. ‘Look what I have in my kitchen,’ she said.
He examined the object. It was a fridge magnet in the shape of a fried egg, sunny side up. ‘Egg magnet,’ he grinned.
‘I thought you’d come to talk about the online game,’ Megan said. ‘But all this interest in my living arrangements… I’m starting to think you’re just after a shag for old times’ sake. Don’t get your hopes up, I changed my mind. About the tea. Thought you’d like a glass of wine, especially if you’ve had a hard day at the office. Assuming you’re at an office. Are you at an office? Oh… but you’re driving… I suppose one would be all right. I could pour you half a glass.’ She was leaning over the table in front of him, watching him smile in recognition. ‘I’m rambling on, aren’t I? Sorry.’
Just as in the game earlier, he recognised her stream of consciousness explain-while-I’m-thinking-aloud manner. ‘I haven’t come for a sympathy shag, no. You and I were over a long time ago.’
‘You count the days, I imagine.’
‘Don’t you?’ he joked, and was a little surprised when her neck flushed. He recognised that reaction, too. ‘I’ve had a very shitty day,’ he continued quickly, ‘and I’d love a glass of… whatever that is.’
She glugged out half a glass for him, more. ‘Chateau La Fleur Chambeau 2004.’
‘French.’
‘Well done, Clouseau. It’s a wine from Lussac Saint-émilion. It’s very similar to what you’d get from the more illustrious Saint-Emilion and Pomerol appellations. But it’s cheaper, of course. Have you educated your palate since we…’ She paused awkwardly. Poured herself a glass, and then breathed in the aroma. ‘Are you more discriminating, or am I wasting this very fine bottle on you?’
Owen smiled. ‘I remember how you tried to convince me to become an… oenophile? Was that the word?’
She sat beside him on the sofa. ‘And I remember you thought that was a sexual practice.’
‘There were a lot of wankers in your wine club.’ He chinked his glass against hers.
‘Bloody cheek. And don’t just swig it down. Like this, remember?’ Megan swirled the wine around her glass and inhaled the aroma. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you came empty-handed tonight.’ She narrowed her eyes, and studied him a bit more closely. ‘Are those biscuit crumbs on your jacket sleeve? Or bits of old crisps? In fact, have you made any kind of effort this evening to…’
Her voice trailed off as she saw something else.
‘Is that a gun in your pocket, Owen?’
Owen shifted awkwardly on the sofa, straightened his jacket and trousers. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
Megan looked like she couldn’t decide whether to get up or to remain seated. She fidgeted with her glass. She set it down on the glass table-top. Changed her mind and transferred it to the tray. Twisted her necklace between her long, pale fingers. ‘Oh,’ she said eventually. ‘Oh God, you’re a gangster. A gangster with a gun. In my living room.’ She offered him a sort of desperate half-smile that seemed to beg him to contradict her. To reassure her. To say she was overreacting.
Owen listened to the sound of the rain battering the window for a while, thinking how best to go on. He took a gulp at the Chateau La Fleur.
‘I work for Torchwood,’ he began.
The second glass was better than the first, Owen decided. He’d helped himself, if only to punctuate his explanation with a pause to do something else.
He’d tried to explain, but his rehearsed routine from the car journey here had melted away into a mishmash of false starts and goings back and repetition. Megan had slowly relaxed into the sofa, bringing her legs up onto the cushion and cradling her glass lightly in both hands. He tried to decipher her expression, just as he had when they had lived together. In Balham, decoding her unspoken mood had been a different matter, the consequences less significant. In their kitchen as they cooked, could he escape some chore? In their hallway as he arrived back from university, had she caught him out in a small untruth? In their bedroom, was she expecting him to have noticed a change she’d made to the flat, her clothes, her hair? After making love, was she trying not to blurt out again that she loved him?
Here in her lonely, draughty maisonette, he watched her face for the familiar clues that he’d barely forgotten over the years. She couldn’t quite hold his gaze, affecting to study his jacket, or picking at crumbs on his trouser leg. Finally, she said in a quiet, faintly mocking voice: ‘So, you’re like Customs and Excise for aliens. You’re the space police?’
‘Police?’ Owen snorted, and immediately regretted the dismissive sound he’d made. ‘I mean, all that process and procedure and paperwork just get in the way.’
‘So you’re outside the law.’
‘You sound like Gwen. No, not that either. We’re… tangential to it.’ He rubbed pensively at his forehead. ‘It all seemed so much easier when Jack explained it to me that first time.’
‘Who’s Gwen? Your girlfriend?’
Owen wanted to snort again, but decided not to. ‘Hardly. Not my type. Think I’d need to be a bit desperate.’ He thought about Jack gripping Gwen’s waist as they’d risen towards the Hub exit. ‘New girl at work. I’m sure she’s not interested.’
‘And Jack?’
‘Guy who hired me.’
‘Your boss?’
‘We’re more of a team…’ The conversation was slipping away from him. ‘Thing is, Megan, I think you’d be interested in Torchwood. I think you’d be right for us.’ Megan was scratching idly at another crumb on his knee, so he grasped her hand. ‘I know you would.’
‘Is that the wine talking?’
‘It’s my instinct talking.’
Megan sat up straight, her eyes alive with anger. ‘Oh, where have I heard that before? No, don’t interrupt me, don’t you dare interrupt!’ She wasn’t having any difficulty meeting his gaze now. ‘It was your instinct that you couldn’t stay in London, wasn’t it? It was your instinct that you couldn’t be cooped up, or tied down. You men, you young SHOs, you’re all the f*cking same. Fixing people up is like… like… building that coffee table. You follow the instructions, you put tab A into slot B, and they’re done. The people in your life can’t be put together so easily when they’re broken. When you break them.’ She was shouting now, enough to drown out the storm at the window.
He remembered. He hadn’t known what he wanted back then. He’d only known what he didn’t want. The weekly shop at Tesco. The visits to her sister in Penarth. The trips to Croydon Ikea, to buy furniture for the flat. Stuff that might do for when they got a bigger place together, she’d said. Flatpack furniture he could bear, just about. But he hadn’t been ready for a follow-the-leaflet life with Megan. He’d escaped by making a feeble excuse, because he could. He was able to walk away from it, away from her. And he hadn’t looked back as he left to see how much she was going to miss him.
‘Your f*cking instinct was a lot of good for us, wasn’t it?’ Megan concluded, more quietly. ‘I thought you were joking when you first talked about how you’d always wanted to travel. Remember? You’d met a Kiwi at a gig in Battersea. That girl Esther that I said you were obsessed by, and oh no, you said, she was just so different, so fascinating. And we discussed whether New Zealand was as far away as you could get.’
Owen smiled. ‘Australia. We were in Hyde Park, August Bank Holiday, and it was pissing down. And we decided that you can’t get further away than Australia.’
She made an exasperated sound at him. ‘You might as well have been in Australia after we split up. After you left.’
‘I didn’t think you’d want a postcard,’ he replied. No, that sounded too hard, too dismissive. ‘It was all bullshit, you’re right. I didn’t get as far as Sydney. Not much further than Sidcup, come to think of it.’
‘Sidcup? So much for “I want to be the real me”, Owen. Remember? That was your piss-poor excuse for running away.’ Megan’s started to chuckle at this, and her head bobbed up and down. Owen grinned too, until he saw that her face was starting to crumple. She was sucking in little sudden breaths, her eyes squeezed tight, and the laughter was turning into sobs. He set down his glass immediately, and reached for her. She mumbled an incoherent sound, and waved him away. He tried once more, and she gestured again. Got up and left Owen alone in the room.
After a few seconds, he followed her out. Off to his right, her bedroom door snapped shut with a final click. ‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered under his breath. Well, his recruitment effort was going right down the crapper. Which reminded him… the sound of the rain seemed to be having an effect on him.
He had a languorous pee in the little bathroom. He lifted the lid, tried not to splash around the edge of the ugly avocado-coloured bowl, and flushed. There was no soap on the basin, so he looked in the little mirror-fronted cabinet above. Found a fresh bar next to a packet of triphasic contraceptives
– a familiar combination of ethinyloestradiol and levonorgestrel. As he rinsed his hands, he noted there was just one bath towel. A solitary splayed toothbrush. No evidence of aftershave in the cabinet or on the windowsill.
The bedroom door was still shut when he came out. Owen half-considered knocking. He even put his ear to the jamb in case he could hear anything, but the noise of the rain from the front door drowned out anything else. So he was surprised to find Megan was sitting on the sofa again as he returned to the living room. She’d brought through a small box of tissues. Her eyes were still reddened, but she had stopped crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Just now?’ she asked. ‘Or back in Balham.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I heard you rummaging about in the bathroom cabinet,’ she said. ‘Maybe you are like the police, after all.’
Owen walked over to the dining table, aware that he didn’t want to crowd her. ‘This isn’t an investigation, Megan. And before you say it again, it’s not just an attempt to get a shag for old times’ sake.’
‘Not just an attempt..?’ she asked.
‘Be serious. I do want you to join us in Torchwood.’ Her face was blank now, or wary at best. Owen tapped the computer screen with his finger. ‘I recognised you in Second Reality after you used a few familiar phrases. You know, “safe of taxis”, that kind of stuff. But even before that, I recognised something else. You just loved all those confrontations and crazy monsters and weird shit. Be honest, it’s a hell of a lot more fun than A&E.’
He watched her reaction now. Moved across to the sofa and sat down beside her again. ‘So imagine, Megan, having that excitement for real. Every day with Torchwood. That’s what I did. That’s what I do. Jack brought me in from my former life as an SHO. Rescued me.’ He held out his hands in an open gesture. ‘This is the real me.’
Megan stared right into his eyes, like she’d made a decision. ‘Come on! I’m sitting here not sure whether to throw you out or call you a psychiatrist. What happened to you, Owen?’
‘So why aren’t you throwing me out then,’ he insisted, ‘right now? Or why aren’t you making some excuse about how you’ve got another date to go to tonight, or you’re due back on shift, or you have to feed the neighbour’s cat…?’
‘My shift does start soon. About an hour and a half…’
Owen leaned closer to her. ‘And here I am. Still. Why? What are you thinking? What suddenly started to make sense?’
Megan pulled her hand away from him, uncertain. The window panes across the room rattled in the violence of the storm outside. ‘Listen to that racket,’ she said. ‘Before you got here, they were saying on Wales Today that this is the worst flooding Cardiff’s ever had. Since records began. But Ramsay, one of the other SHOs at the Royal, he comes in from near Bargoed. And they’ve had nothing up there. River’s running a bit higher near him, that’s all. Driving in, he said, it was like hitting a wall of water. How can that be?’
Owen said nothing. Urged her on with his eyes.
‘That thing you said when you arrived,’ she continued. ‘The vampire thing. I thought you were joking. But you were serious, weren’t you? I mean, really serious.’
He smiled, nodded at her.
She stared at him. ‘No, this can’t make sense! You’re actually offering me a job with this Torchwood. “Save the world from alien infestation. Competitive salary, plus dental”?’
Now he grinned at her. He slipped the Bekaran tool from his pocket. By twisting the central section, he folded it out to display a screen as wide as a pocket calculator. ‘State-of-the-art equipment. Look at this.’
He ran the scanner over her outstretched arm. The display showed the ribbed beige surface of her jumper.
‘Digital camera, very nice,’ she observed.
He shushed her, and adjusted the resolution. As they both watched, the ribbing pattern slowly faded away, and they could see Megan’s pale, freckled forearm. Owen tugged her arm gently, getting her to stand, and then he turned them both to face the mirror above the sofa. He stood behind Megan so that they could see themselves reflected in the octagonal mirror. He moved the Bekaran device over her forearm again, up above her bicep, across her shoulder blade, and then over her breast. The material of her white bra showed in the display, reflected back to them. Owen thumbed the resolution further, and the bra melted away to reveal the skin of her breast and, comically flattened, one nipple surrounded by the pale brown areola.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Megan said. ‘Who made that? Where’s it from?’
‘It’s Bekaran,’ said Owen from behind her, his lips close to her ear. ‘We don’t know where they come from. Ugly things they are. But they have some pretty neat gadgets.’
In the display, Megan’s nipple was now erect. ‘Can it go further?’ Megan giggled. ‘I mean, can it scan deeper? Show the lactiferous ducts? Or as far as the pectoralis muscles?’
Owen thumbed the device and the skin disappeared as the scan displayed a subcutaneous layer, but quickly flicked it back again. ‘I’d rather not.’
Megan turned to face him, eager to see the device for herself. He showed her how to adjust it, the touch-sensitive plates at its rear that looked and felt so unlike any human design. ‘I can show you more,’ he urged her. ‘I can take you to Torchwood now, show you everything.’
‘Steady on, Owen,’ she told him, ‘I’m on duty again in an hour. Let’s see how this thing works, then…’
She ran the device over his jacket. Owen could see the display reflected in the mirror, over her shoulder. He helped her position her palm and fingers on the device, holding the back of her hand like a caress.
After a few false starts, Megan was able to adjust the scan. Owen watched his jacket dissolve in the display, then his crumpled shirt. She focused on his nipple with its little halo of short dark hairs. He felt her hand move down, until he could no longer see the display reflected. He could feel the device pressed lightly against his body. Slowly down his midriff. Over his navel. Below his belt now, pressing against his crotch.
Megan smiled as she studied the display. ‘I see this thing has a zoom facility.’
Owen raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘I didn’t know the scanner could do that.’
‘I wasn’t talking about the scanner,’ said Megan.
Owen lifted up her hand and took the Bekaran device from her. ‘When does your shift start?’
‘About an hour,’ said Megan, and took his free hand in hers. Guided it over her breast. ‘So we still have time for a shag. For old times’ sake.’