Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

'I just need you to tell me what you can remember about what happened in the church last night while you were rehearsing.'

None of the four spoke, but Gwen could feel their tension and anguish intensifying. It came off them in waves. She pushed on, lowering her own voice in an attempt to subconsciously calm them.

'If you could just give me some idea of what the man that did this to your friend looked liked, then it will help us catch him.'

Magaly East twitched and with her free hand tugged her thin white dressing gown around her a little tighter. Her eyes drifted to somewhere beyond Gwen.

'It came through the window.' Her voice sounded like smashed glass, as if it had encapsulated the memory. 'It was… it was…' Her mouth twitched and then she sobbed, curling over herself so that her head was almost resting on her knees as she cried.

Gwen looked at the other three, their faces distraught, expressions pulling their skin this way and that as they fought images in their minds. Despite wanting to leave them in peace, Gwen pressed on. She needed to know. Torchwood needed to know.

'It was what?'

The man next to the sobbing Magaly shook his head and frowned. 'I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember.'

Rhiannon Cave moaned, her mouth drifting open. 'There was this shape… this black shape.' She hesitated. 'More than black. It was awful. And then I felt… I felt…'

'I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember.' The man barked the sentences out, and Gwen flinched trying to hear past him to what Rhiannon Cave was trying to say. Magaly East's sobbing grew louder and the anguish in it carved into Gwen's heart. What had happened to these people? What was it they'd seen that could have this effect on them?'

'You felt what, Ms Cave?'

The man who hadn't spoken shook his head slightly. 'Desolate.'

Magaly Betts leaned over so that her head rested on the knee of the man beside her, all four huddling in tighter.

'It was silent.' The man frowned.

'As if there was no one else there. Ever.' Rhiannon Cave's free hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. 'I want it out of my head.' She grabbed at Gwen. 'I want to forget. Please make it go away.'

Pushing her chair away, Gwen stood up, trying to gently but firmly extricate herself from the clutching hands. 'I'm sorry, I-' Her foot almost tripped backwards over a coffee table as she stumbled away. The noise in the room was rising, the crying and shouting merging into one.

'I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember…'

'Make it go away! Please!'

'So alone. Such silence…'

Needing to get out, to find some sanity, Gwen abandoned any hope of trying to calm them herself. They needed sedatives. They needed bloody Retcon. What the hell were they dealing with here?

Pushing out through the door, she collided with Jack and the nurse coming in.

The nurse's face fell. 'What have you done, you stupid woman?' She didn't wait for an answer before scurrying into the recreation room, pressing the bell for assistance as she did so.

'I'm really sorry, Jack. I just asked them some questions and…'

Jack grabbed her arm, tugging her down the corridor. 'You can tell me on the way.'

'On the way to where?'

'Cutler rang. He says another body's been found.'

Happy to leave that terrible anguish behind, Gwen broke into a slight jog to keep up with Jack. She'd be back though, she promised herself. As soon as she could. And she'd bring some Retcon with her.

On the other side of town, Adrienne Scott pulled her BMW into the small car park at the back of the Havannah Court Autism Centre and sat for a second after turning the engine off. She stared at the familiar bricks of the wall in front of her. It seemed she knew every uneven edge of them, but then she'd used this space a lot over the past four years. This was her space. On a Monday, Wednesday and Friday at any rate. Maybe using the same slot on each visit was her homage to autism, her own little need for regularity.

Her dark bob sank back into the headrest. She just needed a minute or two of peace before going inside. Ryan was her son and she loved him. She was sure she must love him on some level, but it was all just so damned hard when there was nothing but anxiety given in return. She was his mother; she'd grown him inside her and kept him safe, and he couldn't stand her touch. How could that be, she wondered for the millionth time since Ryan's diagnosis, even though she knew the question was pointless.

Not just her touch, she reminded herself. Any touch. But she was his mother. It should be different with her. The clock in the dashboard clicked on to ten o'clock, and she reluctantly got out of the car and headed inside, feeling so much older than her thirty-five years.

Signing in, she flashed a tight smile at Sylvia the receptionist, hoping to avoid conversation. No matter what the woman said it always made Adrienne feel guilty. She could hear the innocuous words coming out — ' How's work? Any exciting cases? Isn't it a lovely day? Have you got any plans for the summer? What a smart suit… ' — but it was as if underneath each sentence was the whisper of ' Bad mother. You should have your child at home. Bad mother .'

Sylvia was still speaking when Adrienne turned her back on her. Adrienne didn't care. Most of the staff at the centre didn't like her, she was pretty sure of that. They thought she was cold; you didn't have to be a mind reader to see that. And maybe she was. Maybe the past six years had made her that way. Some people just weren't cut out to deal with children that were different . They had no right to judge her. After all, it was bad mothers like her that kept them in their jobs.

A dull ache of tension already creeping into her shoulders, she made her way along the familiar route to Ryan's room, trying not to look through any of the open doors as she went, but invariably unable to stop herself. This was her penance: one hour, three times a week. She may as well punish herself properly.

She passed 11-year-old Eleanor, whose long hair was always matted no matter how often it was brushed and who would for ever be known as the dribbling girl inside Adrienne's head. Turning the corner, she glanced into Michael's room, and sure enough he was still intent on trying to fit a square plastic shape into a round hole simply because the shape and the hole were the same bright red colour. Ryan's nurse, Ceri, had told her that Michael could sit for hours with that block in his hand, trying to squeeze it into the hole. Adrienne wondered if the child would ever see the irony. All these children were square pegs in round holes. How the nurses that worked here didn't end up shaking them out of sheer frustration she would never understand. But then, she was a bad mother . She hadn't been able to cope with Ryan for more than eighteen months.

Three doors down from her son's room, a little girl she didn't recognise stared at the wall and screamed as a nurse tried to wipe the snot that streamed down her face. Adrienne turned away in disgust, and the first edge of a headache throbbed loudly at the back of her skull. At least Ryan wasn't a screamer. Staring at the door she had to go through, she ran her manicured fingers through her sleek hair and wished she could raise more enthusiasm for seeing her beautiful son. No, Ryan didn't scream. Ryan was too busy singing. Constantly. All day. From waking to sleeping, barely pausing for breath between songs. Maybe if he'd just been quiet she could have coped. Maybe.

Through the doorway drifted a perfect imitation of Aled Jones's 'Walking In The Air'. Disc 1, track 4. Even she knew their order by heart now. Damn that ex-husband and his Classical Tracks CD that he'd played over and over in the car when Ryan was a baby. She hadn't even liked the music then. The too-familiar song slid past her eardrums and wormed its way towards the hammer of pain beating at the back of her skull, adding melody to its rhythm. And damn her baby's autistic memory storing every note and word in its banks until his body was developed enough to endlessly reproduce them.