Andy Lane - Slow Decay

Lucy wasn’t there.

‘Where the hell did she go?’ Gwen exclaimed.

Rhys opened his eyes, puzzled, and looked at the patch of carpet by the sofa where Lucy had been crumpled. ‘I dunno,’ he said muzzily. ‘I heard someone moving around. I thought it was you.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Sorry — I kind of zoned out there for a bit. I’m not used to this kind of thing.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to be,’ Gwen said, heading into the hall. She’d left the door wide open when she came in and smelled the blood, but now it was pulled to. Lucy must have come to and made her escape. Gwen cursed herself. She should never have left Rhys in the room with Lucy, even if she thought the girl was unconscious! Either Lucy had been faking, or she’d come to while Gwen was on the phone to Jack, but either way she might have just leaped on Rhys and picked up where she’d left off, sucking his eyes from their sockets, or tearing his ears off. What the hell had she been thinking?

What she’d been thinking about, of course, was Rhys, and how hurt he was. Her normal police instincts had deserted her, faced with injury to a loved one.

‘You were right,’ Rhys murmured, breaking the self-destructive spiral her thoughts were descending into.

‘Right about what?’

‘Right about Lucy. About letting her stay here. Definitely a bad idea.’

Gwen laughed — more a hiccup than a proper laugh, but she felt the darkness recede from her mind. ‘I wasn’t anticipating anything like this, I must say.’

‘What were you expecting, then?’

‘I was-’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘Look, I’d better sort that door out. We don’t want her coming back.’ She walked down the hall and pushed the door closed until it clicked.

‘Come on — what were you expecting?’

‘If you really want to know, I thought she was trying to get you into bed!’

‘She was.’ Rhys’s voice was calm, flat, although it was the calmness of encroaching shock. ‘I guess I was flattered. I guess I was even interested. But nothing happened, and nothing was ever going to happen.’

Gwen felt as if someone had poured cold water down her back. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I love you, and because I want to stay with you.’

‘Despite… despite the fact that things aren’t the way they were when we started seeing each other?’

‘Or maybe because of that.’ He shifted position slightly and winced. ‘It can’t always be like the first few days. Relationships change. People change. And so long as they change together, it’s OK. I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me that wants things to be as exciting as they used to be. But there’s another part of me that likes the snuggling up and watching telly together.’

‘She’s prettier than me. And she’s a bloody sight slimmer than me too.’

She wanted Rhys to say that she was prettier than Lucy, that she was slimmer than Lucy, but she knew that he would have been lying, and if there was one thing she wanted at that moment it was the truth about what was happening to them.

‘I have a feeling you’re working with guys who are handsomer and slimmer than I am,’ he said eventually. ‘But nobody can keep trading up for better and better partners. Not if they want anyone to ever trust them.’

‘Oh Rhys…’

‘Oh bugger.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m just wondering how the hell I’m going to shave around this for the next few weeks.’

‘Where’s Owen?’

Toshiko looked up from the screens that were currently displaying the output from the three work stations that she was running in parallel. ‘I believe he is feeding the prisoner,’ she said.

Jack was sitting in his office, separated from the rest of the Hub by a dusty glass screen. ‘Is it my imagination, or is he spending a lot of time with that girl? It can’t be healthy.’

Toshiko had been wondering the same thing, but she wasn’t going to betray Owen. Assuming there was anything to betray. ‘She is very hungry,’ Toshiko responded. ‘Owen has been diligent in supplying her with food. I think he’s even been getting different takeaways so Jubilee don’t get suspicious about the amount of food we’re ordering.’

Jack was just a shadow through the glass. ‘Tell him to come in here when he’s back. I need him to go to Gwen’s place.’

Toshiko got up and walked over to the doorway, concerned. ‘Is everything all right with Gwen?’

Jack looked up from where he sat. His feet were up on the desk. A row of apples sat before him, lined up along the far edge. Some were green, some red, some a dusty grey. Some were large and some were small. They were all, however, recognisably apples.

‘Her boyfriend’s apparently been attacked by one of these women on the verge of a bulimic episode,’ he said. ‘They’ve got the girl there, unconscious. I want Owen to go across and bring her back. While he’s at it, I want him to assess how much the boyfriend knows. We may need to do something about him.’

‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Just as long as it’s not trigonometry. I’m shit at trigonometry.’

‘Why have you got all those apples on your desk?’

Jack stared at Toshiko, then at the row of fruit.

‘It’s an experiment,’ he said.

‘What kind of experiment?’

‘All of these things are apples, right?’

Toshiko shrugged. ‘They would appear to be apples, yes.’

‘Different varieties, yes?’

‘Yes.’

Jack pointed at them, one after the other. ‘St Edmunds Pippin, Mère de Ménage, Catshead, Ribston Pippin, Ashmead’s Kernel, Mannington’s Pearman, Lodgemore Nonpareil, Devonshire Quarrenden.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘So what makes them apples? Why aren’t they something else?’

Toshiko shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘All these apples taste different from one another. They look different. They feel different when you bite into them. But they’re all apples, and we know they’re all apples. You know, there are pears that look more like some of these apples than the other apples do, but they’re not apples: they’re pears. But how can we tell the difference?’

‘Jack, perhaps you ought to take a break.’

He sighed, and continued as if she hadn’t said anything. ‘So much variety. That’s what I like about this planet. Thousands of varieties of apples, for no good reason. Same with pears. Problem is, they’re dying out. People don’t want grey apples, or small apples, or lumpy apples. They want their apples all the same size and all the same shade of green. Doesn’t matter what they taste like. Give it another few years, and you’ll only be able to buy Cox’s Orange Pippins and Golden Delicious, and you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between them.’

‘I think-’

‘It’s like the Weevils. They’re not human. The question is: why aren’t they human? They eat like us, they wear clothes like us, and at night, with the streetlights behind them, they could be taken for human. In fact, I’ve seen people wandering the streets of Cardiff who look less human than the Weevils. So how is it we can make a distinction? And this girl downstairs — Marianne. She’s human, but she eats like a Weevil. Which side of the line does she go?’

‘Jack…’

He looked up, and there was something almost tragic about his face. ‘Don’t worry about me, Tosh. The apples are just a symptom of what’s to come. I’ve seen the future, and it all looks and tastes the same.’ The shadow passed, and he was the same old Jack that she had known ever since he tracked her down in London and asked her to join Torchwood. ‘Sorry. Just me being stupid. Let me know if Owen turns up.’ It was a dismissal, of sorts, and Toshiko turned to go. As she did so, Jack reached out, picked up the first apple in the line and took a bite out of it with a crisp crunch. ‘Lemony,’ he said.