Torchwood First Born (17 page)

if I gripped too tightly, it would break.

Sebastian continued sitting in the chair, examining his hand. 'Can I get you a cup of tea?' he asked, absently. His voice was thick and slurring.

Suddenly the hand, the whole arm jerked up and spasmed. Then he fell silent.

When the end came it was very quick.

Sebastian gasped, his whole body sagging. His head fell back and his whole body slipped out of the chair, falling against the plant. I ran to his side, holding him.

'I am not well,' he whispered.

'It's OK, it's OK,' I told him. 'Oh baby, I love you, I love you.'

'I am so tired,' he said.

'Just rest. You've worked so hard. It's time for a break.'

'OK,' he said.

There was a noise. A whispering. I realised what it was. The leaves of the Juniper Tree were stirring and rustling. The branches were twisting.

Sebastian's eyelids fluttered. The plant... the plant is ill.'

'It will pass,' I assured him.

He struggled to sit up, but couldn't.

'Make sure the plant... the plant...' He stopped speaking, his lips formed into a little 'oh'.

Then his eyes closed and he sank back.

The rustling of the leaves stopped.

I crouched there for a while, holding him. Until I felt a cramp in my leg. So I stood up gently and walked away, wiping the tears from my eyes.

I left the hangar and walked across the wet tarmac, over to a small shed. The padlock was rusted and ice cold to the touch, sucking the feeling from my hand and I wrestled to get it open. For a moment I thought it wouldn't open, and I felt the rich irony - that I had taken a life, the life of someone I really cared for, and it had all been for nothing - that all Jasmine's plans would be frustrated because of a cheap old padlock. Suddenly the day seemed somehow better and easier. I'd just go back and email her. Tell her I'd tried. And that only Sebastian had known where the bolt cutters were. Sebastian...

The padlock opened at last, the hasp catching my knuckle. It stung, but I deserved it. I sucked it, opening the shed door. Inside it glowed the same greeny-blue as the Juniper Tree. But all that was in the shed was a single pod, sealed in bubble wrap and kept warm under a gently glowing sun lamp. There was a bench with a pair of scissors on it. Odd that. I was always running short of scissors, always losing them, always getting Sebastian to go and find me some. But I never came here.

I turned the sunlamp up to full heat. And waited.

Rhys

It was nearly dawn.

Josh and I sat outside the pub on a little wet bench.

He sipped at a can of coke, and wearily checked his watch.

'Great. In three hours' time I have to go and cut the hair of some mildly racist old ladies. Hardly seems worth going to sleep.'

'No,' I said. 'Thanks for staying up. For helping.'

'Yeah,' Josh sighed. 'Bit of drama. Wouldn't have missed it for anything. Glad it worked out OK.'

'Me too,' I admitted. 'Just when I was starting to think I knew all the surprises a baby could offer.'

'Yeah.' Josh tipped the coke back. 'You must be shattered.'

'Beyond tired, mate,' I admitted.

I just wanted Gwen to get back from chatting to Mrs Harries. I didn't want to let Anwen out of my sight, but Gwen had said it was important. She wanted to thank the children. Well, wanted is the wrong word — she felt it was the right thing to do.

'Never fancied kids of your own?' I asked Josh.

He shook his head. 'Tom is more than enough child for me.'

'Where is he?' I asked.

'Working,' he murmured. 'They work odd hours...

You know what the Weather is like.'

'I see,' I said.

Tunny really. I'm sure it's nothing.'

I wrinkled my nose at something distasteful. 'Can you smell that?'

'Yeah.' Josh laughed. 'Pure stink thistle fart.

Those bloody flowers.'

'But there aren't any around here, are there?'

Josh looked around. 'Don't think so. Still bloody reeks, though.'

He stood up and yawned theatrically. 'Right. I am going to go and wash this tired face.' He punched me on the arm, gently. 'Get some rest, tiger.'

'Right,' I said. I sat alone on the picnic bench, waiting for Gwen and Anwen to come back.

Eloise

They say we come screaming into the world.

The weird thing about watching a birth is how it's never the same. When I was birthing the Children of Rawbone, I was amazed at how silent it all was. How calm they were, even from the start.

It had been a long night. A night I hadn't wanted to spend alone with my thoughts.

I watched the pod twist and collapse, splitting apart like a time-lapse film of a rotting avocado. Steadily and gently. When I was a girl, I loved spring when the snowdrops and daffodils would poke through the ground, growing so fast you could almost see them moving. Almost. Almost. The times I would spend as a little girl, hunkered down, staring at plants, just seeing if I could detect their movement. I'd even shut my eyes and then open them again, seeing if there was any change. There must be. There absolutely must be. I knew that. I just couldn't measure it. But I knew that that plant was pushing its way up and out of the world, budding and opening.

The same thing was happening here, but now there was all the change you could want. The pod's flesh bubbled and shivered. There was a whispering on the air that went with the steady rattling of rain on the corrugated tin roof. Then the pod split apart with a sigh, the firm green skin of the pod going soft and falling away, releasing a terrible whiff of gas.

Lying there among the rotting leaves was a beautiful young man in a suit. The pod had grown him with a suit. The face was beautiful and calm and tranquil. It was Sebastian. The eyes opened, blinked once and then fixed on me. The eyes were a deep green. They were clear and firm and dancing as he sat up and smiled.

'Hello, Mother,' he said.

I reached out to lift him up.

'No, thanks,' he said. 'I don't need your help.' He stood and shook himself down like a dog climbing out of the sea.

He was so beautiful. I saw that then. You know that awful thing when sometimes you see someone advertising something and they are so beautiful you just sigh? It was very much that feeling. This is what Sebastian would have looked like younger.

I guessed it would be another three decades before this version reached his twenties, but he seemed confident, strong, comfortable in his own body. I remembered my own miserable teenage years - the jocks at high school, all high-fives and hell-yeah, and knowing full well my dating pool would always be the Chess League and the Computer Club. Looking back on it now, of course, I realised they were a lot of knuckle-dragging lunkheads, but back then... oh, I wanted one of them to notice me so bad. Funny how monstrous genetics is. If only, if only I could have been happy with my lab partner, dear sweet little Christopher Chung. Instead, as we sat there studying Mandel's experiments with sweet peas, I spent my evenings dreaming about entirely the wrong kind of boy - rather than someone who read books and laughed at my Jackie Mason albums.

Funny how we grow up, isn't it? If only I'd known how things would turn out, then I'd have been happy. If I could just have fancied him a little bit.

Poor Christopher. Probably we'd have been married very sensibly now. Couple of kids. All of
CSI on
DVD.

Who knows?

Instead, here I was in a freezing shed in the middle of nowhere, very single, very old, and staring at the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. Actually, strike that, I was gawping.

Sebastian caught my look and his smile changed.

It was odd, almost sardonic. He didn't say anything, but something in the tilt of his neck suggested that he knew full well. 'The old crone wants me. Good. I can work with that.'

Sebastian stepped forward, bare feet on the cold concrete floor. (So it grew him clothes but not shoes?

Odd.) He walked up to me, a firm, confident stride that brought him right up to me. Close. Extremely close. Almost so close that I thought he was going to kiss me. I trembled. I don't know if I was excited or afraid. Instead he sniffed.

'Good morning,' he said. 'Let's get started.'

Then he walked out of the shed.

G w e n

The change came gradually. Or maybe we didn't notice because we didn't leave the caravan for a couple of days. We shut the door and walled ourselves up. Apart from trips out to the laundry hut.

We just held on to Anwen. She was ours again.

It wasn't paradise. But it was normality. Horrible, messy, sleep-deprived, grumpy, snappy, smelly normality. Neither of us wanted to change it.

Mrs Harries had been waiting for me as we left the beach. We'd shared a look. A look that was beyond shattered. She'd just looked relieved.

We didn't much care, frankly. We had Anwen back. I didn't care what happened to Jenny now.

Well, I say that. There were times when it felt as much use as being cross with a flatpack wardrobe, and others where I just wanted to go and stand outside her house and scream at her. Rhys talked me down from that. Truth to tell, it was his suggestion that we lie low for a bit.

Mrs Harries came and knocked on the door. We didn't answer. She came and stood at the window.

But I was feeding and I just looked at her and shook my head. With a little scrunch that said, 'Sorry, not a good time.'

She nodded: 'Quite understand, sorry to have bothered you.' She walked away into the rain.

Rhys waited a day before pointing out that I wasn't letting Anwen go. Not even to him.

'She's mine,' I said with not even a hint of realising that I sounded crazy.

'Go on, love.' His voice was so gentle and soft it was breaking. 'Get some shut-eye, and I'll change her. Please.'

'OK,' I said. But I didn't hand her over. He took her gently from my arms. I looked up at him and smiled. 'Thanks,' I said.

'Yeah,' he murmured. 'Fighting for a go at a soiled nappy.' He laid her down and went to work, pausing to grimace. 'Green. Funny how you never get used to green poo.'

'Wait till we start her on solid food,' I said. 'It'll get really interesting, then.'

'If we're still changing her when she's 20, we'll have got this one very wrong.'

'Totally,' I said and shut my eyes.

This time the dreams were different. I was back in
that bathroom. But I was being dragged forward.

Dragged. I was yelling and screaming. I was terrified.

I was trembling. The hands that held me were so
strong. I fought desperately, I called and I begged.

I could see the white tiles on the walls and the
mirror steamed up and the bright light and the
cluster of half-finished shampoo bottles.

'I've run you a bath, Mother,' said Billy.

The bath waiting, the taps running.

The hands that held me, dragged me closer and
closer to the water.

I struggled and screamed, screamed for Davydd.

But no one came.

Then I looked at his face. Billy's face, red and
scarred. And smiling at me.

'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' I begged him. 'Please don't
make me.'

It's OK, Mummy.' Billy smiled and gestured to
the bath. 'The water's lovely and warm. Why don't
you get in V

Please, don't do this.'

But Billy just repeated the command.

And, sobbing, I obeyed.

I woke up.

It was like one of those falling dreams. Sat in the chair, gasping and floundering. A second's disorientation, like I was waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room, then grasping for Anwen. Realising she wasn't there, panicking. Seeing Rhys standing over me. Holding Anwen. Looking cautious.

It's OK,' he said. 'She's here.'

I took her from him. Without asking. 'I had the oddest dream,' I started to tell him.

Then realised. Mrs Harries was standing outside the window again.

'We'd better let her in,' I said.

Mrs Harries looked older, like I'd been asleep for ten years.

When I opened the caravan door I already felt worried. She saw my face. But she pressed on with the social niceties.

'Sorry to disturb you,' she said, her hands fidgeting with her coat.

'Come on in.'

'You know, don't you?' Her face was sharp, all tired angles.

I nodded. 'I dreamed again. Was it Sasha?'

'Yes.'

'What?' said Rhys.

'Billy attacked his mother,' said Mrs Harries. 'He filled the bath and made her get in it. We couldn't get to her in time.'

Rhys swore and held my shoulder.

'We could hear... we knew... it's....' Mrs Harries's eyes roamed the room sadly. Then she sat down on the chair, clutching the armrests on it. 'It's the children. I meant to say. They've not been right...

not since Jenny... you know...'

'Since she took Anwen.'

'Yes. Your little baby girl.' Mrs Harries shook her head. 'I assumed... we assumed that they felt sheepish, or collective guilt. Or were afraid of us. Of what we might do to them.'

'And what did you do to them?'

Mrs Harries smiled, the tired thin smile of a woman who is mostly steel and sinew. 'I went to the village hall. Most of the parents took their children home. Said it would be fine. I stayed there with mine and whoever else was left. I wanted them all to be safe. In case anything... you know... awful happened.'

'Did it?'

Mrs Harries shrugged. 'I just fell asleep. Sorry.'

'Did you dream?' I asked.

'No dear, I think that's just you. They're no longer interested in my dreams.'

'So what happened next?'

Mrs Harries considered her hands, how tired and wrinkled they were. 'In the morning, they were different... At first I thought it was sheepish.

Guarded. You see, she...' She tailed off.

'Jenny was there, wasn't she?' My voice was sharper than I'd thought it would be.

Rhys made a little
oof.

Mrs Harries watched the carpet. 'Yes.' Her voice was tiny. 'She was. Mrs Meredith - poor Beth's so ashamed, she didn't want her around any more.