The Twilight Streets

SIXTEEN

Rhys Williams glanced at the clock on the wall: 11.46am. He adjusted his tie in the mirror, and brushed a bit of dust off the collar of his Savile Row suit. Neatness mattered.

Alone in the room, he slipped the jacket off and took a sideon look at himself. ‘Thirty-two-inch waist for the first time since you were eighteen, Rhys Alun Williams,’ he said proudly. ‘Not bad for a man getting closer to the wrong side of thirty-five.’

‘Too true, Mister Sexy Pants,’ Gwen said, emerging from the en suite.

Rhys took her, all of her, in his arms, and they kissed. Passionately. Longingly. Slowly, he led her towards the bed.

She broke off, laughing. ‘Calm down, lover,’ she said, patting her extended belly. ‘Not till junior is out and running about.’

‘Running about?’ Rhys put on a mock stressed expression. ‘He won’t be playing for the Torchwood IX Under-10s for another few years. I have to wait till then?’

They laughed. ‘About another three hours,’ Gwen said, ‘and I’m all yours again.’

Rhys was serious. ‘Gwen, God knows I’ve hated Torchwood and I’ve loved Torchwood, but right now I’m scared of Torchwood.’

‘Oh, not again…’

‘I’m serious. OK, so this alien technology you lot found, yeah, it guarantees safe delivery, yeah, it negates caesareans and breeches or whatever, but…’

‘But it’s still alien tech, and you don’t like it.’

Rhys looked down at his feet. ‘Jack didn’t like it,’ he said quietly.

Gwen just stood there, all passion and love drained in a second. She sat in the chair at the dresser, refusing to look directly at Rhys, instead directing her voice at his reflection. ‘Jack isn’t here any more.’

Rhys wouldn’t catch her eye. ‘He didn’t trust the dependency on alien tech, Gwen, and, for all his faults, I trusted Jack’s integrity, if not his morality. If something goes wrong-’

‘Nothing will go wrong, Rhys, for crying out loud. Owen tested it! Owen, the man you were happy enough to let save my life once before.’

‘I saved you!’

‘Using his alien tech! If it was good enough then-’

Rhys leapt up. ‘That was an emergency, Gwen. That was life and death. That was the most terrifying day of my bloody life, and I had no choice but to trust Owen Bloody Harper. Now, now I have a choice!’

Gwen spun round on him. ‘No! No, Rhys, you don’t. I’m doing this because I’m the one facing hours of labour, I’m the one facing depression and illness and pain. I’m the one facing the possibility that, after nine months carrying this baby, something could go wrong and it dies. Or I die.’

‘Our baby,’ Rhys muttered, not caring whether Gwen heard him or not.

‘So, yeah, I’m happy to use technology that guarantees one hundred per cent a healthy boy and a healthy mum. I’d have thought my darling husband would be happy at that thought.’

Rhys knew he’d lost. ‘I do, love, believe me. I just think that what my mam said about natural birth-’

And Gwen was up and heading out of the bedroom.

‘Brenda Bloody Williams and her pre-natal care. If there’s anything that almost stopped me getting pregnant, it was knowing that at the back of every decision we made your mother would be saying, “Oh, I’m not sure that’s the way to hold a baby,” or “Are you really dressing him in that,” or “Are you sure that’s the right food for a baby,” or “In my day, children were seen and not heard.” Screw you, Rhys and screw your mam too!’

With a loud slam of the door, she was out, clattering down the stairs.

No, not stopping at the next level, going all the way down to the front door.

SLAM.

Gone.

Rhys sighed to himself, checked his tie again, slipped the jacket on and followed her downstairs, through the front door and out to the car.

She was sitting in the passenger seat. He slid into the driving seat.

‘Alien tech, eh?’ he said. ‘Can save all those pains, can’t do a bloody thing about your hormones, can it?’

Gwen stared at him. ‘Shut up.’

‘I mean, cos that’d be really useful wouldn’t it. “Hi, I’m Owen Harper, I can give something really useful to the world. Hormonal balance.” Now that would be an improvement.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I mean, look at the time. In thirty minutes, we’ll have a baby boy, happy, healthy and perfect in an Orwell-would-have-hatedit way. But after all that, I bet you’ll still be grumpy, unpredictable, eating raw pickles by the cartload and phoning me at the office and accusing me of shagging Ruth.’

‘Shut up.’ A beat. ‘Which one’s Ruth?’

Rhys used his hands to suggest a somewhat large lady.

‘Oh, that Ruth, from Harwoods? Ruth, now your staff liaison officer?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, if I thought you were humping Ruth, my hormones would be the least of your problems. Now, can you get me to St Helen’s maternity wing in the next thirty minutes or shall I have the natural birth you so desperately want all over the insides of your Porsche?’

Rhys pressed the ignition switch. The car roared into life, and he eased it away from the front door and down the long drive.

He flicked a button on the dash, and the security gates started to open.Two armed Torchwood guards in the gatehouse waved politely as he steered out into the midday sun and on their journey towards Cardiff and the birth of their baby.

‘I sometimes think,’ Rhys said, checking no one was following them, ‘that those guards Tosh gave you are as much to keep us in as to guard us.’

‘You worry too much.’

‘I worry that if the Torchwood Empire is so beneficial to mankind, then why do we need protecting and who from?’

‘From whom,’ Gwen corrected.

‘Ooh, get the girl from Swansea and her posh English.’ Rhys adjusted the rear-view mirror as they trundled through the outer areas of the city.

‘Not sure I like this area, Rhys,’ Gwen said. ‘Isn’t there a better route? Through Whitchurch?’

Rhys gritted his teeth, knowing that he was going to get shouted at again.

‘Dunno, Gwen. I think it does us all good to take the odd trip through the less fortunate ends of the Empire, see how the other half live. I mean, I know mothers aren’t your preferred choice of subject, but if yours was still here I’m not sure she’d approve of what we’ve become.’

Gwen put a hand on Rhys’s. ‘It’s not like that, love. I didn’t plan this.You didn’t plan to run the Council, we never planned for Torchwood to create an empire, but history tells us that to create a Utopia, a bit of darkness has to be present, to make the light glow stronger.’

Rhys said nothing and they drove in silence, until the sat-nav spoke, telling them they were thirteen minutes away from St Helen’s Hospital.

‘When Tosh and Owen finish the project, Rhys, I promise you, the world that baby Gareth inherits will be one that has made all this worthwhile.’

Rhys put his foot down and, before long, they were approaching the hospital, a group of Torchwood guards and nursing staff greeting them.

As they pulled up, Rhys looked at his wife, and then nodded to the group outside. ‘When I married you, I imagined an NHS hospital, me pacing the corridors for eight hours drinking weak-as-piss tea, and Jack stood there, winding me up saying it was an alien. Or his. Or both. But I love you so much, and I trust that you know what you’re doing. Even without Jack Bloody Harkness to guide us all.’

Gwen kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ll text you when he’s been born.’

‘One last thing, love,’ Rhys said as the car door opened. ‘I never agreed to Gareth. I reckon Geraint. After your dad. Good name, good thing for our boy to live up to.’

And Gwen grabbed him and kissed him savagely and powerfully.

Rhys eased her away, embarrassed. The assembled staff outside were applauding them in that way that Torchwood staff always applauded.

Nauseatingly, and slightly insincerely.

Jack Harkness would have hated this new Torchwood.

And then Gwen was out of sight, inside the building.

Rhys eased the car out of the car park then drove towards the city. He needed to get to work for a late-night session about what to do with the irradiated Bay. Ever since the Hub had exploded, the whole area had been in desperate need of reclamation.

As he drove, Rhys pulled a Bluetooth earpiece from his pocket, slipped it on and spoke to the sat-nav.

‘Override Torchwood comms. Clearance five stroke nine.’

‘Confirmed. Signal scrambled.’

‘Connect me with Friend 16.’

‘Confirmed.’

There was a buzz and then a click.

A Welsh voice spoke, curtly, passionless. ‘What do you want, Williams?’

‘Gwen is safe. If you’re going to do it, please do it now.’

The line went dead.