Another Life Read Free

unspent lightning’ Jack had called it as they’d sat down. The tarmac released the day’s earlier heat. Shoppers bustled past with too little time and too many bags on their race back to the car parks against the coming rain.
    A small knot of Merryhill pupils, still in school uniform, jostled past another group from Roath High. The early evening concert at the Millennium Centre must just have finished, thought Gwen, spilling a brawling crowd of secondary-school kids into the area on their way home. God, it was bad enough keeping them apart when they got older and got bladdered and went on the town. She hoped they weren’t going to have to keep them apart when they were in their early teens as well.
    Then she remembered that wasn’t her job any more. And wasn’t sure whether to be sorry or just relieved.
    She and Jack were served by the same good-looking waiter who had served Gwen on their last visit. Her mental notebook told her he was Enrico ‘Rico’ Celi, early thirties, second-generation Welsh Italian, with almost stereotypical Latin looks but an incongruous South Coast accent. He’d inherited the café from his dad. Jack teased him that his tan was fading the longer he stayed in South Wales. Rico could swear in Welsh, Gwen discovered. But he didn’t seem to mind Jack slapping his backside as he stooped to deliver their drinks.
    Gwen had a lemonade, ice and lemon, tall glass. Jack ordered a still water in a plastic cup. He paid for it as soon as it arrived by dropping money into the ashtray on the metal table. ‘Means I can get up and go whenever I need to. Rico’s too cute for me to rip him off,’ Jack explained to her when she asked. ‘Or steal one of his glasses.’
    Gwen fingered the coins in the ashtray. ‘Exact change,’ she noted. ‘No tip?’
    ‘He’s not that cute.’
    Throughout this, Jack’s eyes never left the street. He obviously wasn’t going to let their target slip past unnoticed while Gwen was making polite conversation.
    Gwen let her eyes linger on him for a while instead of the street. Jack had told her once that he drank water because it kept him hydrated, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Apart from what he wore, and a few minor and rather odd artefacts back at the Hub, Jack didn’t seem to own anything. He was tall and broad, a big presence physically and personally. And yet if he disappeared he would leave little evidence behind. Though he would leave a large gap in her life.
    A couple of months had passed since she’d first become aware of Torchwood, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Jack was like the ideal boss she’d imagined back in the force. When she did the right thing, he told her. When she screwed up, he told her that too. That didn’t make it comfortable, but it meant she knew what was expected, understood it, accepted it. No soft soaping, no bullshit. None of the fast-track bollocks she got from Inspector Morrison, no discussions about structured career paths for officers who showed ‘flair and potential’. No courses on assertiveness without aggression. And no listening to fellow officers like Andy, bleating about the inadequacies of the system, giving her grief about being overtaken by smartarse graduates who wouldn’t know an arrest form from their arsehole.
    She had no idea where this job with Torchwood was taking her. The more important thing was, she didn’t give a toss about that either. She only knew that she loved it. When had she last had to give evidence in court, escort a scumbag to the cells, go through the rigmarole of writing up a witness statement?
    She loved every day. She loved working with Owen and Toshiko and Ianto and Jack. Just now, she couldn’t conceive of leaving them. Couldn’t imagine Jack disappearing. Losing him.
    Jack sneaked a quick look at his watch, then at Gwen, then straight back to the street. ‘I don’t know whether to be flattered or irritated. Shouldn’t you be watching for our guy instead of watching