‘Like a bit of an idiot, actually,’ Rhys replied. His eyes were still closed. ‘I’m going to have to make up some kind of story for work. I can’t possibly admit that Lucy bit me. The jokes will never end.’
‘You can’t say that I bit you either. Nobody gives a love bite that big. And not on the cheek.’
He frowned. ‘I read somewhere that there are more bacteria in the mouth than anywhere else in the human body. Is that true? Could I get infected just by being bitten?’
‘If we ever get to see a doctor, we can ask him. But seriously, I think they’ll give you an antibiotic shot. When I used to have to break-up fights and stuff in the police, there’d be lots of guys whose teeth had cut the inside of their cheeks when they’d been punched. The paramedics would always give them antibiotics in case the bacteria inside their mouths got into the wounds and started up an infection.’
‘Not friendly bacteria, then,’ Rhys said.
‘I don’t think there’s any such thing as friendly bacteria. Some of them might be relatively indifferent, but I don’t think they could reasonably be described as friendly.’
Like alien life forms that end up on Earth, she thought bitterly. Despite the best hopes of mankind, the universe seemed to her to be a pretty unpleasant place.
‘Rhys Williams?’ The nurse standing by the desk was looking around.
Rhys’s hand shot up. ‘Here.’
‘This way, please.’
Gwen went with him to a small, curtained alcove where Rhys sat on a bed while a doctor examined him. She was younger than both Rhys and Gwen, and looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.
‘How did this happen, then?’ she asked as Rhys pulled the tea towel away from his face. She looked over at Gwen. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘Rugby practice,’ Rhys said firmly.
Gwen raised her eyebrows at the doctor, expecting her to take a look at Rhys’s flabby physique and say something sarcastic, but she just looked him up and down and nodded. Surprised, Gwen glanced over at Rhys’s stomach. It might have been her imagination, but it was looking flatter than she remembered. Maybe it was just the way the material of his T-shirt was plastered against the skin by the drying blood, but she could almost see some muscle definition. Was he going to a gym or something?
‘I thought you rugby players wore gum shields,’ the doctor said as she cleaned the wound with a pad of cotton wool. She kept dabbing the cotton wool in a kidney dish filled with something antiseptic. Thin strings of bloody liquid began to swirl around in the dish, forming shapes that came together and apart.
‘They fall out.’ Rhys winced as she patted the wound. The tooth-marks were livid against white skin now. ‘By the time the training ends the ground is littered with gum shields. We have to send a boy out to collect them up at the end of the session. We pay him ten pence a set.’
‘Right. I’m going to give you an anti-tetanus shot,’ the doctor said, as if she hadn’t been listening. ‘And then put a dressing on the wound. I’ll also prescribe a course of antibiotics, just in case. It’s a pretty clean wound, and it should heal within a couple of weeks.’
‘What about stitches?’ Rhys asked.
‘Not necessary. Go see your doctor in a week, just to check that everything’s OK. If there’s any swelling, or if the area gets tender to the touch, go and see them sooner.’
When they got outside, it was dark. A handful of people were hanging around near where the ambulances stopped. Rhys and Gwen paused for a moment, letting the fresh air wipe the tang of the antiseptic from their nostrils.
‘I’d suggest going and getting a meal somewhere,’ Rhys said. He indicated his bloody T-shirt. ‘But they’d probably throw me straight out again.’
‘We could get a takeaway,’ Gwen said.
Rhys shook his head. He looked away, awkwardly. ‘I don’t really want to go back to the flat. Not now. Not straight away.’
‘There’s got to be somewhere still open where I can get you a shirt.’ Gwen thought for a moment. ‘Department stores will be closed. Asda will still be open.’
‘Asda.’ Rhys winced. ‘Hardly my style.’
‘Hey, you want dinner or not?’
He shrugged. ‘All right. But you’re going to have to go in and buy the stuff. I’ll loiter outside, scaring small children.’
‘OK. Extra-large?’
‘Actually…’ He paused. ‘I think just Large will do.’
‘Rhys, this is the kind of thing you should be saying to me but never do, but, are you losing weight?’
He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘A little.’
‘How?’
‘Cutting out carbohydrates. Cutting down on the drinking. More walking.’
‘Rugby practice, obviously.’
‘Did you like that? I thought it was quite inventive.’ A pause. ‘And Lucy recommended some tablets she’d been taking,’ he said, offhandedly. ‘They worked on her.’
‘Yes, we should obviously let Lucy be our role model on things involving food.’
‘Ouch. Point taken.’ He shook his head. ‘This still feels like a dream to me. It’s all moving too fast. I can’t take it in.’
‘Part of that’s the shock. It’ll pass. Tell you what — let’s get a hotel room for tonight. A treat for the both of us. We can go back to the flat tomorrow. It’s Sunday, so that still gives us a day to recover before you go back to work — assuming you’re fit.’
‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.’
It would also, Gwen thought, give the rest of the Torchwood team time to investigate. There might be some clues back at the flat they needed to look for, something that might say where Lucy had gone. And, of course, the last thing she wanted was for her and Rhys to go back to the flat, fall asleep, and then wake up with Lucy bending over them, madness in her eyes, poised to rip their throats out.
Threesomes like that really didn’t interest Gwen.
‘What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?’
Owen laughed. The flagstones were cold beneath his crossed legs, and his vertebrae were grinding against the armoured glass behind him, yet he felt strangely comfortable. ‘I sometimes ask myself the same question. I thought I’d be well on my way to being a surgeon by now.’
Marianne was sitting with her back against the glass in her cell, mirror image to his position. Their heads were separated by just a few inches of space. He could almost feel the heat from her body through the glass. Almost.
‘Was that the big life plan?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I thought so. Seven years of training and I still had it in my sights. Spent a year as a junior houseman at Cardiff Royal Infirmary. Then I blinked, and when I looked again it was gone.’
‘And you ended up here.’
‘Yeah.’ He looked around, at the crumbling bricks and the lichen. At the rusted metal and the trickling water. ‘I ended up here.’
‘So you were at the Infirmary, but you’re not Welsh, are you?’
He laughed. ‘You can tell?’
‘The accent.’
He paused. Thinking. ‘Yeah, I’m from the East End. Plaistow. Terraced houses and council estates and old pubs. You could hear the Hammers playing at home from the back bedroom. Big cheer whenever they scored. Big groan when the goal went against them. I used to lie there and listen, Saturday afternoons. Used to make up my own commentary, as well.’
‘So why did you go to medical school?’
Good question, and one he tried not to think about too often. ‘Most of my friends ended up as car mechanics or estate agents. I could see all that ahead of me, and I couldn’t face it. I wanted to do something that meant something. And then…’
‘Go on,’ she said softly.
‘And then my dad died. Just upped and died. We found him in the bedroom one morning, slumped against the wall. He was wearing his shirt and his boxers and he had one sock off and one still in his hand. He looked… he looked like someone had said something to him that he couldn’t quite hear, and he was trying to work out what it was. One of the arteries in his chest had just given way. Aortic aneurysm, it’s called. I’ve done all the lectures, and I’ve seen photos in textbooks, and I’ve conducted autopsies of people who’ve died that way, but for me an aortic aneurysm will always be my dad, sitting there, one bare foot, and frowning.’