'Stamp on our heads,' Ianto added.
'Yes! Rupert Locke… he's certainly not floating around is he? When he appears, he's actually here. It's as if the two time periods are folding over one another, layered with each other, physically co-existing for a brief period. When the walls were pounding, maybe that was just the Jackson Leaves of fifty years ago trying to co-exist with the Jackson Leaves of today, the two slightly out of place over the years because of subsidence.'
'Subsidence?' Ianto smiled at Gwen. 'Or maybe just the spatial disruption?'
'Yes.' Jack nodded. 'Maybe. Because it isn't just time, is it? Something is distorting physical space.' He glanced back to the monitors, flicking through and making sure all was clear before turning back to them. 'I can't put into words how that scares me,' he said. 'You just don't start messing with existence like that. It's pretty elastic, but if you screw with it for long enough it'll snap.'
There was a flash of movement on one of the screens.
'Did you see that?' Ianto shouted.
Jack and Gwen turned to the monitors.
'It was one of the top rooms,' Ianto said. 'A woman…' He stared at the screens, infuriated at the lack of anything in them. 'I know I saw her… She moved across the room towards the door. A woman in a long white dress, maybe a wedding gown.'
Jack felt his heart trip. 'You sure?'
'Yes! A woman in a long white dress, she moved across the room towards the door.'
They kept scrolling through the camera feeds.
'She's not there now,' Gwen said.
Jack got to his feet.
'Where are you going?' Ianto asked. 'There's not much point in setting all this up if you're just going to leg it up there and have a look for yourself!'
Jack closed the door behind him and began running up the stairs.
Joe was wheeling Alexander along the pavement towards Jackson Leaves, Alexander keeping himself dry under an umbrella he'd found in the boot of the car. He didn't offer to share it, but Joe didn't care. He was singing 'My Generation' at the top of his voice and was quite happy, thank you very much.
'Shut up,' Alexander ordered. Joe did. Alexander sighed and waited to have to tell him again; each command seemed to afford him about two minutes of silence. 'Stop here,' he said, a few metres from the house. He stared at the building and tried to decide what it was that disturbed him about it.
'There's something not right about that house,' he said, thinking aloud.
Joe looked at the building for a few moments before giving up and going to dance in the street.
Alexander studied it for a while then wheeled himself to Gloria's front garden, where he selected a lapful of small stones. He returned to Jackson Leaves, parked a little way back from the drive and began to throw the stones.
'Oh no!' Joe giggled. 'You can't do that, we'll get in trouble.'
'Just watch me.' The stones flew towards the house but vanished long before they got anywhere near it.
'Hmm,' Alexander said. 'What does that tell us, Joe?'
Joe stopped dancing for a moment. 'Time for a pint?'
'No. Unless there's some form of force-field technology screening the building — and there isn't because you can always tell, force fields give off static like it's going out of fashion, makes your hair follicles go tighter than a fly's arse — it tells us that Jackson Leaves isn't altogether there. Which is rather strange.'
'Yeah!'
'Wheel us next door, Joey my lad,' Alexander said, pointing to the house the opposite side to Gloria's. 'We need some equipment and a dry place to work.'
'OK.' Joe pushed him along the pavement. 'How are we going to convince whoever lives there to help?'
'My dear Joe, I could have you pushing this wheelchair along with your tongue if I wished, couldn't I?'
'Yeah!'
'Good. Then you just leave the convincing to me, all right?'
Alexander chuckled. He could get used to field work, he was really rather enjoying himself.
Hadn't Jack cautioned himself about getting caught up in his memories? Here was the result, chasing through the focal point of a space-time collapse with a head full of guilt and no clear plan of action. To think earlier he'd been preaching pragmatism.
'Follow me on the camera feeds,' he shouted.
***
In the dining room, Ianto jumped forward to turn the volume down as Jack's voice came through loud enough to make the speakers shake.
'Oh, righty-ho, then,' he muttered sarcastically, shaking his head at Jack's comment. 'We'd never have thought of that.'
'What do you think set him off?' Gwen asked, ploughing through the Jackson Leaves documents on her laptop, hunting for any mention of a bride.
'You heard me say there was a woman on the screen, did you?'
'Now, now,' Gwen admonished playfully.
Jack reached the top floor, both rooms were empty.
'Nothing,' he said.
'I could have told him that from here,' said Ianto, 'though that would have cut down on his "looking dramatic" quota for this evening.'
'You're getting more sarcastic with each passing day,' Gwen said.
'It's the only pleasure I have left.'
Gwen raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. 'Nothing here obviously relating to a woman in white,' she tapped her laptop screen, 'but then it wasn't a huge deal to go on, was it?'
Ianto leaned forward in his seat. 'I'd say she was about my height with long black hair. From the look of her dress, I'd place her at the earlier part of the twentieth century or maybe late nineteenth.' He pointed at the screen where the woman had appeared in the room Jack wasn't. She moved towards the door and promptly vanished.
'Jack?' Ianto stabbed at the audio buttons. 'Oh, come on… patch in your earpiece…' With a roar of exasperation, he got up and opened the door to shout up the stairs.
'Hello!' said Rob, standing in the doorway holding the croquet mallet. 'Sorry, but the house made me do this.'
He swung the mallet.
EIGHTEEN
'Hello, my dear,' said Alexander as the girl opened the door. 'My name is Alexander Martin, and you would be furthering the safety of the universe were you to let my friend and me use your facilities.'
The girl, about sixteen or seventeen, leaned out of the doorway and scratched at her mop of curly hair.
'Your friend would be the tit getting jiggy in the shrubbery, would he?'
Alexander swallowed with embarrassment. 'That's him.'
'Piss off.'
She was closing the door as Alexander hit her full in the face with the spray he'd used on Joe. 'Dear lord,' he sighed. 'I'm not sure I can stand both of you acting like mental outpatients, but I suppose I have little choice. What's your name, my dear?'
'Hannah Ogilvy.'
'Splendid. Well, Miss Ogilvy, are you by any chance alone in the house this evening?'
'Yeah.'
Alexander visibly slumped with relief. 'Right then. Joe!' 'Yes, boss?' Joe appeared behind his chair waving at Hannah like a five-year-old who's just been introduced to a big purple dinosaur.
Alexander looked at him for a moment and then wheeled himself into the house. 'Never mind, Joe, change of plan. Stay out here.'
'Cool!' Joe spun off into the rain, dancing and singing.
Rob suddenly felt a moment of clarity. He had been sitting very still, occasionally chewing on the head of the croquet mallet but otherwise not moving. Then it was as if something had turned on in his head. He knew it was time to step outside the cupboard and get on with the suggestions the house had put to him.