Slow Decay

deep sleep to wakefulness over nearly an hour, slipping backwards into dreams every now and then, but eventually managing to claw his way to consciousness, open his eyes and turn over to face the ceiling.

Morning and wakefulness were bleaching his dreams away. He tried to hold on to them, but all he got was shreds of emotion and tattered images. There was something about him being pregnant, he recalled: stumbling around the flat, huge and graceless, knocking things off shelves. That was a weird one. Even in his half-awake state he realised that he’d better not tell Gwen; the subject of kids had been avoided so far, and he wanted to keep it that way. And there were fragments of a story about a beanstalk or a vine that was growing faster than he could climb it, although he had a feeling that there was something disturbing at the top of the beanstalk that he didn’t want to see. Maybe it was a giant. God alone knew what that dream was about. Gwen would probably tell him that it meant he felt he was committed to a path that he wasn’t sure about. As far as he was concerned it meant he’d eaten too much cheese the night before.

The thought of cheese and the night before suddenly triggered a string of memories that he’d half-hidden from his conscious mind while he’d been asleep. Rhys winced, remembering that after Gwen had gone out he and Lucy had eaten dinner, then dessert, then had cheese on toast as a snack while they were watching Newsnight. And they’d put away two bottles of wine. God, and he was meant to be losing weight as well! The trouble was that he just felt so hungry all the time. Lucy wasn’t helping; she could shovel the food away as fast as he could. And the tragic thing was that she stayed as thin as a giraffe.

Cautiously, Rhys let his hands slide down his chest to his stomach, expecting to find it distended with food. To his great relief, and surprise, it was flatter than he remembered it being since he’d left college. There was even a trace of muscle development beneath the fat. He let his hands rest there while a smile crept across his face. Whatever that pill from the Scotus Clinic had been, it looked like it might be working. Three cheers for Amazonian orchids!

Someone stirred in the bed beside him. Rhys turned his head, hands still resting possessively on his stomach. All he could see was a hump of duvet. No head on the pillow. No hair spilling out from the bedclothes. Panic suddenly swept over him. Gwen had left on police business before he had gone to bed, and he didn’t remember her coming back. Please God, don’t let it be Lucy in bed with him! Lovely though she was, and much as a primitive and unrepentant part of him wanted to shag her senseless, this was neither the time nor the place. Not in his and Gwen’s bed, for Christ’s sake! Not as things were sorting themselves out between them! Surely he couldn’t have got that drunk?

Tentatively, he reached out beneath the duvet and found a hip. Judging by the way his fingers fitted into its curves, its owner was facing away from him. Gently he stroked it.

The warmth felt like Gwen, and the shape felt like Gwen, but it had been long enough since he’d been in bed with someone else that he couldn’t quite remember whether girls all felt different in bed or if they all felt the same. He wanted to pull whoever it was towards him, turning them over so he could see their face, but if it was Lucy then he really didn’t want to know. It would lead to all kinds of trouble.

He stroked the hip again. From nowhere, a smaller hand closed over his fingers.

‘Tired,’ said a sleepy voice. ‘Got in late. Got to sleep.’

Relief sluiced through him like a waterfall. It was Gwen! Thank Christ, it was Gwen. That meant Lucy must be on the couch. And it was a Saturday as well, and he didn’t have to get up and go to work. God was in his heaven and all was well with the world.

He slipped out from between the duvet and the sheet, trying not to disturb Gwen, and pulled his ratty old dressing gown on. It wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted Lucy to see him in, but he wasn’t going to pull his usual trick and wander around the flat naked while she was staying. That would have been disastrous. Cautiously, he pulled the door open a crack and peered out.

The living room was dark, but a thin sliver of light slicing through the gap between the curtains illuminated the sofa. Their spare duvet had been placed on the sofa so that one half of it covered the cushions and the other half curled up and over Lucy’s recumbent body. A tousled mass of black hair and a fragment of pale forehead were all he could see of her. She had still been suffering from shock, the previous night; still reliving the bizarre attempt to abduct her. That primitive and unrepentant part of him wondered what she looked like under there; was she wearing panties and a T-shirt, or was she naked? Now that she’d lost so much weight, what did her body look like with no clothes on? What were the chances that she might turn over and snuggle into the duvet, revealing her naked back and her arse? Were her breasts really that phenomenal, close up?

He quickly changed mental channels. Creeping past the sofa he made it into the kitchen area of the flat, sorted out two mugs, then rinsed the metal percolator jug out, retrieved the ground coffee from the freezer, where Gwen insisted they stored it, and put three spoonfuls into the hopper on the machine. Genuine Cinchona Coffee, it said on the packet. Rhys hadn’t got a clue whether that was meant to indicate quality or not, but it certainly tasted strong and rich. The coffee gradually dripped its way into the jug, releasing a gorgeous smell, dark and complex, pungent and spiky. He felt himself becoming more awake just breathing it in.

He poured a cup for himself and another for Lucy, adding milk from a carton in the fridge and being careful that the bottles of wine in the fridge door — depleted after last night — didn’t clink when he shut it. Gwen sounded as if she needed to sleep; he could always warm a cup up in the microwave for her later on. She must have arrived back some time around sunrise, although that was becoming more and more the case these days. Whatever Torchwood was, it was consuming her. Obsessing her. She’d never worked this hard before, not in any of her police jobs.

Or perhaps it wasn’t the job. Perhaps it was this mysterious boss of hers. Jack. That was the name she’d mentioned from time to time. Perhaps he had some kind of hold over her.

Rhys carried Lucy’s cup of coffee into the living area. Bending down, he placed it on the coffee table close enough that she could reach out and get it but far enough away that she couldn’t accidentally knock it over. From where he was, he could see her clothes folded in a neat pile on the floor. Jeans. Blouse. Black lace bra, catch at the front, underwired. Rhys was no judge of size, but the sight made him feel breathless and warm. And there were a pair of trainers, sat demurely beside the clothes. Rhys had always thought of trainers as being big, clumsy things, but these were small, with pink and silver flashing. There was something so innocent, so girlish about them that he felt his breath catch in his throat. He’d never noticed Lucy wearing them before. He’d not noticed a lot about Lucy.

‘Morning,’ said a voice. He glanced up, startled, embarrassed. Lucy’s face was about two feet away from him. She’d lifted herself up from the sofa slightly, shifting the duvet so that it fell away from her body from shoulder to thigh. The deep shadows made her body more erotic, more mysterious. He felt his heart skip a beat.

‘Coffee’s here,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘I’ll do breakfast.’

‘I’m starving,’ she said.

‘What do you want to eat?’

She smiled, sleepily and suggestively. ‘You?’

‘Or bacon,’ Rhys said quickly. ‘Bacon and eggs do you?’

Lucy pouted, gazing up at Rhys from beneath heavy lashes. ‘If that’s all there is on the menu.’ She tugged the duvet around her, sitting upright with that sudden switch from sensuality to practicality that, Rhys had noticed, only women could manage. ‘And can I have lots of it? With toast?’

Rhys was about to straighten up when he noticed a dish on the side table that hadn’t been there the night before. Sticky traces around the edge indicated ice cream. A sudden pain ran through his stomach, as if someone had grabbed hold and twisted. Ice cream. Sweet and cool, melting in his mouth and trickling down his throat.

Lucy noticed his fixed gaze, and misinterpreted what he was thinking. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I woke up during the night and felt like I needed a snack. I hope you don’t mind…’

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering whether ice cream counted as breakfast.’

‘Actually…’ Lucy played with the edge of the duvet. ‘I think I might have finished it.’

‘No problem — I can always pop down the supermarket and get some more.’

‘It’s a good thing you didn’t need to go to the loo or something while I was getting the ice cream,’ she said, smiling at Rhys. ‘I completely forgot where I was, so I ended up stark naked by the freezer, scooping ice cream out of the tub.’

The mental picture of Lucy, her beautiful body illuminated by the light from the freezer door, licking ice cream from her lips hit Rhys’s mind. ‘I’ll… just get that toast on,’ he breathed.