After the MRI showed no signs of tumours or unusual electrical activity, Rose Haverbrook asked me to return the following day at the same time. So I did.

"Have you ever seen a film called The Silence of the Lambs, Reed?" she asked me, on our first official meeting.

"No," I answered. "Tell me about it."

"Well, the details are disturbing. Suffice it to say, that the FBI agent agrees to a quid pro quo basis for an interview with a convicted serial killer. He gives her insights into another killer's methods in exchange for personal details about her life."

"Ooh, sounds like great fun."

"I've always thought, in spite of the creepy serial killer spin, that it was a pretty healthy way to have a therapy session. We exchange personal details, and in-between, we talk about why you're here."

"Can you do that?"

"I'm not a doctor," Rose replied, knowing what I was thinking, that it would be a professional breach of ethics to release details about her personal life. "I can do anything I want. In fact, incidentally, let's let that be detail number one: I was going to pursue my doctorate in psychology, but I got pregnant, and sort of derailed."

"Okay, erm, I... have never been pregnant."

Rose smirked. "Okay, thus far not too personal, but we'll get there. Tell me about the visual aspects of your visions. Sights, colours, light."

"Well, nothing about what you describe as the visual aspects are very consistent. All I can say is that the visions range from blurry to very clear."

"There are no recurring colours? No dominant reds or whites, for example?"

I thought about this. "No. There is a variation of colour... it's as varied as it is in real life. Except, of course, when the girls return to common places, like their homes or schools or workplaces. Then the visual details are consistent."

"Okay. Give me an example."

I shut my eyes tight. "Well, all three of the females appear sometimes in a black wood-panelled room," I said. "I think it's a library of sorts, with a big, dark wooden table, and of course books everywhere. Sometimes she's trapped there."

"Who?"

"The woman."

"The woman, or the girls, or all of them?"

I opened my eyes. "What did you say?"

"I asked you if it was the woman, the teen or the little girl trapped in the black wood-panelled room, or if it was all of them. You said they all appear there in your visions..."

"It's... the woman. But it's all of them. Wait, that doesn't make any sense."

"No, but continue."

"It's all of them. It's like they're the same person, they are one."

"I've been wondering if they are the same person at different ages," Rose said. "I was wondering if you would come to that conclusion on your own, or if you already had."

"But it's impossible," I pointed out, still with my eyes shut. "Because the teenager is black."

"Black? A person of African descent?"

"Yes."

"And the other two are not? The little girl and the woman?"

"They're white."

"Oh, that's interesting."

"So they can't be the same woman at different ages, can they?"

"Well, the laws of the universe as we know them tell us... probably not. But I've seen things that defy the laws of the universe as we know them, so let's explore more." There was a long pause, and Rose said, "My mother died last year, Reed."

"I'm sorry. Were you close?"

"Yes, very," Rose confessed. "I miss her a lot. She used to smoke a lot, when she was younger, when I was a kid. They say that's how she got lung cancer, but... I think it was the carcinogens in the air in the Congo."

"The Congo?"

"Yes, she was there on a humanitarian mission with the Red Cross as a benefactor about ten years ago. I told her not to go."

I smiled wryly. "I suppose that means you'd like to know about my mother."

"I hate treating people with psychiatric training," Rose answered, just as wryly.

"Well, she was pretty much a typical mother. She's where I get my cheek from."

"I think you're very pleasant. I don't find you overly cheeky."

"You're in the minority, trust me," I assured her. "She had a career for a little while when I was small, but she gave it up so she could volunteer at school and help coach lacrosse and the like."

"I see. What sort of career did she have?"

"She worked for a perfume company," I answered, shifting in my seat.

"Was she a chemist?"

"No, she, er..." I cleared my throat. "She modeled in their ads."

"Oh! Why does that make you so uncomfortable?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I feel she could have done more with her brain, and her life. I feel that there's a reason she was so willing to give it up. It seems like an empty practice to me."

"Did she also look like Queen Bess?"

"No," I answered bitterly. "She was ten times prettier than Queen Bess."

"I see," Rose said, cryptically. Though, as she had pointed out, I had had some training in psychiatrics and I knew what she was finding out with these questions. I had hang-ups about my mother, and she was trying to work out what this had to do with the visions of women I felt connected to.

"Mrs. Haverbrook, you're barking up the wrong tree. The visions are nothing to do with my mother."

"Oh, I'm sure you're right," she told me calmly. "I'm just trying to get to know you."

I closed my eyes again. "There is swirling light," I told her. "Sometimes blue, sometimes orange. I can see it churning, and it means something - it's not just an abstract representation of something that should become clearer. It is its own thing."

"So, perhaps just like the females in you visions, and the man with the bowtie, the orange and blue swirling lights are important, and have a name that you don't know?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Okay. Continue."

"There's a green light as well, but it's a different kind of light. It's much less brilliant, and it doesn't churn. It pumps."

"Pumps?"

"Yes, like an oil well surrounded by cartoonish nuclear material."

Rose chuckled. "Interesting visual."

I opened my eyes and looked at her expectantly.

"So, you know there are other worlds, yeah?" she asked. "Well, I have a confession to make: I'm from one of them. We often call it Dimension Alpha, the universe where I grew up. And in my world, I grew up without a father - he was killed when I was a baby. In this world, my mother was killed. And many, many years ago, when the worlds collided, there was this great big ugly battle right here at Torchwood, and it's a long story but... my mum and I got trapped here, and my parents reunited. Goodness, what was I, twenty, at the time? " At that, she stared off into the distance for a moment, and seemed to catch a memory. She utterly checked out for the time being, her mind and heart, I could see, were not in the here and now.

And then just as suddenly, she resumed. "Anyway, I often envied them having lost each other rather hideously, and having found one another again. It always made them appreciate each other more acutely. It's something we all should strive for in our relationships."

"I can see that," I conceded. "So, wait: you're from another world? Like another planet?"

"No, I'm from London... just a parallel dimension."

I felt a surge of excitement. "That's so amazing! Just to know that something like that exists!"

"You'll get used to it," she assured me. "I reckon you've already got used to it on some level."

"So, you said you envied your parents their relationship, having lost each other."

"Yep."

"To know what it was like to live without the other, so that they would always know that they couldn't be apart."

"Exactly," she nodded.

"How long have you been married?"

"No, Reed, quid pro quo. " She fluttered an eyebrow at me.

"Okay, well, my parents married young - they were twenty-one. They got married in June, and I was born nine months later." I felt wistful because, truth be told, I liked my parents a lot, even with the issues. "My mum, she's the strong one in the relationship, at least from the outside. Actually, most people think she wears the pants in the family, but... don't tell her I said this, but I think it's really my dad. He's truly a man of strength, and above all, patience. Good God, the man is patient."

"Give him a run for his money when you were a kid, did you?" Rose asked.

"Often, yes," I chuckled.

"Reed, close your eyes. When I say the word void to you, what do you see, or feel?"

I shivered. "The Howling," I whispered.

"The what?"

"The Howling," I repeated. "Cold, black, nothing. No feeling, no light, no time."

When I opened my eyes, I felt almost drunk, and Rose was staring at me with wide eyes, and worry, almost fear, betraying itself.

"Whoa," I commented. "Where did that come from?"

"It came..." she began, then gulped. "It came from an interdimensional contact, Reed. The void... you understand the void."

"No, I don't, really."

"You understand it intrinsically. I'm convinced, as you are, that your visions are real."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. The void is the zero space between universes, like the dark place between dry-wall panels between rooms. It is wasted space. And it is impossible for anything, including messages, sentience, visions, whatever, to cross from one universe to the other without crossing the void. When thoughts cross over, they must..."

"... must what?"

"Well, when anything crosses the void, some residue is leftover. If thoughts cross into your mind, then the void gets inside your mind, permeates you. You understand the void, you have experienced it on an unconscious level. And especially since you called it the Howling..." she exhaled hard, catching her breath.

"Are you okay?" I asked uneasily.

"Yes," she assured me, smiling quickly. "It's just, I have never had a case like this, so obviously in-tune with the... I don't know, the turn of the universe. Many patients know what the void is in theory, but they cannot describe it. You called it the Howling."

"You keep saying that. How is that significant?"

"It just is," she said. "I have only ever heard one person call it that and... well. Reed, listen, I think there's a thin spot in the void somewhere, allowing thoughts to cross to you, or visions, messages, whatever. But I still don't know what your connection is to the females you're seeing, or why they want you. We still need to work out if the messages they're sending you are conscious on their part, or if it's coincidence or what. Do they need something from you? Can you get rid of the visions? Do you even want to? So much to talk about..."

I could tell that Rose was agitated. She was fixated on the Howling, mere terminology with which I had described what she called the void. Something in that word made her very nervous, whereas, up until now, she had been cool as a cucumber. She wondered what the connection was between me and the women now, and had a million questions all of a sudden. I'd made a believer out of her but I wasn't sure how!