- 1 -

Ianto Jones and I were standing outside the tourist information office that was the main entrance to the Hub, leaning on the rail and gazing out over the placid waters of the bay while drinking our coffees. It was early morning in Cardiff and so far we were the only members of the Torchwood crew here. Well, except for Jack of course, but he lives in the Hub. At first we sipped our beverages in silence, me because the inventory of alien artefacts I'd done a few days ago had given me an exciting idea, one whose kinks I was still working out, and Ianto just because.

"The Cardiff International Pool is coming along, Toshiko," he said abruptly, nodding in the direction where it lay on the far side of the bay, "though it's closer to the middle of Penarth than the middle of Cardiff where the old one was. Supposed to open next year, and not before time, too."

"The old one was before my time here," I said, sipping my coffee.

"Used to be on Wood Street," said Ianto. "The Empire Pool it was, Olympic standard. Opened in 1958, demolished in 1998 to make way for the new Millennium Stadium. Don't get me wrong, the stadium is magnificent, and it's great for rugby internationals, but it's a shame the Empire Pool had to go."

"Do you still go to internationals?"

"When I can. I remember the first time my Da and I travelled in from Newport by train to see a match in the previous stadium. I was instantly hooked, which is just as well since a love of rugby is almost a requirement of being Welsh. You're expected to support Wales and whoever's playing England."

"I almost feel like I should be offended," I chuckled.

"Ah, good," said an American voice behind us, "someone else is already in. And since it's you two, you're elected."

"Elected to do what, Jack? I sighed, turning to face our boss, Captain Jack Harkness.

"Just got a call from Gwen's old friend PC Andy. He was called out to investigate a death at a mansion on Sully Road, a heart attack."

"What's it got to with Torchwood?" asked Ianto. "Even if it's a suspicious death that's a police matter, surely?"

"According to Andy, and I quote: 'there's some weird bollocks here that your lot should deal with'."

"Do we know who the deceased is?" I asked.

"Jez Stackhouse. Some sixties rocker, apparently. Name mean anything to either of you?"

I shook my head, but Ianto's eyes lit up.

"He was a session musician on albums by everyone from the late fifties onward, and I do mean everyone. Despite doing a stint out front with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers he was never a household name, but among aficionados he is - was - a legend. Born in 1938, so that'd make him 69 now. Amazing he lived so long given all the drugs he did in the sixties and early seventies. He got clean after that, and retired to Wales. So that's him and Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant up there near Machynlleth, then."

As its name suggests Sully Road is the road to Sully, one of the many small villages that dot the coastline west of Cardiff. The road itself isn't much more than a country lane, so the Torchwood SUV being a bit of a beast we were fortunate not to encounter anyone coming the other way when we turned onto it from the A4055 just beyond Cogan. The mansion was a relatively modest Victorian pile which you come upon before you reach Sully and is visible from far off, sitting as it does amid the flat surrounding farmland. We pulled up on the driveway next to a police car, a white one with a red stripe running along the side which had led to the type being given an inevitable nickname.

"A jam sandwich!" exclaimed Ianto. "Probably the last of the jam sandwiches. I thought they'd all been phased out a few years ago."

PC Andy emerged from the mansion on hearing us arrive.

"Only you?" I queried.

"For now. Forensics wanted you to assure them the stuff we found is safe before getting stuck in. I'll call them back on my radio when you tell me it's safe."

"Where's the body?" asked Ianto.

"Already whisked away by the coroner. Jeremy Roland 'Jez' Stackhouse, born 1938 in Manchester, died here today in 2007. Preliminary cause of death - a massive heart attack. The stuff we need you to look at is in his study."

He led us into that book-lined room with its antique desk, the various display cases it also contained housing the artefacts we were here to assess. I'd brought my scanner from the SUV, and while Ianto studied the bookshelves I checked to see if anything was emitting harmful radiation of any sort or otherwise seemed dangerous.

"Lots of books here covering all the usual conspiracy theories," said Ianto, while I ran through every scanner setting.

"Everything's clean," I announced, laying down the scanner, "but it looks like Jez had been collecting anything alien he could get his hands on for quite a while."

Recognizable among the alien bric-a-brac were a weevil skull, a Cyberman faceplate, a Dalek eye-stalk, and a Pendaran life-stone. It was this last that had alarmed the police since it was glowing and pulsing with an eerie purple light. They did that, but were quite harmless. Examining the bric-a-brac more closely I was pleased to spot a couple of items that I could use in the project I was contemplating, and surprised to find a (non-functional) Arcateenian telepathic pendant. It was just such a pendant that enabled me to see and hear Mary, my currently phantom girlfriend.

"See if you and Andy can rustle up a couple of boxes and we'll cart this lot back to the Hub."

While Ianto scurried off to do that I moved over to the desk. On it was a framed photo showing the then middle-aged Jez Stackhouse with his arm around a younger woman, both of them dressed in studded black leather. It had been signed: "Me and my Mary, 1987." I gasped on seeing this.

Because though she was older in the photograph, his Mary was my Mary.

- 2 -

Being a phantom Mary could come and go as she pleased and would often follow me to work but unless there was a specific reason to do otherwise I always left the telepathic pendant that allowed me to see and hear her at home. This was both because I couldn't let myself to be distracted by her while working - and Mary was very distracting - and because seeing me interacting with someone invisible to them would clue the others in to her presence, something Jack and I had agreed I would not do. So rather than be ignored by me Mary would often go walkabout during the day, though she was almost always there to greet me when I returned home to my flat in Pontcanna. After transporting Jez Stackhouse's collection back to the Hub, and spending the rest of the day cataloguing it, it was a relief to go home, don the pendant, and gaze once more into the face of the woman I loved. She could see immediately that I had something on my mind.

"What is it, Toshiko?" she asked, frowning.

"Jez Stackhouse died today," I said, taking out the photo I'd filched, "and I found this on his desk."

"Ah," she said.

"A part of your life you haven't yet told me about."

"After two centuries here there are plenty of those," she replied, "but this isn't one of them."

"You're saying that isn't you in the photo?"

"It is, and yet it isn't."

"I don't understand."

"My life is full of improbable coincidences," she sighed, "and this is another one since it was only a few days ago that I mentioned..."

"Mentioned *what*?" I asked, exasperated by her trailing off in mid-sentence.

"I've told you how I'd age when I was away from the Rift," she said, "and how this was at a normal rate at first but it accelerated in the early seventies, yes? Well, it got to the point where I'd age a decade every week, something so noticeable that I had no choice but to move back to Cardiff and its environs permanently. Being here would reverse that aging over the course of a month or two, resetting me physically to 26 years old, the age Mary Wozniak was when I first melded with her. Well in 1976, I started a relationship with Fiona Farmer, a married woman who was separated from her husband, Al. I had a decent sized house on Rhyd-Y-Pennau Road in Cyncoed at the time, one that backed on to a wood. She and her 5 year old daughter Katy - both of them blonde and pretty - moved in with me. Which brings me to

THE STRANGE STORY OF MY HUMAN CHILDHOOD

Fiona had a doctor's appointment late that afternoon so I was looking after Katy until her return, enjoying a cup of coffee and a cigarette as I watched the early evening news. It was August 1976 and as usual the main item was the record-breaking heatwave and drought the UK was suffering under, It had turned parched grass the colour of straw across the length and breadth of the land and produced an almost biblical plague of billions of ladybirds. Reservoirs had dried up, water was rationed, and factories and schools had closed. In all my time here I had never known anything like it.

I glanced over to where Katy was sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor with her toys. She looked so adorable in her little pink dress, white socks, and shiny Mary Janes, a large pink bow in her hair, that I couldn't help smiling.

Then I frowned as something unusual caught my eye.

She was playing with a strange looking jewel I'd never seen before, presumably one of the basket of items Fiona had bought from a local junk shop yesterday for Katy to play with. It should have been no more than a piece of cheap knock-off costume jewellery, but something told me it wasn't. With all the alien items that fall through the rift across the city and keep Torchwood busy, it pays to be careful.

"Can I see that, sweetie?" I asked, putting my coffee down and my cigarette in an ashtray before kneeling next to her.

She nodded and offered it to me. As my fingers touched the gemstone so there was a bright flash of light and I was thrown backwards. Momentarily blinded, everything looked suddenly bigger when my sight returned. I also felt really peculiar. Gazing down at myself, the sight of my small pink dress, white socks, shiny Mary Janes, and pudgy little girl arms revealed the shocking truth. Somehow, impossibly, I was in Katy's body!

"Wow, that was something!" said a familiar voice, my voice.

The woman I'd been until seconds ago was already on her feet and retrieving my cigarette from the ashtray. I was too stunned to say anything as she took a long drag.

"K..Katy?" I said uncertainly, finding my voice - my squeaky little girl voice.

"No, not Katy," she smiled, slowly exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke and studying me thoughtfully.

"It's me," she said, chuckling at my puzzlement, "Mary Wozniak, the woman whose life became yours a hundred and sixty years ago."