Torchwood: Exodus Code by Carole E. Barrowman, John Barrowman Page A

squirming in the seat, her cries getting louder. An elderly couple began down the aisle towards them, observed the scene and backed away.
    ‘Cowards,’ said Gwen, snatching a box of puffed wheat from the shelf, and thrusting it into Anwen’s hands. Immediately, Anwen’s howls dropped to a low fuss while she negotiated the top of the box, her tiny hands tearing into the cardboard.
    When Gwen turned back, the woman had dropped to her knees on the tiled floor and was rocking back and forth, mumbling nonsense about her feet.
    Gwen crouched in front of her. ‘Is there someone I can call for you?’
    ‘I just want it all to stop.’ She cradled her head in her hands. ‘Everything is too loud. Everything. I can hear myself blink. My feet ache. They hurt so much.’
    Poor thing probably stopped taking her prescriptions, Gwen thought, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder and gently squeezing. The woman screamed and crab-walked frantically away from Gwen’s touch.
    ‘Don’t yell at me!’
    ‘I’m sorry… I’m sorry,’ said Gwen, raising her hands in the air. The woman backed herself against the corner of the shelves at the end of the aisle, tucked her head between her knees and tugged her jacket up over her head.
    ‘Listen, I’m calling someone for you,’ said Gwen, cereal crunching under her feet. ‘I’ll wait here with you until they come. OK?’
    The woman let out a long sad moan. Gwen took the sound for a yes and put her phone to her ear, quickly calling 999. While she patiently explained the situation, Anwen steadily covered herself in a rain of cereal.
    Meanwhile the woman was thumping her feet against the shelves behind her, but she was no longer shouting or even moaning, she was humming, not a tune as much as a chord of peculiar-sounding notes that slowly became a low chant in Welsh of ‘Distaw! Distaw!’
    ‘Thanks,’ Gwen said and slipped her mobile into her pocket. She knelt in front of the woman. ‘It’ll be ok, luv, someone’s coming to help you. I’m sure they’ll make the noises stop.’

19
    THE SHOP MANAGER and a security guard charged down the cereal aisle, taking in the piles of crushed grains, the empty boxes scattered on the floor, a toddler in a trolley eating from a ripped-open box like some kind of wild animal, and two women crouched on the floor, one of them hidden under a jacket, singing and rocking on the balls of her feet.
    ‘Oi! What are you doing?’ the manager yelled, pointing angrily at Anwen. Blissfully unaware of her surroundings, she dug into her puffed oats. ‘Christ, you’ll have to pay for this mess you know. This isn’t a… a play school,’ he blustered, nodding to the security guard, who pushed Gwen’s trolley off to the side, blocking her passage back down the aisle to the front of the shop.
    At both ends of the aisle, small crowd of shoppers were gathering, some taking pictures of the bizarre scene with their mobiles.
    Gwen tried to squelch the rage she could feel rising in her chest as she stood and faced the manager. She clenched and unclenched her fists, banging them against her legs, taking deep breaths and hearing Rhys’s voice in her head before he left for work that morning.
    ‘Please don’t pick any more fights, Gwen. We already can ’t go to Boots or to the butcher’s and you’re getting a bit of a rep at the Cwm Deri bakery, and it’s not for your taste in muffins. Try to stay calm. Please. Keep Mrs Angry in check.’
    Gwen forced Rhys out of her head. ‘Mrs Angry’. Who the hell did he think he was talking to? Anwen? I’m in control. I’m always in control. She could feel her chest tightening and she could hear the manager speaking into his mobile and for a brief moment she thought she could see his words, pink and opaque, floating across her field of vision then exploding into a test card of white noise.
    Really, Gwen, get a grip.
    She started to count to ten. Rhys was right. This was the closest supermarket to home. Gwen was aware