Free Risk Assessment by James Goss

one-night stand?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Gwen.
    Agnes poured herself a cup of Chinese tea and noticed, with interest, the bottle of beer Gwen was necking. Her calculating look suggested that drinking straight from the bottle was somehow a little wrong.
    Gwen made another guess. ‘And Torchwood Cardiff – what was it like in the early days?’
    ‘Well, my dear. . .’ Agnes looked thrilled to be asked. ‘Actually, I was influential in getting Cardiff a Torchwood base, don’t you know? It was before I became the Assessor – when I was down here shooting at zombies. I thought, “This thing’s ’appened before, and it may well ’appen again, Aggie, you mark my words.”’ She coughed slightly, and her voice resumed its normal timbre. ‘And I realised the Rift was strong enough and still very much dangerous. It was as though it had lain dormant for millennia but some space-time disturbance a few years earlier had just. . . shifted it slightly. Awoken it, you might say. Curious.’
    ‘I see,’ said Gwen.
    ‘And I was right – from then on it was. . . oh, you know. Elizabethan plague doctors walking the streets, a litter of alien objects, strange lights in the sky. . .’
    ‘Business as usual,’ smiled Gwen.
    ‘Quite,’ said Agnes, echoing the smile. She looked around the bar. ‘Oh yes, it couldn’t happen to a nicer city. And there was this gal up in Scotland, Alice Guppy. Dear creature, very bright, serious as the tomb, but couldn’t hold a teacup without crooking her little finger. No one knew what to do with her. . . And so we shipped her down here.’ She turned in her seat and glared at a passing waitress, who slouched over. ‘My dear,’ smiled Agnes, ‘I don’t suppose you have a sherry, do you?’
    ‘End of the bloody world,’ sighed Jack, prodding at the decomposing sample.
    Ianto looked up from neatening Gwen’s desk. ‘Jack?’
    ‘That woman.’ Jack’s tone was sour. He rearranged his braces, distractedly, which gave him the air of an old-fashioned comedian about to tell a joke about his mother-in-law. ‘Why does she always have to be right?’
    Ianto gently laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Because otherwise she wouldn’t be so annoying.’
    And Jack took the hand, and smiled.
    ‘And what, pray, is this?’ giggled Agnes. She’d untied her bonnet and it rested unsteadily on the seat next to them. She stared curiously at the tiny glass in front of her. ‘It seems but a thimble, yet it savours rather strongly of spirits.’ She looked at Gwen with mock disapproval, and then hiccupped. ‘Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m getting a bit Mrs Gaskell in my cups.’ She raised the glass, sniffed at it again, and then downed it in one with barely a shudder. ‘Nope. My father taught me, quietly, all the various types of rum and it most certainly isn’t of those. He feared I would take after mama’s Scottish heritage and was keen to teach me about things other than a single malt. Which,’ her face flushed, ‘isn’t really what a father is supposed to distil in his offspring – instil rather – only. . . oh, he so wanted a son and was delighted when I could shoot straight.’
    Gwen sipped carefully at her zambuca. The Welsh truth serum was working its wonders.
    ‘Why another!’ roared Agnes, happily, slapping the table and startling a waitress into action. ‘There’s a liquorice savour about it which rather tickles the. . . Why, Mrs Cooper, I declare you have me tipsy.’ And a slow smile spread across her features. ‘I know what you’re doing, you know,’ she said, slyly.
    ‘What?’ Gwen decided on mock innocence. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘You are trying to get me inebriated in hopes that I’ll tell you about myself. There’s no need to worry – I’ll gladly tell you whatever you want to know. Consider me an open book, my dear friend.’
    And Agnes plucked refilled glasses from a tray and used a gloved hand to wave away the waitress.
    ‘So you don’t