Here is part three of our serial, by Gareth Evans. Gareth, one of Quentin Langley's former students, graduated from Cardiff School of Journalism in 2005 before specialising in public and media relations and entering the world of work in 2006. He currently works in the corporate communications and public affairs department at Google's London office. 

His sister had finished talking and now it was Niall that needed a drink. His relaxed demeanour betrayed the industrious palpitations inside his chest. 

They'd already polished off the cheap plonk (he thought the Mini-Mart had many attributes for convenience shoppers – milk, bread, birthday gifts – but its wine carried the ungraceful aftertaste of stagnant Ribena), so Niall retreated to the living room to grab a half-drunk bottle of scotch and two tumblers. He could tell his sister was already a bit squiffy from the wine. He knew the signs by now: her cheeks soared to an embarrassing shade of crimson while her left eye did the most curious thing, where it would droop subtly, though undoubtedly, in a south-westerly direction. But there was no harm in encouraging a bit of openness. Not tonight. There were questions to be answered. 

He poured two generous helpings of scotch and pushed a glass in front of his sister.

“Remember Niall, what I've told you goes no further.”

“But this is…” Niall stammered

“But nothing," she cut in sharply, "I could lose my job.” She took another swig of scotch and her left retina fell a little further towards the bottom corner of her eye

He lent back in his chair. The hell with that, he thought. Some things were not meant to be kept secret. It was a well known fact that some things in society trumped less important things – there was a natural order. A full-house trumps two-pair, for example; the Supreme Court can trump Congress; and Jeremy Paxman’s opinion on underpants can trump a week’s worth of serious news. In Niall’s mind, alien pregnancies certainly trumped doctor-patient confidentiality.

Jeremy Black was in for a long walk home. It wasn't that he had ‘jumped’ and forgotten his whereabouts, nor was missing his stop the result of any cognitive issues at all. His matter was purely social (and material if you count his grey school trousers which were a touch expressive around the crotch). Miss Jenks had disembarked three stops ago, though not before brushing past the hormonal teenager on her way off. The way her knee-length skirt accentuated her shapely form as her slender legs negotiated their way down the aisle of the bus did for the boy. And who knew the whiff of tomato soup could be such an aphrodisiac? His cooling off period meant he was ready to hop off the bus three stops later, but unfortunately he spotted a group of scantily clad sixth-form girls congregated outside the shops and this cost him another four stops. Jeremy equally cursed and blessed the name of Miss Sally Jenks on the long walk back up the Holloway Road.

Niall closed his eyes  and cast his mind back half an hour to consider what it all meant: 

The blood sample was 'extrinsic' by Madeline's account (she had actually described the blood as 'like nothing she'd ever seen before' but after being put through the Niall's imagination-prism, 'extrinsic' was the resultant descriptor). He replayed the facts in his head: dark blood, still red, but very dark. More intriguingly it retained  a ‘metallic quality’. What this looked like to the naked eye he could only imagine. This was big news in itself, although his sister was later to unveil an even more sensational discovery. 

At first Maddie had been vague about the scan: seemingly normal but after further inspection there was sufficient ‘cause for concern’. This was sister-speak for something seriously awry - but she'd always had a bothersome knack of being able to retain a professional superiority no matter how slurred her speech became, which made for interesting table-talk at dinner parties. 

She'd told him that while she was carrying out the usual ante-natal scans and tests, she felt there was something wrong with this pregnancy - something she couldn't quite place. After the patient left, Madeline shared the results with the specialist, Dr Barringdale-Smythe. Niall scowled when he heard mention of that name. He'd met Barringdale-Smythe at last year’s hospital Summer Ball, to which he was accompanying his recently divorced sister. He was a smarmy, well-fed gentleman who had coarse grey-brown hair growing from every visible orifice. He was always conveniently on hand to refill Madeline’s glass and laughed a little too loudly as her jokes, and Niall hated that. Not that he begrudged his sister happiness, mind you, he just thought she could do better than someone who looked like he had two hedgehogs abseiling out of his nostrils. 

She'd shown the doctor the scans and the blood sample and he confirmed something was definitely erroneous with the baby’s genetics. She explained they'd first considered some form of elephantiasis, which would explain the size of the baby - but a condition of that nature was unlikely to reveal itself  that early in the pregnancy. Besides, it didn't explain the ugly blood in the test tube.

"Now, Maddie, is there anything else I should know before I examine the patient tomorrow? What about the father?" Barringdale-Smythe had asked. "The father?" his sister had replied,

"No idea. A foreigner by all accounts. Could be anywhere by now." 

They were just about to call it a day when something caught the specialist's eye. He pulled his reading glasses out of his top pocket and held the scan up in front of him. His brow was a blanket of perspiration.

"Madeline. The Doppler test. Was there anything unusual about it? Anything at all?"

"Come to think of it, yes. There was almost an echo. But then I can't be sure. Might have been the equipment, or I might have..."

"No, Madeline. I don't think it was an error." 

Then his sister had explained to Niall - in the professional and prosaic manner of a lawyer summating her case - that although it was almost unnoticeable on the scan, the very real probability was that this baby was going to be born with not one, but two separately functioning hearts. Sitting at the table, his eyes still closed, a wicked grin spread across Niall's face.

After the scan and the soup fiasco, Sally decided to cancel her gym class that evening. All she wanted to do was lie in her dressing gown and pig out in front of a chick-flick. Unfortunately her mother had Sky-Plussed Jeremy Kyle, so she was forced to comprehend why people would bring their partners onto national TV to tell them they were sleeping with their father in-law. She forced a smile when she thought of Jeremy Kyle's face if she'd divulged her little problem on his show.

Then for reasons entirely unrelated to Jeremy Kyle or his human circus, emotion crept up on Sally and she began to sob. One of those long, hard sobbing sessions where snot trickles down from your nose and into your mouth, but you don’t really care. Her mother was perched next to her on the sofa and rubbed her back, saying things like “there, there”, and “everything will be fine, you’ll see” from the in-built well of comforting phrases from which all mothers draw when their siblings are swept away with sentiment. Sally eventually dried her eyes and wiped away the snot with the sleeve of her dressing gown.

“Do you think Aliens have to pay child maintenance?” enquired her mother. Sally burst into tears again.

Niall’s creative juices flowed as he digested this information. This girl with this thing, this Alien thing, growing inside her was going to make him famous.

A lecture tour? Yes. A book? Certainly, he thought - he might even have some evidence this time. But the potential for this was immense. There’d be national news coverage, respect from his peers and admiration from sci-fi nerds around the globe. Even a reality TV show with round-the-clock coverage of the pregnancy would not be out of the question.

Jeremy slammed the front door behind him and dumped his rucksack in the hallway. He walked through to the kitchen where he found a ready-meal with a scrawled Post-It from his mother attached. It read: 'GONE CASTLE BINGO DAD DOWN PUB HEAT 3 MINS DONT WAIT UP.' 

After dinner, which looked like lasagne but tasted of Shepard's pie, Jeremy put on the radio and lay on his bed with nothing better to do. He let his mind wander and thoughts turned inevitably to Miss Jenks, her flexing calf muscles and tomato soup. His imagination raced through various scenarios and adrenalin began to career though his veins. Jeremy began to squirm, gently at first, but as his brain dreamt up ever more exotic scenes with Sally Jenks at their centre, he began to shake increasingly violently as his inner beast wrestled to get out. Eventually, in a pit of sexual sweat and tension, Jeremy Black passed out. The silence was broken only by the feint two-toned beats of his heart.

Part Four will follow soon...