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"You're leaving nose-prints on the glass," Jack said. Amelia startled and straightened up so her face was farther from the window. He smirked when she scowled at him. "Your face'll freeze like that," he warned her, as if she were a much younger child.
She grabbed a cushion off the sofa and threw it at him. "Jack, this is London," she said. In her seventeen years, she'd never left Cardiff--she told him so on the train. "I know you've been here before, but don't you still find it at least a little exciting?"
Jack snorted and looked out on streets filled with the bustle of people and the odor of cars, behind that pane of glass. "At a certain level," he said, "all cities are the same. They're crowded and you can hide anything here. Which gives Torchwood One a certain edge on us in containing problems." Amelia's frown was a silent rebuke in the moment before she turned to look back out the window. I'm a cynical old man, Jack thought, wryly.
He stepped up beside the sofa and looked out over her shoulder. It was as pleasant as days ever got in London: sunlit and warm and full of people about their business. "What do you see?" he asked.
"People," she said, instantly. "Marveous buildings. Opportunities. Excitement."
Jack smiled, in spite of himself. "You can see excitement, huh?"
Amelia made a rude noise. She pointed. "Right there. See the little girls? Excitement."
The pair were about eight and six, each one with a chubby hand in her mother's. They did look like they were expecting some treat. "Trip to gran's, maybe," Jack said. "I hope so--their mother looks like she hasn't had enough sleep."
Amelia glanced over at him and frowned a bit. "What makes you say that? She's not facing us."
Jack put one knee on the sofa beside her and leaned forward a little, bracing his arms along the back of it. "Look at the line of her back. See the little slump?" Amelia nodded. "And the curve of her shoulders, where they fall forward a little. But the give-away that it's sleep and not something else? Watch her walk."
Amelia studied the tired woman for several moments. "Short steps," she observed. "But she's slowing for her children."
Jack shook his head. "She doesn't pick up her feet," he said. "Look at her steps, and then look at the woman across the street--the one in the green blouse. See the difference?"
"Oh!" Amelia said, in that startled, delighted way she gave voice to some new understanding. Jack chuckled. She turned to look at him. "How did you learn that?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Practice, mostly." And a few acquaintances of dubious moral suasion. "It's just a matter of learning to really see people, and not just people-shaped cut-outs."
Amelia looked thoughtfully fascinated. "What else do you see?" she wondered.
Can you teach me? Jack edited in, mentally. Amelia took to any new body of knowledge with the same enthusiasm she'd taken to the study of alien technology. He studied the streetscape in front of them. "Well, speaking of excitement . . . " He suppressed a grin. "You see the guy by the lamp post, there?"
"In the grey suit?" she said.
"In the very expensive grey suit," he agreed. "Look at the way the fabric hangs at his hip and knee. And see the polish on his shoes?" Amelia nodded. "So he's well-off . . . and very interested in the young lady beside him. Which is something else tell from the way his trousers ride.
Amelia murmured, "I already knew you were incorrigible, Jack. That's not interesting."
The little dig made him laugh. "Well, then. Look at the way their upper bodies lean toward each other, just a little."
Amelia said, "She's leaning more than a little. And her blouse is almost indecent."
"For London in 1954, yes. And since she's not a prostitute--"
"Jack!"
"What? She's not. Wrong time of day for it in this part of town."
Amelia covered her face with her hand, hiding exasperation or amusement--Jack wasn't sure which. "I shouldn't be surprised you know these things," she complained. "And yet, Cyn sent you with me to help keep me from running into trouble. That's the part I don't quite follow."
"I keep your life interesting," he pointed out. "Besides, you're still technically a minor. Now get your eyes out of your hand or you'll miss the excitement."
"Oh. And here I thought it was in his trousers," she said, dryly, and looked.
"Behind him--the kid about your sister's age, in the brown hat--that's her partner. See the brush-by?" The kid bumped into the distracted fellow. The lift was so deft, Jack barely saw it, and he was looking. "He just picked the guy's pocket."
Amelia's head swiveled and she stared at Jack for a minute. "And we're just going to sit here?" she concluded.
He raised his eyebrows. "You want to find a constable and tell him you saw the guy's pocket picked? Did you see it? Could you describe the pair? If anybody gets too close, he'll dump the wallet in a rubbish bin."
She made a face. "Not our business?"
"Not our business," Jack agreed. "Cities live and breathe on the fact that people mind their own business."
Amelia wrinkled her noise. "And I need to sharpen my observation skills," she noted.
Jack grinned at her inability to leave it alone. He remembered, if only just, being seventeen and idealistic. "Sorry, sweetheart," he said, sympathetically. "Here--it's not all depressing out there." He looked out the window, his eyes seeking a suitable target. "I can teach you how to identify soldiers when they're out of uniform."
"But I like uniforms," Amelia said, pertly.
Jack grinned without looking away. "A woman after my own heart. I'll show you how to pick out police, too, when I see a constable on his off-hours." At her inquiring noise, he said, "It's the walk. And the eyes. The same things that give away people with something to hide. But . . . " he trailed off as he found something worth looking at. "Here we go. The woman in yellow. On the street corner."
"Yes," Amelia said, as her eyes caught up with his.
He grinned. "The sun's behind her, which puts us at an advantage. That's a nice, light skirt on her dress--you see the way it drifts just a little with every puff of breeze?" Amelia nodded. "Now, see how the sun backlights her legs so you can see them clearly?"
"She needs to wear a slip," Amelia murmured. Jack stayed silent, and she glanced at him inquiringly. "What am I looking at?"
He smirked. "Very lovely legs."
Amelia waited a moment, then closed her eyes. The slight tension at the corner of her mouth told him she was trying not to smile. "Jack, when I was a little girl the vicar taught me the words 'lead us not into temptation.' I know he hadn't met you personally, but somehow, I'm sure you're exactly what he meant."
Jack laughed.