Wrong Place Wrong Time(22)

‘In what?’ Pauline says, suddenly serious. For all her humour, she is a formidable mother where it matters. She will tolerate smoking and swearing, Jen thinks, but nothing worse. Look at her here: checking Connor has made it to school.

‘I don’t know – I just … Todd is acting strangely. And I just wondered – has Connor?’

Pauline tilts her head back just a fraction. ‘I see.’

‘Exactly.’

More parents begin to gather around them by the gates. Eleven-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds greet their parents and Jen thinks how she’s only done this a handful of times, instead choosing to sift through disclosure at the office, appraising trainees, making bundles of documents. Earning money. She wonders, now, quite what it was all for.

‘He seems fine …’ Pauline says slowly, and Jen is so thankful, suddenly, here, for her friend, who has understood the subtext and chosen not to take offence. ‘But let me do some digging,’ she adds, right before Connor and Todd arrive.

‘All right,’ Connor says to Jen. He has a tattoo that looks like a necklace, rosary beads maybe, disappearing into the neck of his T-shirt. Tattoos are personal choice, Jen tells herself. Stop being snobby.

He takes his cigarettes out of his pocket, which Jen is relieved to see Pauline wince at. He flares the lighter while still staring at Jen. The flame illuminates his face for the briefest of moments. He gives her a wink, so fast you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it.

It’s been a difficult evening. Todd left as soon as he got home; ‘Going to Clio’s,’ he said. He had been irritated by Jen’s appearance at the school pick-up, and annoyed with Kelly, too. ‘Can either of you two get hobbies?’ he’d said, when they were all at home by four o’clock.

After he left, Jen looked up Clio on Facebook. She is a couple of years older than Todd, but in education still. An art college nearby. Her page is meticulously curated. Model-like shots of her, a strangely high number of political memes, a lot of bunches of flowers. Pretty innocuous teenage stuff. Jen is going to go and see her, soon, she has decided. To talk to her.

She tidies up, thinking about what Pauline might find. It’s useless to clean, she acknowledges, as she scrubs at the kitchen countertops and stacks the dishwasher. When she wakes up, yesterday, none of this will have been done, but isn’t that kind of always the way housework feels?

Pauline calls her twenty minutes later. ‘I have spoken to Connor,’ she says. She always speaks without any introduction at all, always gets straight to the point. ‘And I’ve done some digging.’

‘Shoot.’ Her arms feel chilled as she draws the curtains across their patio doors.

‘I’ve checked Connor’s phone. Nothing suspicious. A few unfortunate photographs. Takes after his father.’

‘Jesus.’

‘What’s going on with Todd?’

‘He seems to know these older men – an uncle and friend of his new girlfriend. There’s a weird vibe at their house. Plus, they own a company called Cutting & Sewing Ltd. It’s brand new, no turnover, no accounts. I think it’s got to be a front. Pretty unusual for two blokes to set up a sewing company, right?’

‘Right. That … all?’

Jen sighs. Obviously not, but the rest is unbelievable. A dark underworld ending in a murder that she’s got to crack open. She turns away from the patio doors, spooked.

And that’s when it comes to her. Just like that. The news story she watched yesterday, the road traffic accident. It happens tonight, is on tomorrow’s news. She can use it. She can use it to convince the person she needs to confide in the most. If she can convince Kelly, maybe it will break the cycle, break the time loop, and she’ll wake up on tomorrow.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she tells Pauline. ‘Don’t worry. It’s – it’s nothing, probably,’ she adds, wondering why she has always felt the need to do that. To be easy-going, not to worry people, to be good.

‘Hope so,’ Pauline says.

Kelly wanders into the kitchen, much later, after ten at night.

‘What?’ Kelly says curiously, catching her expression. ‘What’s up?’

‘Will you come somewhere with me?’ she says.

‘Now?’ he asks. He looks at her for a beat. ‘You in full madtown?’ he says with a small, wry smile. After they first met, and went travelling around the UK in a little camper van, they lived for years in the Lancashire countryside, just the three of them, in a little white house with a grey slate roof at the bottom of a valley that caught the mist in the winter like a candyfloss hat. Jen’s favourite ever house. Kelly had coined this term back then, when she used to come home and download her entire working day to him. She’d never needed anybody else.

‘Totally,’ she says.

‘Come on then. We can walk.’

Their gazes meet, and Jen wonders what she might be about to set in motion, wonders whether the future is different, now. Wonders if, together, they might make it worse, if there is some alternative future unspooling as she stands here, motionless, in her kitchen, where Todd himself is murdered, where he runs away, where he attacks more than one person.

Jen pushes open the front door. She’s excited for it. To present him with actual, tangible proof.

The night air is chilly and damp, the same as it was on that first night. It smells of the mildew of autumn.