Wrong Place Wrong Time(41)

Even Ryan’s arms and legs feel excited, as if he could get up and do star jumps. Finally, something that fucking matters. Something that he might be good at. Something where he could change the world.

Leo grabs the corkboard and sets it on the desk. Ryan loves the drama of it. The cut and thrust of policing. Here he is: home. Leo pins the piece of paper on the board and on it he writes a name. ‘This bloke works at the port. And he’s bent. Turns a blind eye and allows stolen cars on. We got him on the very corner of CCTV. Haven’t nicked him yet as we want to see what sort of cog he is in the machine. All right?’

Ryan looks at the paper pinned up there: Ezra Michaels.

‘See who brings the cars to Ezra. Okay?’ Leo says.

‘And then …’ Ryan says, looking up at Leo hopefully. ‘Once we know a bit more about them … I mean’ – he gestures to Leo’s scruffy clothes, to Jamie’s hat – ‘I’ve got your department right, haven’t I? Covert?’

‘Yes,’ Leo says simply, communicating something that, until now, has remained unsaid. ‘Undercover.’





Day Minus Thirteen, 19:00





A police car followed Todd home today. Jen is sure of it. She thinks of the car that drove past Clio’s, twice.

It’s the evening now, and Todd and Kelly are sitting opposite each other. The lamp on the breakfast bar is on, the sky a lit-up pewter beyond the doors.

The trees outside have more leaves on them. What just a few days ago was a thick collection on their patio is now a cluster of bright red flags, back in their spots on the trees.

‘Good evening, squire,’ Todd addresses her. ‘We’re talking about Schr?dinger’s cat.’

Jen spent the morning at work, pretending to be normal. She had an initial meeting with a new client, who she knows tells her in a few meetings’ time that she doesn’t want to leave her husband, after all. Jen took far fewer notes this time.

Todd’s eating a Chinese takeaway out of the box, like an American, except it isn’t in a kitsch carton with chopsticks in it but a plastic Tupperware container. Bless his heart.

Kelly widens his eyes at Jen across the breakfast bar. ‘We are not,’ he says with a laugh. ‘You were. I was eating wings.’

‘I’m not sure Dad is your best audience,’ Jen says, and she hears the perfect little amused exhale that is her husband’s laugh.

‘What happened with the Venus and Mars project?’ Kelly asks.

Todd inches his phone out of his pocket and passes it to Kelly. The first time Jen lived this day, she was at work. Didn’t know anything about this project.

Kelly reads Todd’s phone for a few seconds, then says, ‘Ah – an A! A for astrophysics prodigy.’

‘A for Alexander Kuzemsky,’ Todd says.

‘Can you speak English?’ Jen asks.

‘He is a great physicist,’ Todd says. ‘This assignment.’ He passes her his phone.

‘Well done,’ she says sincerely. She starts to read the assignment with interest, partly wondering if it might contain some science that might help her, but Todd takes the phone off her.

‘Really, don’t worry about it.’

‘I’m interested!’

‘You never usually are,’ Todd shoots back.

A guilty stone arrives in her stomach. Maternal guilt, that thing she has tried to work against for much of her life, but that always – always – sits there anyway. You never usually are.

‘You all right?’ Kelly says with a laugh. ‘You look like the Grim Reaper.’

Todd snorts into his takeaway while Jen dishes hers out.

Kelly leaves the counter, his mobile ringing. She stares into the hallway, thinking about Todd.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks him.

‘I mean – you don’t usually pay attention to my stuff.’

‘Your stuff?’ Jen says, the world feeling suddenly still. Todd says nothing, reaching for a chicken ball and eating it whole. ‘Do you think I don’t listen to you?’ she asks.

A hazy kind of awareness is descending on her, the way cloud cover does: you can’t quite see it if you’re in it, but you can feel it.

Todd seems to actively consider the answer, looking down at his plate, his brow furrowed. ‘Maybe,’ he says eventually.

He is still staring at her. Kelly’s eyes. But everything else is hers. Dark, unruly hair, pale skin. Unbearably large appetite. She made him. And look: he thinks she doesn’t listen to him. Just says it like it is a plain fact.

‘It isn’t interesting to you,’ he adds.

‘Oh,’ she whispers.

‘I care about physics,’ he says. ‘So it isn’t funny that I care about Alexander Kuzemsky. I actually care about him.’

Jen experiences the eerie feeling of being wrong in an argument. So totally wrong. Her mind performs gymnastics. This isn’t about planets. This is about their relationship.

Todd with his fun science facts and his head in the clouds. Jen with her wry inability to understand what he is talking about. That’s how she has always thought of them. She and Kelly couldn’t believe they’d made such a cerebral child, clever in a totally different way to them, both so earthy, and Todd so … not. But he isn’t something made. He isn’t an object. Here he is, right in front of her, telling her who he is. She’s let her own insecurities about being stupid turn his intellectualism into something to be laughed off. Laughed at.