Wrong Place Wrong Time(49)

‘It’s Appleby Road,’ Clio says. A road behind Eshe Road North. Makes sense.

‘Oh, so you don’t live at Eshe Road?’ Jen asks lightly as she indicates and pulls away.

‘No, no,’ Clio says, but she looks surprised that Jen knows her address. That’s right: Jen has never been there. Is never supposed to have been there. ‘Just me and Mum at Appleby.’ Clio doesn’t elaborate, the same as last time.

Jen glances quickly at her as she comes to a stop at a roundabout. Their eyes meet for just a second.

Clio breaks contact, gets her phone out of her jeans pocket, angling her hips up to slide it out. ‘Kelly must think I live on Eshe Road,’ Clio says with a laugh.

Jen tries not to react. ‘Why?’

‘I’m always there, aren’t I?’ She pauses. ‘Kelly and Ezra and Joseph – they go way back, don’t they?’

‘Right, right, yes,’ Jen says. ‘Sorry – so did he … did Kelly introduce you to Todd, then?’

‘Yes, exactly,’ she says. ‘Well – when I came with Joe to drop something off for Kelly, Todd answered the door … and then … has he never said?’

‘Do you know – Kelly has so many friends,’ Jen says: a sentence which is the exact opposite of the truth, ‘I plain forgot.’

Clio turns her gaze to the left and looks out of the passenger window, not understanding the significance of the information she’s imparted.

Bewildered, Jen spends the rest of the trip in silence. She drops Clio at her mother’s house, who comes out on to the drive and waves at Jen. She looks nothing like Clio. Clio must look like her father, just like Todd does.

Two hours later, Jen is doing yoga for the first time in her entire life, a grotesque kind of downward dog in Kelly’s car, her head underneath the seats, her arse somewhere near the neighbour’s windows, it feels like.

Jen needs to find the burner phone again, the one she now thinks belongs to Kelly. She wants to use it to call Nicola.

And so this is what she is doing, while he’s out running.

But there’s nothing in his car. A few old coffee cups, a jack, an unopened bottle of Sprite. In a funny kind of way, she is glad he hasn’t hidden the phone in here, under the seats or with the spare tyre in the boot. Kelly is never drawn to cliché, and she likes this, that he is not behaving exactly like every dishonest man before him. Like she still knows him, somewhere underneath the mess.

She shakes her head and walks back into the house, where she continues her search. Tool bags, the airing cupboard, old coats. Anywhere.

He arrives back later and she stops abruptly, trying to tidy away some of the mess she’s made. While he showers, she grabs his regular phone and turns on Find My iPhone to track him. She’ll have to do it every morning, because she is travelling backwards in time, but so be it. She will do whatever it takes.

It’s five to eight in the evening. Kelly and Jen haven’t eaten yet. Jen is biding her time, waiting to confront Kelly about – well, everything, really. She’s just working out what to start with.

Todd is upstairs, on his Xbox. Jen can hear the noises of his games playing out like thunder and lightning above them.

‘Do you ever think he’s getting a bit – insular?’ Jen says. She’s sitting on one of the bar stools while Kelly leans his elbows on the kitchen counter, looking at her.

‘Nah, no way,’ he says. ‘I was the same at his age.’

‘Computer games?’

‘Well – you know. I hate to break it to you, but he will be on porn sites.’ Kelly raises his hands, palms to Jen. It’s so easy. How is it so easy to interact with him in this way, their shared humour that they’ve always had? In the café, back on that first date, Kelly had been so quiet, so guarded, but by the end of the evening he had laughed her into bed.

‘What – while the war rages on in Call of Duty?’

‘Of course. Headphones in for the porn. Call of Duty on as a decoy.’ He gets up and turns to the cupboards, opening and closing them listlessly. ‘We have no food.’

‘I’ve just lost my appetite.’

‘Oh, stop. It’s perfectly natural, Jennifer.’

‘What, watching women with fake tits have fake orgasms?’

‘It taught me well.’ Kelly turns and raises an eyebrow at her and, despite, despite, despite everything, Jen feels her stomach burn. That dark little look, just for her. He’s been a good husband, or so she had thought. Not exactly ambitious, somewhat unfulfilled at times, but interesting, layered, sexy. Isn’t that what she always wanted?

‘I could go for a curry,’ he adds, evidently thinking about food as she is deconstructing their marriage in her mind.

She hears a phone vibrate. The kind of noise she would usually tune out, it’s so ubiquitous in their house. Kelly unconsciously puts his hand to his front pocket but, as he turns, she sees that his iPhone is in his back pocket. She watches him closely. Two phones. Both on his body. She never would have noticed. Why would she? The burner phone is small, like a pebble. He wears his jeans loose, low slung, always has.

Jen draws her head back in a reverse nod, appraising him. ‘Sure,’ she says. The Indian takeaway is a restaurant three streets up from theirs. They love it, even though it is expensive (perhaps because). It is entirely made of wooden cladding, like something from Center Parcs, and is beautifully lit. Jen and Kelly say they can never eat in there because the waiters have seen them pick up takeaway in loungewear (pyjamas) so often.