Wrong Place Wrong Time(50)

‘I’ll go,’ he says.

Yes, this is right, isn’t it? He went out, came home carrying joyous scented bags of Indian food. Had he been back later than she’d expected? She doesn’t think so. God, not everything is a fucking clue, is it?

‘I’ll come.’

‘Nah. I’ll go. You relax. Watch some porn,’ he throws over his shoulder as he leaves. She can hear him laughing as he opens the front door. As though nothing whatsoever is amiss.

He’s either taking a call or meeting someone. That’s what Jen concludes. And so, right after he’s left, she heads to the picture window to watch him go. She leaves the light off. She stands there, invisible, just watching him walk.

Several houses down, somebody is waiting. Kelly raises a hand to him. Jen shifts so she can still watch them, so close to the window that her breath mists it up. She squints, trying to work out who it is.

The sun has only recently set. Jen is much closer to summertime than she was yesterday. The sky is still silvery behind the black, shadowy houses. It helps to illuminate them. Jen sees Kelly clasp the man on the shoulder. The kind of gesture a teacher might make. A mentor, a therapist.

Or a very old friend.

In an almost-perfect echo of the night this all started, they turn around, and Jen sees that the person being greeted by Kelly is Joseph.

They walk a couple of metres down the road, then Joseph says something. They stop, and a small bag passes from Joseph to Kelly, brown, about the size of Kelly’s palm. He doesn’t open it or look at its contents. He puts it in the pocket of his jeans, touches Joseph’s shoulder again, then raises a hand behind him as he leaves. Joseph heads back, past their house. Jen shrinks to the side to remain unseen. Joseph’s eyes look up to the windows as he passes.

Todd emerges from his room just as Jen is thinking it through: so all that talk about no food, that was groundwork being laid, as carefully as an architect. Kelly was waiting for that phone to buzz, to signal Joseph’s arrival. How sinister it is to relive your life backwards. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you. To uncover lies told by your husband. Jen would always have said Kelly was as straight as they come. But don’t all good liars seem that way?

‘Any danger of some food around here, or do I have to call social services?’ Todd says, coming up behind her.

‘Do you know who that is?’ Jen says, pointing down to the street. This is surely better, actually, than asking Kelly. Todd is less connected to Joseph than she first thought, and is almost two months from killing him. And so maybe he won’t lie.

Todd squints. ‘That’s Clio’s uncle’s mate’s car.’

‘How does Dad know him? They were just talking.’

Todd shifts back from her, barely a step. Jen stares at him. Something significant has happened in his mind, but Jen has no idea what.

‘Do they know each other?’ Jen asks again. They both look back down at the street. The dark is gathering. Her husband just performed some sort of transaction right there, so brazenly. Jen can feel the significance of this, of the argument Kelly and Todd go on to have, too. Information is rushing towards her. Perhaps an end is in sight.

‘I need to know,’ she says to Todd.

‘Look – I … I don’t want to be causing marital issues here.’

‘Todd, you are not in a sitcom,’ Jen snaps.

‘Amazingly, I do know that. Yes, Dad knows Clio’s uncle and his mate. Asked me not to tell you.’ Todd scuffs his bare foot on the carpet.

‘What? Why?’

‘He says they’re his old friends and you used to find them irritating. And you wouldn’t like that he’d got back in touch with them.’

‘He asked you to lie to me?’

‘Do you not find them irritating?’

‘I have no idea who they are.’ Jen is completely confused. In a few weeks’ time, Kelly tells Todd he can no longer see Clio, can no longer associate with any of them. And yet – look. Items passed under streetlights; trades willingly arranged on burner phones.

Kelly has some association with Joseph. Clio and Todd got together and complicated it. And Kelly … Kelly thought it would fizzle out, that he could cover it up for long enough, and, when it became apparent that he couldn’t, he told Todd to end it. And why.

That why is the missing piece. And Jen is fairly sure that, today, Todd doesn’t know why. Only Kelly does.

Todd holds his hands up. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’

‘Is Joseph trouble?’ Jen asks curiously while her mind performs a firework display of questions.

‘He might be a wheeler-dealer. I don’t know. He’s a bit of a wide boy.’

‘How so?’

Todd turns his mouth down. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t work, but he has money. I really don’t know.’

‘Does Clio know more?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll ask Dad.’

Jen grabs a jacket and shoves her feet into trainers, heads out into the mild, soupy night, summer’s last exhale. She’s glad to do this away from Todd. He already knows too much, clearly.

She hurries along the street to the takeaway, feeling guilty about grilling Todd, feeling guilty in case he’s worrying, feeling complicit in her hurt in some way. He’s just a fucking kid. Of course he’d lie in order to keep his glamorous girlfriend.