Wrong Place Wrong Time(83)

‘Any time, love,’ the taxi driver says, but Jen just nods.

Kelly disappears up a side road, his stride a study in casual walking that Jen knows to be false. She’s going to lose him. ‘I need to go,’ she says.

She starts to gather her bag and purse, trying not to lose sight of him. As she’s counting out the money she got out of the drawer in the kitchen – different drawer, different kitchen, different notes – another car honks their horn.

‘Hang on,’ the taxi driver says.

‘I’ll go, I need to go,’ Jen says, almost shouting.

‘We’re blocking a bus route.’

‘I need to get out!’ Jen yells. She fiddles with the car door handle as the honking continues, wondering what will happen if she just cuts and runs without paying. It’s only a taxi. It’s barely a crime.

She thrusts too many notes into the silver tray that has actual cigarette ash in – God, yes, people used to smoke everywhere! – and leaps out.

She dashes to the side-street. Kelly has almost reached the end of it. He stands out to her in a crowd the same way Todd does, the same way her own name does on a list.

He turns abruptly left and goes into a pub called The Sundance. He’s holding his suit bag still, over his arm, so Jen hedges her bets and waits nearby, on the pavement.

She stands outside Woolworths, the red-and-white sign so familiar to her. It goes bust in just five years’ time. The recent past, really, but it doesn’t feel it. Inside: the sealed plasticky floors, the stationery. She could stay here for ever, just looking in through the window, marvelling at times gone by, Christmases buying games and pic ’n’ mix, just staring at the changes that have overtaken the world over the last twenty years, the things lost and gained. She raises a palm to the glass, just as she did right at the very beginning of this, and waits.

Reflected behind her, she sees Kelly emerge from the pub. He’s now wearing the suit, the bag slung back over his arm. Hair freshly gelled. Black, shiny shoes on.

A woman seems to come out of nowhere, perhaps another pub, perhaps an alleyway. Jen watches her approach Kelly. She squints. It’s Nicola.

‘How was it?’ Kelly says to her.

‘Yeah, all right. Tough – they want to know all the methods.’

Kelly guffaws. ‘We can’t say those.’

‘I know. I said that. Judge didn’t much like it. Listen – good luck. And call me, you know? If … in the future. You ever want to come back.’

Nicola leaves Kelly there, in the street, without another word.

Jen gazes at him, unseen now in the crowds, thinking of the texts he sends Nicola in twenty years’ time, asking for help. Of the fact that she asks for something in return from him.

Jen follows Kelly at a distance, grateful that it’s Liverpool and not Crosby. She marvels at the fashions – flared jeans, boho tops exposing skin to the last of the summer sun, in September – and the old cars and shops, the world filtered vintage. Kelly walks with purpose but also with anxiety, Jen thinks. His head upright, a deer being pursued, or a lion in pursuit, she isn’t sure which.

Down a cobbled street, past brands that have and haven’t survived the last twenty years, Debenhams, Blockbusters. Into a striplit-bright mall full of jewellers, out the other side. Left, right. Up a side-street lined with industrial-sized bins. Jen drops even further back.

His pace slows on a wide, pedestrianized swathe of grey paving slabs. He’s surrounded by tall buildings. His body turns completely towards one of them, and then he walks forward, pulls the door open, and disappears.

Jen doesn’t need to look at a map or read the signs. She, a lawyer, knows this building well. How could she not? It’s Liverpool crown court.

Outside, there are old-fashioned streetlamps, the bulbs spherical and white, like pearls. The building is no different back here in 2003. A large seventies cuboid sprawl, dark brown cladding, tinted windows. An embossed crest on the front. For once, she’s glad of the justice system that never changes, creaking and ancient and fusty.

She waits in the sun for a few minutes, then follows Kelly inside, pulling open the glass double door to the courthouse.

She heads straight to the listings, glad of the legal knowledge that she has. They’re pinned on a corkboard in the foyer, four scraps of paper fluttering together, held by a single drawing pin that’s probably still in use today.

She knows what she’s looking for. She knows what she will find.

The dates align. She didn’t realize it, as she travelled back. The archived news story. The list of charges against him.

And there it is. She barely has to scan down at all.

R v Joseph Jones. Courtroom One.

So this is a life lived in reverse. Things happened that Jen had no idea about, that passed her by as innocuously as cars.

She heads into courtroom one and sits in the public gallery. It smells of stale teapots, ancient books, dust and polish. It is busy; a high-profile trial that she had no idea about at the time. And why would she?

She’s lost Kelly. She has no idea in which capacity he is attending. As a friend of Joseph Jones, she assumes with a wince; an accomplice.

The benches in the public gallery are laid out like pews. ‘All rise,’ a clerk says. He has reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, robes that sweep the cheap-carpeted floors. Jen is embarrassed by the pomp and circumstance of the justice system that she’s dedicated her life to. She gets to her feet as the judge arrives. She bows her head reflexively.