Wrong Place Wrong Time(99)

I wrote this book from July 2020 to May 2021, across two lockdowns, one lasting almost five months. It was all I did over the pandemic. I figured, if I could produce a great book, then something good came out of the gloom. (My boyfriend proposed during the January lockdown and I still hit my wordcount that day.)

I’ve dedicated this novel to my agents, Felicity Blunt and Lucy Morris. It’s hard for an author to overstate the effect two great agents can have on their career. They counsel, they edit, they hand-hold, they sell and, most of all, they make me a better writer. They were never worried by this idea, never thought it was too ambitious, and for that I am forever thankful.

It is not hyperbole, either, to say that my editors, Maxine Hitchcock and Rebecca Hilsdon at Penguin Michael Joseph, have totally changed my life. I count this up in every acknowledgement, but that’s because it’s true: I have now written six bestsellers, and it’s because of the dream team that is PMJ: Max, Rebecca, Ellie Hughes, Sriya Varadharajan, Jen Breslin (the genius) and all in Sales, plus my super copy-editor Sarah Day. Six Sunday Times bestsellers, one Richard and Judy pick, an eBook number-one bestseller … almost half a million sold: the list of the things they have achieved with my books goes on.

Thanks, too, to my brand-new US editor, Lyssa Keusch, and the team at William Morrow, HarperCollins. I can’t wait to get started!

I consulted a few experts during my time writing this novel. Richard Price (who does indeed have a J. D. Salinger T-shirt), for his physics and closed timelike curve expertise. Neil Greenough for the ongoing police procedure help. I can’t even tell you how valuable it is to know someone who can help with procedure, and Neil is endlessly generous with his time and my strange questions (any errors are my own, indeed, deliberately so: an undercover unit would never work out of the main station, of course).

Paul Wade, for talking multiverses with me. Tyler Thomas, for being so great and Todd-like. Thanks, too, to my Liverpool gurus, John Gibbons and Neil Atkinson.

And my father, of course, for the many chats, invaluable suggestions, and for being my first reader, always.

Thanks, too, to Jo Zamo for dedicating her name, and to Kenneth Eagles and Kacie for letting me borrow their family lore.

The deeper into my thirties I get, the more I realize I wouldn’t be much of anything without my many and varied best friendships. For Lia Louis, Holly Seddon, Beth O’Leary, Lucy Blackburn, Phil Rolls and the Wades: you are my therapists, comedians and the holders of my dearest secrets.

And finally, thanks, too, to David. He is, as I write these acknowledgements, due to become my husband in twenty hours’ time (ah, marrying writers: who else would do their acknowledgements on a Sunday afternoon when they’re getting married tomorrow?). In whatever universe, whatever timeline, whatever your name, I will love you to Day Minus Five Thousand Three Hundred and Seventy-Two (and back).





Prologue





Julia knew from the way Cal closed the front door that something was wrong. A hasty, chaotic kind of slam. She sat upright in bed, heart thrumming. She could feel her pulse right down through her arms and legs as she listened intently, like an animal in the wild.

And then she heard it. An intake of breath. All of Julia’s instincts were trained on it, on him.

And then it came: a cry for help.

‘Mum?’ he called urgently up the stairs. ‘Mum? Something’s happened.’





First Day Missing





1


Julia


Julia has always been too soft to be a police officer. She is thinking this as she stands in the custody suite of the station, coat on, apparently ready to leave, but really staring at an old informant of hers who is sitting on one of the benches.

It’s seven o’clock. The family WhatsApp group is trilling with dinner plans. Julia catches a glimpse of a message from her daughter saying, ‘Okay to Nando’s. But know that I think it is passé.’ Julia smiles at her arch first born, then looks back at the informant, Price. She fails to resist the urge to ask him what he’s doing here, even though she knows it’ll keep her from that Nando’s. She can’t help it. Curiosity. It’s shot through her, imprinted onto her body and mind. It’s why she’s here, double-checking on an arrest. Only she didn’t expect to see Price.

He has his legs crossed at the ankles, an arm slung across the backs of the chairs, ostensibly casual, but Julia knows he will be afraid. So afraid he trades on information – the most dangerous of commodities.

She raises her eyebrows at him. Just as he opens his mouth, the custody sergeant speaks. ‘DCI Day, urgent call for you,’ he says.

Julia looks at Price, thinks of a busy, warm restaurant and her amusing kids, then sighs. ‘I’ll take it out back,’ she says.

This is the job. This is the job. That has become her mantra, necessarily so after twenty years in the police, and all the collateral surrounding that. She shrugs her coat off and holds it over her arms. The custody sergeant puts it through, then stands and goes to the kitchenette. Julia glances at Price again, whose eyes self-consciously meet hers. ‘What’re you in for?’ she asks him, standing opposite him in the empty foyer.

‘This and that,’ he says. He smiles up at her, a bombastic, swaggering teenager’s smile.

‘Meaning?’ she asks. Price is hardly ever interviewed. Smart, slippery, and funny, too, but never under arrest. Almost all of Julia’s dealings with him have been out there, in the world.