She turns off the console and leaves Todd’s room. Seconds later, he opens the bathroom door.
They meet on the landing. He has only a towel around his waist.
She meets his eyes, but he doesn’t hold her gaze for long. She can’t gauge his mood. She recalls his facial expression from the night of the murder. There wasn’t any remorse on it, not anywhere, not even a bit.
What’s the point in going to the office if, when she wakes up tomorrow, it will be yesterday? There is, for the first time in Jen’s adult life, no point in working at all. She muses on this while feeding Henry VIII.
She tries calling a number she finds listed for Andy Vettese but gets no answer. She googles him again. He won some science award yesterday, for a paper on black holes. She emails two more people who have written theses on time travel.
She thinks about how to convince her husband of what is happening.
Jen sighs and eventually finds a legal pad full of notes on a case that doesn’t seem to matter much right now. All she can hear is the soft hum of the heating.
In the notebook, she writes Day Minus Three.
What I know, she writes underneath that.
Joseph Jones’s name, his full address
Clio may be involved
Connor drop-offs?
It isn’t a lot.
For the first time in years, Jen is on the school run. The green school gates are clotted with parents. Cliques, loners, people dressed up, people very much dressed down – the lot. Jen would usually spend her time at the school gate paranoid everybody was talking about her but, today, she wishes she had done this more often. For starters, it’s fascinating.
She spots Pauline immediately. She is alone, has lately been insisting on collecting Connor so she knows he’s been to school – he was recently told off for skiving – and then goes on to get her youngest, Theo. She is wearing a denim jacket and a huge scarf, is staring down at her phone, her legs crossed at the ankles.
‘I thought I’d try one of these school-run things,’ Jen says to her.
‘I’m genuinely honoured,’ Pauline says, looking up with a laugh. ‘Everyone here is a dick. Honestly – Mario’s mum has a Mulberry handbag with her. For the school run.’
Pauline is one of Jen’s easiest friends. Jen did her divorce, three years ago, separating her neatly from her cheating husband, Eric. Pauline had turned up at Jen’s firm for an initial consultation, screenshots of Eric’s infidelity in hand. Jen had known of her from the school but had never spoken to her. She made Pauline a tea and very professionally looked at the damning texts, sent from Eric to his mistress, and said she’d take Pauline’s case on.
‘Sorry you had to see them,’ Pauline had said in Jen’s office, pocketing her phone and sipping the tea.
‘Yes, well, it’s good to have the – er – evidence,’ Jen had said. And, despite herself – her stiff suit, the corporate surrounds – she felt her expression falter. ‘However – um … graphic.’
Pauline met her eyes for just a second. ‘So do you attach dick pics to the court petition?’ she had said and, right there in Jen’s office, they had exploded into laughter. ‘That was the first time I’d laughed since I found them,’ Pauline had said sincerely, later. And, just like that, a friendship was born, out of tragedy and humour, as they often are. Jen had been so pleased when Connor and Todd had become friends, too. Until now.
‘Well, you’ve got me, here, unwashed,’ Jen says.
Pauline smiles and scuffs a Converse shoe on the floor. ‘You not working today?’
Todd appears in the distance, loping along with Connor, one of the only students who is taller than him. Thicker set, too, a unit of a kid.
‘No.’
‘How’s things? How’s your enigma of a husband?’
‘Listen,’ Jen says, skipping past the small talk.
‘Uh-oh,’ Pauline says. ‘I don’t like that lawyerly listen.’
‘Nothing to worry about,’ she says lightly. ‘Todd is, I think – maybe – caught up in something …’
‘In what?’ Pauline says, suddenly serious. For all her humour, she is a formidable mother where it matters. She will tolerate smoking and swearing, Jen thinks, but nothing worse. Look at her here: checking Connor has made it to school.
‘I don’t know – I just … Todd is acting strangely. And I just wondered – has Connor?’
Pauline tilts her head back just a fraction. ‘I see.’
‘Exactly.’
More parents begin to gather around them by the gates. Eleven-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds greet their parents and Jen thinks how she’s only done this a handful of times, instead choosing to sift through disclosure at the office, appraising trainees, making bundles of documents. Earning money. She wonders, now, quite what it was all for.
‘He seems fine …’ Pauline says slowly, and Jen is so thankful, suddenly, here, for her friend, who has understood the subtext and chosen not to take offence. ‘But let me do some digging,’ she adds, right before Connor and Todd arrive.
‘All right,’ Connor says to Jen. He has a tattoo that looks like a necklace, rosary beads maybe, disappearing into the neck of his T-shirt. Tattoos are personal choice, Jen tells herself. Stop being snobby.
He takes his cigarettes out of his pocket, which Jen is relieved to see Pauline wince at. He flares the lighter while still staring at Jen. The flame illuminates his face for the briefest of moments. He gives her a wink, so fast you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it.
It’s been a difficult evening. Todd left as soon as he got home; ‘Going to Clio’s,’ he said. He had been irritated by Jen’s appearance at the school pick-up, and annoyed with Kelly, too. ‘Can either of you two get hobbies?’ he’d said, when they were all at home by four o’clock.
After he left, Jen looked up Clio on Facebook. She is a couple of years older than Todd, but in education still. An art college nearby. Her page is meticulously curated. Model-like shots of her, a strangely high number of political memes, a lot of bunches of flowers. Pretty innocuous teenage stuff. Jen is going to go and see her, soon, she has decided. To talk to her.
She tidies up, thinking about what Pauline might find. It’s useless to clean, she acknowledges, as she scrubs at the kitchen countertops and stacks the dishwasher. When she wakes up, yesterday, none of this will have been done, but isn’t that kind of always the way housework feels?
Pauline calls her twenty minutes later. ‘I have spoken to Connor,’ she says. She always speaks without any introduction at all, always gets straight to the point. ‘And I’ve done some digging.’
‘Shoot.’ Her arms feel chilled as she draws the curtains across their patio doors.
‘I’ve checked Connor’s phone. Nothing suspicious. A few unfortunate photographs. Takes after his father.’
‘Jesus.’
‘What’s going on with Todd?’
‘He seems to know these older men – an uncle and friend of his new girlfriend. There’s a weird vibe at their house. Plus, they own a company called Cutting & Sewing Ltd. It’s brand new, no turnover, no accounts. I think it’s got to be a front. Pretty unusual for two blokes to set up a sewing company, right?’