‘Right. That … all?’
Jen sighs. Obviously not, but the rest is unbelievable. A dark underworld ending in a murder that she’s got to crack open. She turns away from the patio doors, spooked.
And that’s when it comes to her. Just like that. The news story she watched yesterday, the road traffic accident. It happens tonight, is on tomorrow’s news. She can use it. She can use it to convince the person she needs to confide in the most. If she can convince Kelly, maybe it will break the cycle, break the time loop, and she’ll wake up on tomorrow.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she tells Pauline. ‘Don’t worry. It’s – it’s nothing, probably,’ she adds, wondering why she has always felt the need to do that. To be easy-going, not to worry people, to be good.
‘Hope so,’ Pauline says.
Kelly wanders into the kitchen, much later, after ten at night.
‘What?’ Kelly says curiously, catching her expression. ‘What’s up?’
‘Will you come somewhere with me?’ she says.
‘Now?’ he asks. He looks at her for a beat. ‘You in full madtown?’ he says with a small, wry smile. After they first met, and went travelling around the UK in a little camper van, they lived for years in the Lancashire countryside, just the three of them, in a little white house with a grey slate roof at the bottom of a valley that caught the mist in the winter like a candyfloss hat. Jen’s favourite ever house. Kelly had coined this term back then, when she used to come home and download her entire working day to him. She’d never needed anybody else.
‘Totally,’ she says.
‘Come on then. We can walk.’
Their gazes meet, and Jen wonders what she might be about to set in motion, wonders whether the future is different, now. Wonders if, together, they might make it worse, if there is some alternative future unspooling as she stands here, motionless, in her kitchen, where Todd himself is murdered, where he runs away, where he attacks more than one person.
Jen pushes open the front door. She’s excited for it. To present him with actual, tangible proof.
The night air is chilly and damp, the same as it was on that first night. It smells of the mildew of autumn.
‘I have something to say to you, and I know how you’re going to react, because I’ve already told you,’ she says. Kelly’s hand is warm in hers. The road is slick with rain. Jen’s getting better at this explanation.
‘Is this about work?’ Kelly is used to Jen asking him about work, theorizing at him, though mostly all he does is listen. Just last week, she asked him about Mr Mahoney, who wanted to give his ex-wife his entire pension, just to save the battle. Kelly had shrugged and said avoiding pain was priceless to some.
‘No.’ And there, in the darkness, she tells him everything in total detail. Again. She tells him about the first time, and then the day before it, and then the day before that. He listens, his eyes on her, the way he always has.
He doesn’t speak for a few moments after she’s finished. Just leans there, against the road sign, close to where the accident is due to happen, appearing to be lost in thought. Eventually, he seems to come to a conclusion, and says, ‘Would you believe this, if it were me?’
‘No.’
He barks out a laugh. ‘Right.’
‘I promise,’ she says, ‘on everything we stand for, all our history – that I am telling you the truth. Todd murders somebody this Saturday – late. And I’m moving back in time to stop it.’
Kelly is silent for a minute. It begins to drizzle again. He pushes his hair off his forehead as it gets wet. ‘Why are we here?’
‘For me to prove it to you. A car’s going to come along here, soon,’ she says, gesturing to the dark, quiet street. ‘It’ll lose control and flip on to its side. It was just on the news last night. My tomorrow. The owner escapes, totally unharmed. It’s a black Audi. It flips over there. It won’t go near us.’
Kelly rubs a hand along his jaw. ‘Okay,’ he says again, dismissive, confused. Together, they lean back on the road sign, side by side.
Just as she is beginning to think the car won’t come, it does. Jen hears it first. A distant, speeding rumble. ‘Here it is.’
Kelly looks at her. The rain has intensified. His hair begins to drip.
And then it rounds the corner. A black Audi, fast, out of control. The driver clearly reckless, drunk, both. Its engine sounds like gunfire as it passes them. Kelly watches it, his eyes fixed on it. His expression inscrutable.
Kelly pulls his hood up with one hand, against the downpour, just as the car flips. A metallic crunch and skid. The horn goes.
Then nothing. A beat of silence while the car smokes, then the owner emerges, wide-eyed. He’s maybe fifty, ambles across the road to them.
‘You’re lucky to be out of that,’ Jen says. Kelly’s eyes are back on her. Disbelief, but also a weird kind of panic seems to radiate from him.
‘I know,’ the man says to Jen. He pats his legs, like he’s unable to believe that he’s really fine.
Kelly shakes his head. ‘I don’t understand this.’
‘A neighbour is about to come out, to offer help,’ Jen commentates.
Kelly waits, saying nothing, one foot against the leg of the street sign, arms folded. A door slams somewhere.
‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ a voice says a few houses down.
‘Do you believe me yet?’ she says to Kelly.
‘I can’t think of any other explanation,’ he says after a few seconds. ‘But this is – this is mental.’
‘I know that. Of course I know that.’ She squares herself in front of him so she can look directly into his eyes. ‘But I promise. I promise, I promise, I promise it’s true.’
Kelly makes a gesture, down the street, and they walk, but not home. They stroll aimlessly, together, in the rain. Jen thinks he might believe her. Truly. And won’t that do something, surely? If Todd’s other parent believes it. Maybe Kelly will wake up with her, yesterday for him, too. It’s a long shot, but she has to try it.
‘This is completely batshit,’ he says. His eyes catch the overhead lights as they move. ‘There is no way you could’ve known about that car. Is there?’ She can see him trying to work it out.
‘No. I mean – literally, no.’
‘I can’t see how …’ His breath mists up the air in front of him. ‘I just don’t …’
‘I know.’
They take a left, then walk down an alleyway, past their favourite Indian takeaway, then start a slow loop back towards home.
Eventually, he takes her hand in his. ‘If it’s true, it must be horrible,’ he says.
That if. Jen loves it. It is a small step, a small concession from husband to wife. ‘It is horrible,’ she says thickly. As she thinks over the past few days of panic and alienation, her eyes moisten and a tear tracks its way down her cheek. She stares at their feet as they walk the streets in perfect sync. Kelly must be watching her, because he stops and wipes the tear away with a thumb.
‘I’ll try,’ he says simply, softly, to her. ‘I’ll try to believe you.’