When they get in, he pulls up a stool at the breakfast bar, sitting at it with his knees spread, his elbows on the counter, his eyes on her, brows raised.
‘Do you have a theory? On this – Joseph?’ Kelly says.
Henry VIII jumps on to the kitchen island and Jen gathers him to her, his fur soft, his body so fat and yielding, and puts her hands around him, like cupping a bowl. She’s so glad to be here. With Kelly. Sharing the same spot in the universe together, confiding in him.
‘I mean – no. But the night Todd stabbed him. It’s like he sees this Joseph, then just – he just panics. And does it.’
‘So he’s afraid of him.’
‘Yes!’ Jen says. ‘That’s exactly it.’ She looks at her husband. ‘So you believe me?’
‘Maybe I’m humouring you,’ he says languidly, but she doesn’t think so.
‘Look – I made these notes,’ she says, jumping up and grabbing the notepad. Kelly joins her on the sofa in their kitchen. ‘They’re – I mean, they’re pretty scant.’
Kelly looks at the page, then laughs, a tiny exhale of a sound. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. These are very scant.’
‘Stop it, or I won’t tell you the lottery numbers,’ Jen says, and it’s so nice, it’s so nice to laugh about it. It’s so nice to be back here, in their easy dynamic.
‘Oh yeah – all right. Look. Let’s write down every possible reason he could have for doing this. Even the mad ones.’
‘Self-defence, loss of control, conspiracy,’ Jen says. ‘Working as a – I don’t know, a hitman.’
‘This isn’t James Bond.’
‘All right, cross that one out.’
Kelly laughs as he scratches a line through hitman. ‘Aliens?’
‘Stop it,’ Jen says, through laughter.
They make more and more and more lists as the night draws on. All his friends, all his acquaintances that she could speak to.
On the dimly lit sofa, Jen’s body sags. She leans into Kelly, whose arm immediately snakes around her.
‘When will you – I don’t know. Go?’
‘When I sleep.’
‘So let’s stay up.’
‘Tried that one.’
She stays there, listening to his breathing slow. She can feel hers slowing, too. But she’s happy to go, today. She’s happy she got today, with him.
‘What would you do?’ she asks, turning to look at him.
Kelly folds his lips in on themselves, an expression on his face that Jen can’t read. ‘You sure you want to know that?’
‘Of course I do,’ she says, though, for just a second, she wonders if she really does. Kelly’s sense of humour can be dark but – just sometimes – his very core self can seem this way, too. If Jen had to describe it, she’d say she expects the best of people, and Kelly expects the worst.
‘I’d kill him,’ he says softly.
‘Joseph?’ Jen says, her jaw slack.
‘Yeah.’ He pulls his eyes away from whatever he’s looking at and meets her gaze. ‘Yeah, I’d kill him myself, this Joseph, if I could get away with it.’
‘So that Todd couldn’t,’ she says in almost a whisper.
‘Exactly.’
She shivers, totally chilled by this incisive thought, this edge her husband sometimes exhibits. ‘But could you?’
Kelly shrugs, looking out at the dark garden. He doesn’t intend to answer this question, Jen can tell.
‘So tomorrow,’ he murmurs, pulling her back close to him, against his body. ‘It’ll be yesterday for you, tomorrow for me?’
‘That’s right,’ she says sadly, but thinking privately that maybe it won’t be, that maybe telling him has avoided that fate, somehow. Kelly’s quiet; he’s falling asleep. Jen’s blinks get longer.
They are here, tonight, together, even if they might part again tomorrow, like two passengers on two trains going in opposite directions.
Day Minus Four, 09:00
Four days back.
And, worse, the notebook is blank.
Jen lets a scream of frustration out in the kitchen. Of course it is. Of course it fucking is. Because she hasn’t written in it yet. Because she’s in the past.
Kelly walks into the kitchen, biting into an apple. ‘God,’ he says, wincing, ‘these are tart. Here – try. It’s like eating a lemon!’
He holds it out to her, his arm extended, his eyes happy, crinkled. ‘Do you remember our walk last night?’ she asks him desperately.
‘Huh?’ he says, through a mouthful. ‘What?’
He clearly doesn’t. Telling him achieved nothing. Just twelve hours ago they sat here, together, and made a plan. The car crash, the conviction on his features as he turned to her. All gone, consigned not to the past, but to the future.
‘Never mind.’
‘You all right? You look like shit,’ he says.
‘Ah, married life. So romantic.’
But, inside, her mind is racing. If the notebook is blank, then – of course – the phone calls and emails to Andy Vettese haven’t yet been made, either. She checks her sent items: nothing. Of course! No wonder he hasn’t replied. It is so hard to get used to a life lived backwards. Even when she thinks she understands it, she doesn’t. It trips her up.
She needs to leave, get away from this Kelly who knows nothing about tomorrow, and the next day, and everything that follows. She needs to get away from disappearing notebooks and knives in school bags, and from the scene of the crime that stands silently, waiting.
She needs to go to work. Back to Rakesh, and to Andy Vettese, too.
Ten o’clock in the morning. A sweet black coffee, her desk, and Rakesh. He has stood here thousands of times over the years, often swings by early and complains that he doesn’t want to start work. That was the foundation they built their friendship on: moaning.
‘Can you try to contact Andy for me?’ Jen says to Rakesh now.
She has just told Rakesh, again, what’s happening to her. Jen rushed through her explanation to Rakesh, appearing inauthentic and haphazard. She’s told it so many times, she has become tired of the tragedy of it, like somebody who’s seen so much death and destruction that they are immune.
Still, Rakesh seemed to believe that she really thinks this is happening to her, the same way he did last time. Passively, serious, perhaps internally diagnosing her with something, but not saying what.
‘I can’t get hold of him, and I need to,’ Jen says sincerely but urgently. She needs to speak to Andy today: it’s all she has.
Rakesh steeples his fingers together in that way he does. ‘I’m sure I’ve never told you about Andy,’ he says with a small smile.
‘You do – in a few days.’
‘I see,’ Rakesh says, looking at her directly, his brown eyes on hers. He’s wearing a sweater vest, today, in purple, and holding a coffee. The rectangular outline of a box of cigarettes is visible in his trouser pocket. Some things don’t change.
Jen can’t help but smile back at him. ‘Please call him. He’s nearby, isn’t he? John Moore’s? I can go to his office – whatever.’
‘What’s it worth?’ Rakesh leans on the doorframe.