‘Oh, are we negotiating?’
‘Always.’
‘I’ll do your costs schedule on Blakemore.’
‘God, deal,’ he says immediately. ‘You’re so easy. I would’ve done it for a potato.’
‘And I’ll take your cigarettes so you can get back on the wagon.’ She points to his pocket. He blinks, then pulls them out.
‘Wow. Okay. I see.’ He retreats back down the corridor. ‘I’ll call him now.’ He raises a hand, a parting gesture. ‘Let you know.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Jen says, though she doesn’t think he can still hear her. She rests her elbows on the desk she’s worked at for the past two decades, feeling momentarily relieved to have instructed an expert.
The sunlight warms her back. She’d forgotten this little warm spell. A few days in October that felt, for a second, just like summer.
Andy says he will come to Liverpool city centre in two hours’ time. Jen – like a mug – does Rakesh’s costs schedule for him.
Jen and Andy arrange to meet in a café that Jen likes. It is unpretentious, cheap, the coffee good and strong. She finds romance in the retro quality it has: tea that costs pence, not pounds, ham sandwiches on the menu, torn vinyl benches to sit on.
As she walks there, weaving between shoppers and past off-key buskers, all the ways she’s ineffectually mothered Todd crowd into her mind. Feeding him too much so he slept more, upending the bottle while watching daytime television, bored, no eye contact. That time she shouted in frustration when he wouldn’t nap. How early she went back to work because her father put pressure on her; enrolling Todd in nursery so young, too young. Has she planted these seeds here? Was she a shit mother, or just a human? She doesn’t know.
Andy is already there, at a Formica-covered table: Jen recognizes him from his LinkedIn photo instantly. About Rakesh’s age, unruly hair woven black and grey. A T-shirt that says Franny and Zooey on it. J. D. Salinger, is that?
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ Jen says quickly, taking a seat opposite him. He’s already ordered two black coffees. A miniature silver milk jug sits on the table, which he gestures wordlessly to. Neither of them uses it.
‘Pleasure,’ Andy says, though it doesn’t sound like it. He sounds jaded, like how she gets when pushed into giving free legal advice at parties. It’s fair enough.
‘This must be – I mean, this must be unorthodox,’ she says, adding sugar to her coffee.
‘You know,’ he says, sitting back with a small shrug. He has just a trace of an American accent. ‘Yes.’ He makes a lattice with his hands and rests his face on it, just looking at her. ‘But Rakesh is a good friend.’
‘Well, I won’t keep you long,’ she says, though she doesn’t mean it. She wants him to sit with her all day: ideally, into yesterday.
Andy raises his eyebrows, not saying anything.
He sips his coffee then replaces it on the table, calm hazel eyes looking at her. He motions wordlessly, the kind of gesture you’d make when letting somebody through a door.
‘Go ahead,’ he says crisply.
Jen begins to speak. She tells him everything. Every last piece. She talks fast, gesticulating, insane amounts of detail. Every last part. Pumpkins, naked husbands, Cutting & Sewing Ltd, the knife, how she tried to stay up, the car accident, Clio. The lot.
A waitress silently fills their coffees up from a steaming percolator, and Andy thanks her, but only with his eyes and a small smile. He doesn’t interrupt Jen once.
‘I think that’s everything,’ she says, when she has finished. Steam dances around the overhead fluorescent lights. The café is near empty on this day – whatever day it is – in the mid-morning, mid-week. Jen is so tired, suddenly, with somebody else temporarily in charge, she thinks she could sleep right here at the table. She wonders what would happen if she did.
‘I don’t need to ask you if you believe you are telling me the truth,’ Andy says after what looks like a moment’s consideration.
The somewhat passive-aggressive if you believe rattles Jen. The parlance of doctors, legal opponents, passive-aggressive relatives, Slimming World leaders …
‘I do,’ she says. ‘For what it’s worth.’
She rubs at her eyes for a minute, trying to think. Come on, she tells herself. You’re a smart woman. This isn’t so hard. It’s time as you know it, only backwards.
‘You win an award in two days,’ she says, thinking of the story she saw about him when he hadn’t answered her. ‘For your work on black holes.’
When she opens her eyes, Andy has paused, his coffee halfway to his mouth, the Styrofoam cup made elliptical by the pressure of his grip. His mouth is open, his eyes on hers. ‘The Penny Jameson?’
‘I think so? I saw it while googling you.’
‘I win?’
Jen feels a petty, triumphant little spark light within her. There. ‘You do.’
‘That award is embargoed. I know I’m shortlisted. But nobody else does. It isn’t –’ he gets his phone out and types quietly for a second, then replaces it, face down, on the table. ‘That information is not in the public domain.’
‘Well, I’m glad.’
‘All right then, Jen,’ he says. ‘You have my attention.’
‘Good.’
‘How interesting.’ Andy sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. He drums his fingers on the back of his phone.
‘So: is it scientifically possible?’ she asks him.
He spreads his hands wide, then repositions them around his cup. ‘We don’t know,’ he says. ‘Science is much more of an art than you’d think. What you say violates Einstein’s law of general relativity – but who’s to say his theorem should control our life? Time travel isn’t proven to be impossible,’ he says. ‘If you can get above the speed of light …’
‘Yes, yes, a gravitational force a thousand times my body weight, right?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But – I didn’t feel anything like that. Can I ask – do you think I went forwards, too, in time? So, somewhere, I’m living the life where Todd was arrested?’
‘You think there may be more than one of you?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Hang on.’ He takes the knife from the cutlery pot sitting next to them. ‘Can you use this?’
‘Use it?’
‘A tiny papercut.’ He leaves the rest implicit.
Jen swallows. ‘I see. Okay.’ She takes the knife and makes – quite honestly – the most pathetic shallow cut along the side of her finger. Barely a scour.
‘Deeper,’ he says.
Jen directs the knife further into her cut. A bead of blood escapes. ‘Okay,’ she says, blotting it with a tissue. ‘Okay?’ She looks down at the wound, a centimetre long.
‘If that cut isn’t there tomorrow … I’d say you’re waking up in yesterday’s body, each day. You move from Monday to Sunday to Saturday.’
‘Rather than time-travelling?’
‘Right. Tell me.’ He sits forward. ‘Did you experience any kind of – compressing sensation when this happened? Or only the déjà vu?’