‘Anything we should know about?’
Mr Adams looks up in surprise. ‘Like what?’
‘Is he – you know, hanging out with anybody new, working less hard, doing anything out of character?’
‘Perhaps lacking common sense at times in the lab.’
Kelly laughs softly under his breath, the first noise he’s made since they arrived here, her introverted husband. He reaches for Jen’s hand, fiddling with her wedding ring. After this session with Mr Adams, he will go to the table serving tea and coffee, get them two teas, but drop one. The absurdity of this knowledge.
‘Oh, but the brightest minds are,’ Mr Adams says. ‘Honestly, he’s a joy.’ Jen’s heart is full of sunbeams for the second time. You can never hear enough that your children are good. Especially not now.
They scrape their chairs back and walk over to the trestle table along the back. Jen debates taking the tea from Kelly before he drops it. She watches his hands.
‘These things are so fucking pointless,’ he says to her under his breath as he faffs with teabags. ‘So dystopian. Like being in some sort of crazy evaluation system.’
‘I know,’ Jen says, passing him the milk. ‘Judgement ahoy.’
Kelly smiles a pained sort of smile at her. How long until we can leave?
‘How long until we can leave?’
‘Soon,’ she promises him. ‘Do you think he is a good kid?’ she asks. ‘Honestly.’
‘Huh?’
‘Do you think we’re out of the woods? You know – teenagers going astray.’
‘Not Todd going astray?’ a voice says at Jen’s shoulder.
She turns around and there’s Pauline, in a bright purple dress and a cloud of perfume. ‘Who knows?’ Jen says with a sigh. She’d forgotten this interaction. Totally forgotten that they met here.
Kelly wanders off in the direction of the bathroom. Pauline raises her eyebrows. ‘Wonder if your husband hates me,’ she says. ‘He always disappears.’
‘He hates everyone.’
Pauline laughs. ‘How’s Todd, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jen says to Pauline. ‘I think we’re heading towards some – some rebellion.’
‘Connor’s teacher just said he’s not handing in any homework,’ Pauline says.
‘None?’ Jen says, thinking: Is this relevant? This small piece of information, so small Pauline obviously forgets to relay it in a few days’ time when Jen asks.
‘Who knows? Teenage boys. Laws unto themselves,’ Pauline says. ‘Theo’s the only one with an unblemished record. Right – geography calls. Prayers appreciated.’
Jen touches her shoulder as she leaves. Kelly comes back, resumes making the tea. As he passes it to Jen, it falls straight on to the floor, an eruption of beige liquid, teabag and all. Jen stares at it bubbling away there.
They see Mr Sampson next, Todd’s form tutor. He looks barely older than Todd. Side-parted dark hair, a kind of eager-to-please expression.
‘All good,’ he says quickly, crisply, while Jen sips the tea. She thinks suddenly, horribly, of what Mr Sampson will say in the future. The day after the crime, the day after that. Day Plus One. Day Plus Two. Each one an equal and opposite reaction to Day Minus One, Day Minus Two. ‘Good kid, never knew he’d have it in him,’ he will say sadly. Jen can just see it now. ‘Must’ve been unhappy in some way.’
‘You’ve not noticed anything?’ Jen asks Mr Sampson now.
‘Perhaps he is ever so slightly more withdrawn?’
‘Is he? He’s not – he’s not involved in anything, is he?’ she asks. ‘Anything – I don’t know … I sometimes wonder if he’s gone off the rails a bit.’
Kelly turns to her in surprise, but Jen isn’t focusing on him. Mr Sampson is hesitating, just a little. ‘No,’ he says, but it contains an invisible ellipsis that streams out into the air after he’s finished speaking. He sips a coffee. He winces as he swallows. ‘No,’ he says again, more firmly this time, but he doesn’t meet Jen’s eyes.
Ryan
It’s Ryan’s fifth day at work, Friday, and five minutes ago everything changed. He arrived at the station and this man, this Leo, told him he wasn’t working on response today. He walked Ryan into the large meeting room at the back of the station, more of a boardroom, and Ryan had watched curiously as he locked the door behind them.
Leo is maybe in his late forties, slim but jowly, his hairline receding. He speaks with a jaded kind of brevity, as though he’s never not talking to idiots. Similar to Bradford, but not at Ryan’s expense. Not yet, anyway. Unlike Bradford, whose reputation Ryan now knows to be that of an embittered junior, Leo’s generally regarded as a crazy genius. Much worse, in many ways, but much more interesting, too.
They have just been joined by Jamie, who is maybe thirty. These men are not only in plain clothes but in actual scruffs: Jamie is in jogging bottoms, a stained T-shirt and a black baseball cap. Leo looks like he is about to go and coach a football team.
Ryan is feeling fairly uneasy at this point, sitting opposite these men, a giant table between them. ‘Sorry – what is this …？’ he starts to ask.
‘We’ll get on to that,’ Leo says. He has a cockney accent, a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand which clinks against the wooden table. ‘Where did you say you’re from, Ryan?’
‘Manchester …’ Ryan says, wondering if he’s about to get sacked. ‘Can I just ask –’
Next to him, Jamie takes his baseball cap off and rubs at his hair. He puts the cap on the table, very deliberately, it seems to Ryan, over the recording equipment. Ryan’s eyes track to it. ‘Nine nine nine response is pretty boring, isn’t it?’ Leo asks.
‘For sure.’
‘Look. How do you fancy doing something more interesting? We can call it research.’
‘Research?’
‘We need information about an organized-crime gang operating around Liverpool.’
Day Minus Nine, 15:00
That it is Day Minus Nine makes sense to Jen.
She has come to the school. She’s here, the day before parents’ evening, to see if she can get any insight into what was underneath Mr Sampson’s hesitation last night, in private. People are always more confessional in private.
‘He has mentioned a falling-out, I seem to remember,’ he is saying to Jen.
Mr Sampson teaches geography. Behind him there is a wall that seems to be a tribute to the features of the world he likes the most – the white desert in Egypt, a cave of crystals in Mexico. He is leaning back against his desk, facing Jen.
‘When? And with who?’ Jen says. She looks around this classroom which must greet Todd every morning but that she has never seen herself, never had time to, because of her job. Green speckled carpets. White desks that seat two students. Blue plastic chairs. She found out her mother died when she was in a classroom just like this. Called out by the head teacher. She hadn’t returned for several days afterwards. Her father had hardly talked about it. ‘Can’t change what’s happened,’ he’d said once. Repressed, unhappy at times, a very typical lawyer. Jen had been so determined to parent differently. Openly, honestly, humanely, but maybe she’d fucked it up as much as he had. Isn’t that what Larkin says?