‘Nicola Williams, one and the same,’ Ezra says.
Jen frowns, sitting there on the steps, listening to this play out. Todd is being introduced to Nicola. But Todd has already texted Nicola. Hasn’t he? She runs over the dates in the phone messages. Yes, he has. He has. He texted her on the fifteenth, saying Nice to chat. Today is the sixteenth. But he meets her on the seventeenth. Doesn’t he?
Jen shifts as quietly as possible, straining her eyes, looking past the lit-green of the snooker table, and beyond. On the red plush sofa attached to the far wall is Clio. Golden legs, short fringe, the lot. Jen blinks, just watching, waiting for the small talk to end.
‘Room for a little one?’ Nicola says. She grabs the cue off Todd, who sits down. It seems like a perfectly normal outing. Todd’s girlfriend, her family. But Nicola’s appearance has set something off, perhaps because Jen knows Todd’s lying, perhaps not. There is some sinister undercurrent now, like a shark in the water.
Jen shifts again to look at Todd sitting on the bench with Clio. He isn’t as close to her as he was the other night. But, nevertheless, he’s with her. So, what – does he end it tonight?
Music kicks in from nowhere. Big, bass-led rap that drowns out their voices. Jen peers and sees that it’s coming from a jukebox she hadn’t noticed, a red retro-looking one with white lights surrounding the display.
She sits for the duration of the song, hoping it’ll stop, but another kicks in. Todd is talking to Joseph, and Clio stands and joins them too, with Nicola, but Jen can’t hear a thing. She can only watch it play out. Something that looks like casual conversation, but Todd is uncomfortable, she can tell. She can tell by the way he walks toe to heel around the table, a pacing lion.
Suddenly, Jen realizes the music isn’t accidental. It’s to drown anyone else out. Any eavesdroppers like her – and others, she thinks, remembering the circling police.
After an hour, Joseph puts on a coat. Todd cleans up, potting the balls effortlessly himself. As Joseph leaves with Nicola, Jen dives through the door on her left, which she discovers leads to the toilets. She stands there in a retro-decorated bathroom alone, listening for footsteps.
The bathroom has vintage wallpaper up, pink clamshells, the texture gone fuzzy with age. Two wooden boxes of toiletries sit between the two sinks, also pink, and a gilded full-length mirror hangs on the wall.
She leans against the sinks and thinks about what she knows:
Todd meets Clio in August.
They’re currently still together but, by tomorrow, he’s gone off her. But then five days before the crime, they’re back together.
Yesterday, he asked Nicola for some sort of help.
Today, Nicola shows up at the snooker club. He pretends not to know her. She clearly knows Clio’s uncle, used to work for him.
In a few days, a blond kid steals a car for Ezra. Clio’s family are clearly criminals. The Chanel bag. And, in a few more days, Nicola is injured. And then Todd becomes a killer.
She stares outside, considering this timeline of events. The window is open, letting in a steady stream of cool night air. She waits at least ten minutes before considering leaving, then hears a low voice, laughter, outside. Without thinking, she climbs on to the unit holding the two sinks, her knees painful on the hard surface, and peers out through the crack. It’s Todd. He’s on the phone. He has reached his car, parked out the back. He leans his elbows on the roof – he’s so tall – as he talks animatedly.
She strains to hear. It’s quiet out. She should be able to listen. She reaches to her side to switch the light out, so she can sit here, once again unseen at yet another window.
‘I almost called your secret phone. I’m trying to phase Clio out,’ he is saying. ‘Don’t worry. Your dirty work is safe with me.’ His tone is acidic, like a lemon.
A pause. Jen stops breathing. ‘Yeah – I mean, who knows,’ he adds. She has no idea who he is talking to, can’t gauge it. It isn’t a mate. Isn’t an equal.
Todd laughs again, a sort of hard laugh, bitter and sardonic. ‘No. That’s just what I was trying to say. We’re at the end of the line, aren’t we?’ He tilts his head back, looking up at the heavens. The moon is out, a pale hologram in the sky. The temperature is dropping. Jen is cold, kneeling there on the sinks, listening to her son, who seems to think they’re at the end of the line. What does that curiously adult expression mean? Is this why, in just under two weeks, he kills?
He moves his gaze down, like he’s watching a ball slowly drop, and looks straight at Jen’s window. She can’t look away, as their eyes meet, but he moves his gaze quickly away. He can’t have seen her. The glass is frosted, the light is out.
‘Yeah, okay,’ Todd says.
Another pause.
‘Ask Nicola. See you at home,’ Todd says into the phone.
The world seems to stop, just for a second. See you at home. See you at home. See you at home.
That can only be one person: her husband.
Day Minus Thirteen, 20:40
Todd gets into his car, revs the engine and drives away, leaving Jen alone in the dark bathroom, her knees damp from the water sitting on the side.
See you at home.
The person on the end of that phone is Kelly.
Ask Nicola.
Kelly knows Nicola. Not Todd. Todd wasn’t lying when he was introduced to her.
I almost called your secret phone.
It is Kelly to whom the burner phone belongs. It is Kelly who texted Nicola.
‘You were just on the phone to Todd,’ Jen says the second she storms through the front door. Todd isn’t home yet. Perhaps he caught up with Clio again. And Jen can’t wait. Who cares? She has no tomorrow. She’s got to ask him now.
Kelly is wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt. He is sitting on their velvet sofa. They put it in the bay window in their living room. It fits exactly, not even a centimetre of wiggle room. They had laughed so much as they tried to thump it into place. Kelly had suggested they use lube and Jen hadn’t been able to stop giggling.
She drops her handbag on to the wooden floor. The house is quiet, the lamps on low.
Kelly apparently needs a moment to think. Those three seconds break Jen’s fucking heart.
‘I know he’s involved in something dodgy – and so do you,’ she says.
Evidently, Kelly decides to go for an outright denial. ‘He’s having women trouble.’ Kelly’s eyes don’t change at all as he speaks these words, these lies. ‘Jen?’ He reaches for her.
‘I heard you,’ she says.
‘We talked about Clio.’
‘Who’s Nicola?’
‘What? I don’t know a Nicola.’
‘Kelly,’ she says, the word exploding out of her. ‘I know you know them. Who is Joseph Jones?’
‘No idea,’ Kelly says quickly, not missing a beat. He busies himself, standing and turning on the overhead light, her enigmatic husband. Mysterious – or a liar? ‘Sorry – I don’t know what you mean?’ he says, turning to her.
As he does, she sees the glimmer of sweat around his hairline catching the light for just a second. ‘I know you’re lying,’ she says to his back as he begins to retreat again. Now he’s putting shoes on, a coat.