‘I promise,’ she says.
‘Just – for things to go well,’ Todd says simply. ‘To get the GCSEs. Keep working hard. To become something.’
‘What’s that?’ she says softly, holding his eye contact under the harsh lamplight. He looks pale. The air smells of the kiss of garlic hitting the pan and Jen immediately thinks of her father and the garlic bread in the oven.
He shrugs, a child bathed in the glow of parental interest, content to be witnessed thinking, dreaming, wishing. ‘Sciencey,’ he says. ‘Something sciencey. I’d like to come to the Earth’s rescue in the future, you know? I’d like to change the world.’
‘I know,’ Jen says quietly. How could she ever have laughed at this?
‘I think that is laudable,’ Kelly says. ‘Really cool.’
‘I’m not trying to be cool,’ Todd says.
‘I just meant it in the old sense of the word.’
‘Of course,’ Todd snorts, and Kelly laughs easily. As he looks up, distracted by something behind them, his expression changes completely.
‘Oh sorry, got to take this,’ Kelly says, jumping to his feet. He raises his phone to his ear, and his T-shirt rides up, exposing his slim waist. He walks to the other side of the restaurant, where they can’t hear. She stares at the phone in his hand, at his face as he talks into it. She’s sure it didn’t ring, didn’t light up.
She looks behind her.
Nicola Williams is sitting two rows behind them. Jen is sure it is her, even though she looks completely different, her hair down, a glamorous top on. She’s sharing a bowl of noodles with a man, and laughing.
Something hot flashes up and down Jen’s back. That’s right. That’s right. Kelly left. He left the birthday meal. Something urgent for work, he’d said. Her gaze lands on him again, as he approaches the table after a phone call that lasted only ten seconds. ‘Work,’ he says. He’s hunched over, not quite looking at them. And certainly not looking at Nicola. ‘I’m so sorry – a client is back early, wants to discuss a job … do you mind if I …？’
‘No, no,’ Todd says, always reasonable, always affable, until he kills. He waves a hand, suddenly looking like a man again, in the hinterland between childhood and adulthood. ‘’Course not. Go. I’ll eat yours.’
‘It’s his birthday!’ Jen cries, stalling for time.
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Remember me when you win the Nobel,’ Kelly says to Todd, raising a hand in a parting gesture to both of them.
Jen jumps to her feet. She’s got to do something.
‘Nicola,’ she says loudly. Nicola doesn’t look at her, doesn’t do anything at all, keeps feeding the man noodles. ‘Nicola?’ Jen says again, directing it to her table. Kelly has stopped walking and is turning around slowly on the spot, watching Jen.
Nicola turns her mouth down in bafflement and shakes her head. ‘You know my husband?’ Jen prompts, pointing to Kelly.
Nicola and Kelly’s eyes meet, but there’s nothing. No recognition whatsoever. They are either masterclass liars, they haven’t met yet, or this woman isn’t Nicola. Jen steps closer to her. God, it isn’t. She only saw her through the door of the snooker club. And now, looking at this woman, she’s sure it isn’t her. She is much more groomed, her hair different, her make-up and clothes much tidier.
‘Sorry – sorry. Thought you were someone I knew,’ Jen says in embarrassment.
Kelly comes back to their table. ‘What’s going on?’ he says in a low voice, his palms flat on the table. There is something just the wrong side of assertive about this. He crosses over into menacingly angry.
‘Sorry – I thought you used to know her,’ she says, though she has never met any of Kelly’s friends.
‘No?’ he says, waiting for her to say more. When she doesn’t, he leaves. Jen must be mistaken. Nicola must not be the reason he was leaving after all.
‘You sad he left?’ Jen asks Todd.
Todd shrugs, but it isn’t dismissive. She thinks he is genuinely unbothered. ‘Nah,’ he says.
‘Good.’
‘It’s usually you leaving,’ he adds lightly. Jen’s head snaps up in surprise. Perhaps she isn’t here to observe Kelly’s behaviour at all.
She looks closely at Todd. He’s staring at the table. She starts to consider what Andy says about the subconscious. About how clues aren’t always the most obvious thing.
Their conversation about Todd’s science project pops into her mind. What was it he said to her? You don’t usually pay attention to my stuff. She thinks of the pizza boxes, one empty, one full, the other night. How she left him. How maybe this is all deeper, deeper, deeper than organized crime, than lying husbands, than murders. Maybe Kelly is a red herring. She’s here, on Todd’s birthday, when she’s been absent so often. What makes somebody commit a crime? Well, maybe it’s about her mothering of him. After all, does every action a child performs not begin with their mother?
Jen and Todd have been at the table for two further hours, clearly annoying the waiting staff, who keep asking if they want anything. Outside, the sun has set, the sky a deep plum. Todd’s eaten two puddings, ordered one after the other. ‘When can you, except on your birthday?’ he’d said hopefully, and Jen had let him.
‘You’re growing,’ she says, slipping seamlessly back into the role of the mother of a younger child. It’s innate, she was always told. It lived within her. Only she had never thought it had. It had taken her so long to adjust. The birth had been such a mess, the baby years so fraught, so busy Jen felt like she was in a vortex, always something to be doing. The clichés were all true: cups of undrunk tea left dotted around the house, friends neglected, career bodged.
Jen buried it. The shame of it, of not falling head over heels for her baby, who arrived in her life like a detonated grenade. She lived alongside it, that inadequacy, got used to it. But then, years later, she still felt the shame; but she also felt the love, too.
She remembers waiting for Todd to come out of his tiny classroom one day when he was five or six, feeling like she had just downed a glass of champagne. Fizzy with the excitement of just … seeing him, little him.
The love, true love, it should have eclipsed the shame, but there is so much judgement involved in parenthood that it never did. The shame is so easy to access, at the school gates, at the doctor’s, on fucking Mumsnet. She can’t let it go. And nor should she. You don’t usually pay attention to my stuff.
‘Let’s head?’ he says now. He jerks a thumb towards the door, motioning to leave.
‘I’m sorry about Dad,’ she says to him.
A frown crosses his face like a cloud in front of the sun. ‘No – I said it’s fine,’ he says, genuinely baffled, but not getting up.
‘And I’m sorry if I haven’t been … you know. The mum of your dreams.’
‘Oh, please, Mother.’ Todd flicks his hand on the table, a throwaway gesture. Already, at sixteen, he’s learned to deflect.
‘Let’s just say –’ she stops, not knowing how to word it.