‘For me to prove it to you. A car’s going to come along here, soon,’ she says, gesturing to the dark, quiet street. ‘It’ll lose control and flip on to its side. It was just on the news last night. My tomorrow. The owner escapes, totally unharmed. It’s a black Audi. It flips over there. It won’t go near us.’
Kelly rubs a hand along his jaw. ‘Okay,’ he says again, dismissive, confused. Together, they lean back on the road sign, side by side.
Just as she is beginning to think the car won’t come, it does. Jen hears it first. A distant, speeding rumble. ‘Here it is.’
Kelly looks at her. The rain has intensified. His hair begins to drip.
And then it rounds the corner. A black Audi, fast, out of control. The driver clearly reckless, drunk, both. Its engine sounds like gunfire as it passes them. Kelly watches it, his eyes fixed on it. His expression inscrutable.
Kelly pulls his hood up with one hand, against the downpour, just as the car flips. A metallic crunch and skid. The horn goes.
Then nothing. A beat of silence while the car smokes, then the owner emerges, wide-eyed. He’s maybe fifty, ambles across the road to them.
‘You’re lucky to be out of that,’ Jen says. Kelly’s eyes are back on her. Disbelief, but also a weird kind of panic seems to radiate from him.
‘I know,’ the man says to Jen. He pats his legs, like he’s unable to believe that he’s really fine.
Kelly shakes his head. ‘I don’t understand this.’
‘A neighbour is about to come out, to offer help,’ Jen commentates.
Kelly waits, saying nothing, one foot against the leg of the street sign, arms folded. A door slams somewhere.
‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ a voice says a few houses down.
‘Do you believe me yet?’ she says to Kelly.
‘I can’t think of any other explanation,’ he says after a few seconds. ‘But this is – this is mental.’
‘I know that. Of course I know that.’ She squares herself in front of him so she can look directly into his eyes. ‘But I promise. I promise, I promise, I promise it’s true.’
Kelly makes a gesture, down the street, and they walk, but not home. They stroll aimlessly, together, in the rain. Jen thinks he might believe her. Truly. And won’t that do something, surely? If Todd’s other parent believes it. Maybe Kelly will wake up with her, yesterday for him, too. It’s a long shot, but she has to try it.
‘This is completely batshit,’ he says. His eyes catch the overhead lights as they move. ‘There is no way you could’ve known about that car. Is there?’ She can see him trying to work it out.
‘No. I mean – literally, no.’
‘I can’t see how …’ His breath mists up the air in front of him. ‘I just don’t …’
‘I know.’
They take a left, then walk down an alleyway, past their favourite Indian takeaway, then start a slow loop back towards home.
Eventually, he takes her hand in his. ‘If it’s true, it must be horrible,’ he says.
That if. Jen loves it. It is a small step, a small concession from husband to wife. ‘It is horrible,’ she says thickly. As she thinks over the past few days of panic and alienation, her eyes moisten and a tear tracks its way down her cheek. She stares at their feet as they walk the streets in perfect sync. Kelly must be watching her, because he stops and wipes the tear away with a thumb.
‘I’ll try,’ he says simply, softly, to her. ‘I’ll try to believe you.’
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.’