But, first, you lie to me.
Kelly says nothing in greeting to her. Typically him. She understands, now, the need to be guarded. Because he is a liar. But his eyes flick up and down her body and, nevertheless, her stomach rolls over.
‘Coffee?’
‘Sure.’
She messes with the sugar packets on the table. Pink Sweet ’n Lows. The menu contains coffee, tea, peppermint tea and orange squash. Nothing like 2022’s macchiatos. The front window is illuminated with fairy lights, even though it’s late March. The rest is pretty mundane. Formica tables, linoleum floors. The smell of fried food and cigarettes, the sound of a till ringing up. People signing receipts for card payments. Two thousand and three lacks the flair of 2022. There’s nothing, except the fairy lights, that is there just because it’s nice. No picture walls or hanging plants. Just these tables and those blank walls, and him.
He’s in the queue, weight on one hip, slim frame, his face inscrutable, an enigma.
‘Sorry,’ he says, bringing over two old-fashioned cups and saucers. He sits down opposite her and, bold as that, her future husband knocks his knee against hers, as if by accident, but then lets it settle there. It has exactly the same effect on her the second time as the first, even though she knows in precise detail what it’s like to kiss him, to love him, to fuck him, to make a child with him. Kelly has never failed to turn her on.
‘So,’ he says to her, a sentence as loaded as a gun. ‘Who is Jen?’ His knee is warm against hers, his elegant hands plucking at the same sugar packets she was just messing with. He’s always done this to her. She can’t think clearly around him.
She stares down at the table. He is undercover. His name isn’t Kelly. Why does he never, ever tell her, not in twenty years? That’s what she can’t figure out. The answer must be out there, somewhere, beyond those fairy lights, but she can’t yet find it. She wonders if, when she does, the time loop will end. And, if not, what it’ll take to stop it.
‘Not much to tell,’ she says, still looking at the street outside, at the 2003 world. Thinking, too, about the glaring truth that she’s been trying to ignore: unless Jen and Kelly fall in love, Todd won’t exist at all.
‘Who is Kelly?’ she says back. She thinks, out of nowhere, of the way he bought that pumpkin for her, because she wanted it. The Belfast sink he got her. The lack of fucks he gives to the whole world, in the future. Both inspirational and slightly dangerous. He excites her. They were good together. They are good together. But the foundation of it is this: lies. A crumbling cliff edge.
He lets his smile spread across his features as he looks at her, biting his bottom lip. ‘Kelly is a pretty boring guy on a date with a pretty hot woman.’
‘Only pretty hot.’
‘Trying to keep my cool.’
‘Failing.’
He holds his hands up and laughs. ‘True. I left my cool at the law-firm door.’
‘The painting then – it was a ruse.’
Something dark passes across his expression. ‘No … but I don’t give a fuck about decorating your dad’s law firm any more.’
‘How did you get into that then?’
‘You know, I just never wanted to be of the establishment,’ he says, and Jen remembers this exact sentence, the effect it had on her, on of-the-establishment her. She’d found it thrilling. Now, she’s jaded by it, confused. She doesn’t understand where Ryan ends and Kelly begins. Whether the things she fell in love with are the real him.
‘Which area of law do you practise?’
‘I’m a trainee – so everything. Dogsbody stuff.’
Kelly nods, just once. ‘Photocopying?’
‘Photocopying. Tea-making. Form-filling.’
Another sip of his coffee, yet more eye contact. ‘You like it?’
‘I like the people. I want to help people.’
His eyes catch the light at that. ‘Me too,’ he says softly. Something seems to shift between them. ‘I like that,’ he adds. ‘You have much to do with the running of it or …?’
‘Hardly anything.’ Jen remembers being flattered by these questions, at his ability to sit and listen, unusual among young men, but she feels differently about it, today.
Kelly crosses his legs at the ankles, his knee leaving hers. She’s cold with the absence of it, despite everything. ‘That’s good,’ he says quietly.
She looks across at him. Sparks fly between them, like embers spitting out from a fire that only they can see.
‘I never wanted the big job, big house, all that,’ he adds.
She glances down at the table, smiling. It is such a Kelly thing to say, the attitude, the confidence, the edge, she finds herself tumbling. And, for much of their marriage, they were poor but happy.
‘Tell me about the most interesting case you have on,’ he says. And she remembers this, too. She’d confided in him about some divorce or another. He’d listened for so long, genuinely interested. So she’d thought.
‘Oh, I won’t bore you with that.’
‘Okay – tell me where you want to be in ten years.’
She looks at him, hypnotized by him. With you, she thinks simply. The old you.
But hasn’t he always – God, what is she thinking? – but hasn’t he always been a good husband to her? Loyal, straight-up, sexy, funny, attentive. He has.
The knee is back again. He rolls up through his foot, moving his knee against hers. Jen’s stomach is set on fire immediately, like a match struck with only the merest touch to the box.
As the evening air gets blacker and blacker outside, the rain heavier, the café steamier, they talk about everything. The media. They briefly touch on Kelly’s childhood – ‘only child, both parents dead, just me and my paintbrush’ – and where Jen lives. They talk about their favourite animals – his are otters – and if they believe in marriage.
They talk about politics and religion and cats and dogs and that he is a morning person and she a night owl. ‘The best things happen at night,’ she says.
‘The best thing is a 6 a.m. cup of coffee. I will not be taking any arguments.’
‘Six o’clock is the middle of the night.’
‘So stay up then. With me.’
They get closer and closer, as close as the table will allow them. She tells him she wants a fat cat called Henry VIII, Kelly having no idea that they do get one, and he laughs so much he shakes the table. ‘And then what’s his heir called? Henry IX?’
They talk about their favourite holidays – Cornwall for him, hates flying – and their death-row meals – they both want a Chinese takeaway.
‘Oh, well,’ he says, around ten o’clock. ‘Just a rough upbringing, I guess. I want to give my kids better.’
‘Kids, hey?’ And there it is. A layer of Kelly that Jen knows to be true.
‘I mean – yeah?’ he says. ‘I don’t know – just something about raising the next generation, isn’t there? Teach them the stuff our parents didn’t teach us …’
‘Well, I’m glad we’ve skipped the small talk.’
‘I like big talk.’
‘Did you come in yesterday just – on the off chance? Of work?’ she asks, wanting to understand, fully, their origin story. He’d gone in to check with her dad, then come out only five minutes later.
‘No. You know,’ he says, seeming to be wanting something from her, his expression expectant, ‘your dad and I have a mutual acquaintance. Joseph Jones? You might’ve met him.’
A bomb explodes somewhere, or that’s how it feels, at least. Dad knew Joseph fucking Jones? The world seems to stop, for Jen, for just a blink.
‘No, I haven’t,’ she says, almost a whisper. ‘Dad deals with everyone.’
It’s as though she’s popped a balloon. Kelly’s shoulders drop, perhaps in relief. He reaches for her hand. She lets him take it automatically. But her mind is whirring. Her father knew Joseph Jones? So – what? Her father is … Is what? If Jen were a cartoon, a burst of question marks would appear above her head.