He hasn’t called the taxi yet. His gaze lights on hers. And she knows, she knows, she knows that look.
He raises an eyebrow. And then he says it, the sentence which changes everything: ‘I know this is a fucking cliché, but: do I know you? From before today?’
Jen can’t help but laugh. ‘Not yet,’ she says, the banter with her husband flowing as easily as ever.
She meets his eyes in the car park. He fell in love with her so deeply that he gave up his life for her. His name. His mother. His identity. She doesn’t think he has been pretending all of their marriage. She thinks he was trying not to.
‘I’m Ryan, anyway. You?’
‘I’m Jen.’
And this is the moment. Jen knows. She’s ready. She closes her eyes, as if falling asleep. And she’s gone. And everything that has been is wiped, just as she suspected.
Day Zero
01:59 becomes 01:00. Jen Hiles is on the landing.
The pumpkin is there. Everything is there. On her skin, she can still feel the phantom mist of the January night, still feel her husband’s eyes on hers.
Her husband emerges from the bedroom. ‘All right?’ he says.
‘Tell me about the day we met,’ she says to him, stepping into his warm embrace.
‘Huh?’ he says sleepily.
‘Tell me,’ she says, with all the urgency of somebody with everything on the line.
‘Er … you came into the station …’ Jen gapes in disbelief. She’s done it. She’s lived it, these whole twenty years, with him, with Ryan.
‘Am I a lawyer?’ she asks him.
‘Er – yes? I need to sleep. I’m on shift tomorrow.’
He’s a policeman. Jen closes her eyes in pleasure. He will be happier. No longer so unfulfilled, no longer found wanting.
‘It’s so fucking late,’ he moans.
But still him.
‘Is my dad alive?’ she says.
‘What’s happened to you?’
‘Please – just tell me.’
‘… No,’ he says, and that’s when Jen understands it. The papercut, saving her father. Neither of them lasted. Andy was right: events played through from that rainy day in January almost twenty years ago, erasing all the other changes she made along the way. Changes she only made because they gave her the information to go back to the right place, the right time, and solve it.
‘Hello?’ Todd calls.
Something lifts in Jen’s heart like a sunrise, dawn breaking over their lives. It’s Todd. He’s home. Home, calling up the stairs, not walking along the street, knife in hand.
‘You’re still up?’ Todd calls. ‘You’re in the window like a fucking rude picture!’
Kelly laughs loudly.
‘Hey – Ryan?’ Jen says.
‘Hmm?’ he says, as though it’s nothing at all, but, to her, his name confirms everything. Jen stares at him. Same navy eyes. Same slim frame. A tattoo that says only Jen.
So Joseph didn’t get caught, but the baby never got stolen, either. Jen reflects on this, just for a second, in the picture window. Well, you win some, you lose some. Criminals will always trade in drugs, in arms, in information. They will always steal and lie. You can’t catch everyone, but you can save the innocent. Did twenty years in prison teach Joseph anything, anyway?
She looks at her husband and at her son, coming up the stairs two at a time. Isn’t it a price worth paying?
Something niggles in the back of her mind. Something about how she will account for this, this strange period of her life spent reliving it.
‘All right?’ Todd says, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Where have you been – out with Clio?’
‘Who’s Clio?’ Todd says, staring down at his phone.
Of course. Joseph never comes to find Kelly, so Todd never meets Clio. Jen stares at her son. She has denied him his first love. Is that a price worth paying, too?
‘I had a dream you met somebody called Clio,’ she says, wanting to be sure.
‘Eve wouldn’t like that, would she?’ Todd says.
‘Eve?’ Jen says sharply. ‘Who?’
‘My …’ Todd’s eyes slide to Kelly, who shrugs. ‘Girlfriend?’
‘What’s her surname?’
‘Green …?’
The baby. The stolen baby that was never stolen. Jen is standing at the edge of a hurricane, feeling just the breeze of it beginning to waft her hairline.
‘Can I see a photo?’
Todd looks at her like she is a total idiot and flicks through his camera roll on his phone. And there she is. It’s Clio. It’s fucking Clio. Clio was the stolen baby. No wonder she felt recognition when she saw the photo of the baby. Jen reaches, in a daze, to hold his phone in her grasp. He lets her do it easily, no secrecy here, not really. ‘Wow,’ Jen says, zooming in on her features.
‘Never seen a woman before?’ Todd remarks.
‘Let me look in peace,’ Jen says, working it through.
So, now. Baby Eve was never stolen. Jen prevented it. She stayed with her mother, as Eve Green. Jen stopped them meeting in one way, but, look: they met in another. She fell in love with her son in 2022 the same way she did as Clio, when she was stolen and sent to live with a relative of Joseph’s. Fate.
Jen looks up at her husband, and at her son. Clio. Ryan. Eve. Kelly. People whose names have changed but whose love has endured despite that.
Jen extends an arm to him and Todd steps into their embrace, and they stand there, in the picture window, just the three of them. Jen’s breaths slow.
She goes downstairs after a few minutes, just to check, just to look. Her hand on the door knob.
A strange feeling descends around her, like a fine mist. Déjà vu. What was that? She shakes her head. Stolen babies and … gangs? She blinks, and it’s gone. How strange. She never gets déjà vu.
And on such a normal evening, too.
Day Plus One
Jen wakes up. It’s the thirtieth of October and, for whatever reason, she isn’t sure, she feels as though she has her entire life ahead of her.
‘All right?’ Todd says to her on the landing as she pulls a dressing gown around her. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure?’ Jen says. She has a headache, but that’s about it. She can smell cooking downstairs. Ryan must have started breakfast.
‘You said some weird shit last night. Thought I had a girlfriend called Clio?’
‘Who’s Clio?’ Jen says.
Epilogue:
Day Minus One
The Unintended Consequence
For the first few minutes after she wakes up, Pauline has forgotten.
And then she remembers. Dread descends as she does, and she shoots out of bed like a firework. Connor.
She’d known this was going to happen for months. He’s been secretive, rude, sullen. She’s been waiting up for him, all hours. There’s been a series of escalating behaviours. And now this.
It began with the déjà vu. Last night. And then, right after that, Connor was arrested. The police said he’d committed all sorts of offences: drugs, thefts, the lot. He’s been involved recently, over the past few years, with somebody called Joseph. He’s supposed to have the rest of his life in front of him, and here he is, ruining it.
She needs to call a solicitor. She needs to fix it. She needs to do so many things. She needs to get to the bottom of why he did this.
She heads out onto the landing, ready to fire up the computer and find a solicitor. But there he is, her boy, on the landing. ‘Er?’ she says to him. ‘Did they let you go?’
‘Who?’
‘The police?’
‘What police?’ he says, with a laugh. And that’s when Pauline sees it. The date, flashing up on BBC News, blaring from inside his room. It’s October the thirtieth. Wasn’t yesterday the thirtieth? She’s sure of it.
HYSTERICAL STRENGTH
Hysterical strength is a display of extreme strength by humans, beyond what is believed to be normal, usually occurring in life-or-death situations, particularly involving mothers. Anecdotal reports are of women lifting cars to rescue newborn babies, sometimes creating a huge force field of energy. Indeed, more supernatural reports have also been noted, such as time loops, though none has been proven to date. Sufferers often report déjà vu alongside episodes of hysterical strength.
Acknowledgements