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‘You’ll soon regret that.’ Muscles pushes himself off the wall, then wanders down the corridor. Ryan follows him out. Just before they come to the door that leads to the enquiry office, Muscles turns back.
‘You know, it can be a good thing not to know the lingo,’ he says. ‘You’ll find out why.’
‘You heard the Mike thing,’ Ryan says.
‘Exactly,’ Muscles says, barely hiding a smile.
‘Well, yeah – I’m not that up on the lingo, but I’m going to be,’ he says.
‘Well, don’t get too good, Ryan,’ Muscles says, enigmatically. He chews the gum for a few more seconds, staring at the door, thinking. ‘Not all good policemen talk like them.’
Day Minus Three, 08:00
Jen’s eyes open. She is in bed. And it’s the twenty-sixth.
It’s Day Minus Three.
She goes to the picture window. It’s raining outside. Where is this going to end? Cycling back – what, for ever? Until she ceases to exist?
She needs to know the rules. That is what any lawyer would do. Understand the statute, the framework, and then you can play the game. All she knows so far is that nothing has worked. She can only infer from travelling backwards that she hasn’t managed to stop the crime. Surely. Stop the crime, stop the time loop. That must be the key.
She hastily refreshes her email, looking for a reply from Andy Vettese, but there’s nothing. She goes downstairs to find Todd hunting for something.
‘On the top of the TV unit,’ Jen says. She knows he will be looking for his physics folder. She knows because she’s his mother, but she also knows because this has already happened.
‘Ah, thanks.’ He throws her a self-conscious grin. ‘Quantum today.’ God, he towers over her. He used to be many feet shorter than her, would reach his arm right up vertically when he was on the school run, his warm hand always finding hers. He’d get frustrated if she couldn’t take it, when she was fussing with her handbag or reaching to press the button on the traffic lights. She had felt guilty each time. It’s crazy the things mothers feel guilt over.
And now look, over a foot taller than her and refusing to meet her gaze.
Maybe she had been right to feel guilty, she thinks hopelessly. Maybe she should have never done anything except hold his hand. She could come up with a thousand maternal crimes: letting him watch too much television, sleep-training him – the lot, she thinks bitterly.
‘Do you know who Joseph Jones is?’ she says quietly, watching him carefully. Not to see if he tells her, but to see if he lies about it, which she thinks he will. A mother’s instincts are better than any lawyer’s.
Todd puffs air into his cheeks, then plugs his phone in the charger on the kitchen island. ‘Nope,’ he says, a studied frown crossing his features. He’s never once charged his phone there before school. He charges it overnight. ‘Why?’ he asks.
Jen appraises him. Interesting. He could have easily said, ‘Clio’s uncle’s friend,’ but he chose not to. Just as she expected.
She hesitates, not wanting to do something big, wanting to plan her moment. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she says.
‘Alrighty. Mysterious Jen. More a question than an axiom. Shower time.’ Todd leaves his phone charging. Jen stands there in the kitchen, without a theory, without a hope, and with the only person who might be able to help lying to her.
She glances at the stairs. She’s got between five and twenty minutes. Todd sometimes takes long and contemplative showers, sometimes quick ones, rushing so much to get dressed afterwards that his clothes stick to his wet skin. She tries to get into his phone but fails the PIN request twice.
She dashes upstairs. She’ll search his room instead. She’s got to find something useful.
Todd’s room is a dark cave, painted bottle green. Curtains closed. A double bed with a tartan cover on it sits underneath the window. A television faces the bed. There is a desk in the corner, underneath the stairs that lead up to her and Kelly’s bedroom. It’s neat but not cosy: the way many men keep their spaces. A black lamp and a MacBook sit on the otherwise empty desk; an exercise bike leans against the far wall.
She opens his laptop, and fails that password log-in twice, too. She looks around his bedroom, thinking how best she can use the time.
Frantically, she opens his desk drawers and the ones in his bedside tables and looks under the bed. She pulls the duvet back and feels around in the bottom of the wardrobe. She just knows she’s going to find something. She can feel it. Something damning. Something she can never forget.
She ransacks the room. She’ll never be able to get it straight again, but she doesn’t care.
She’s already wasted six minutes. One unit of legal time: an hour divided into tenths. Her gaze lands on his Xbox. He’s always on it. He must talk to some people on there. It’s worth a shot.
She powers it up, listening out for the shower, then navigates to the messenger section. It’s a dark world in there. Messages with random people about spooky games, fighting games, games where you earn enough points to buy knives to stab other players with …
She goes to the recent sent items, which has two messages in. One to User78630 and one to Connor18. The first says: okay. The one to Connor says: 11pm I’ll drop it off?
