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She looks at the sky and thinks, Well, I’ll see. She might see August before November. But she’ll get to the beginning of the problem, whenever that is.
The moon is out, an early lunchtime moon, hanging above both of them, whichever versions of themselves they are. She, in the past. And Todd, undergoing whatever changes that lead to him killing somebody in four days’ time.
‘I’ll be home soon,’ she says.
‘Where are you?’
‘The universe,’ she says, and he laughs, a noise so perfect to her it may as well be music.
Jen is back at Eshe Road North, hoping to find Clio. She assumes she doesn’t live with her uncle, but perhaps he can direct her to Clio’s address.
Jen believes the key rests with Clio. Todd met her a couple of months ago – as far as Jen knows, but you can add at least a few weeks for teenage secrecy. It can’t be a coincidence that that is when it began, along with his friendship with Connor. It being an amorphous, hard-to-describe change. Sullenness, secrecy, that strange pallor he has at times.
And so here she is, knocking. Almost immediately, a female form appears in the frosted glass. Jen’s heart rises up in her chest.
The door opens, and Jen can’t help but marvel at Clio’s beauty. That short, chic fringe, her close-together eyes. Her hair is snarled, undone, but it looks good for it, rather than the insane way Jen would look if she tried the same.
‘Hi,’ Jen says.
Clio glances over her shoulder, a quick, automatic move, but Jen spots it and wonders what it means.
‘Todd’s mum,’ Jen says, realizing after a second’s hesitation that although Jen has met Clio, Clio has not met Jen.
‘Oh,’ Clio says, her striking features slackening in surprise.
‘I just wondered …’ Jen says. She glances down. Clio has stepped back slightly. Not to let Jen in, but as if she is about to close the door. Jen thinks of her open, curious expression the first time she saw her, when she was in those ripped jeans at the end of this same hallway. Clio’s face now, when Todd isn’t here, is totally different. ‘I just wondered if we might have a bit of a chat?’ She gestures to Clio. ‘It’s nothing to do with – it’s nothing to do with you, really. I’m fine with your – with your relationship. Can I come in … just for a sec? Is this where you live?’ she gabbles.
‘Look – I can’t …’ Clio says. Jen looks around the hallway. Clio’s coat is hanging up, thrown over the door to the cupboard that Ezra closed. Over the coat is a Chanel handbag, Jen thinks a real one. They’re worth at least five thousand pounds, aren’t they? How can she afford one? Unless it’s a fake?
‘It’s nothing bad,’ Jen says, her eyes still on that bag.
Clio’s brows knit together. Her mouth begins to scrunch up into a delicate kind of apology. ‘I really …’ she says, her hands wringing together. She takes another step back. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I really – I just really can’t …’
‘You can’t what?’ Jen says, totally bewildered.
‘I really can’t talk about it with you.’
‘Talk about what?’ Jen says, suddenly remembering that Kelly thought they’d broken up. ‘You haven’t fallen out?’
Something seems to pass over Clio’s features that Jen can’t name. Some understanding, but Jen isn’t privy to what. ‘Please explain,’ she adds pathetically.
‘We broke up, but then we got back together yesterday – it’s … complicated.’
‘How?’
Clio shrinks back from Jen, drawing her arms around her stomach, folding in on herself, like somebody frail or feeling ill. ‘Sorry,’ she says, barely audibly, taking another step back. ‘I’ll see you soon – okay?’ She closes the door, leaving Jen there, alone.
It latches with a soft click, and through the frosted glass Jen watches Clio retreat.
She turns to leave. As she does so, a police car circles past. Very, very slowly. It’s the pace of it that makes Jen look up at it. The windows are up, the driver looking straight ahead, the passenger – who Jen is sure is the handsome police officer who arrests Todd – looking straight at her. As she walks to her car, defeated by Clio’s reaction, bewildered by the mystery facing her, the car circles back, going the other way.
Jen thinks about what Andy said as she drives away. About her subconscious, about what she knows, about things she might have seen and dismissed as insignificant, and about what she’s here to do. There’s nothing else for it, she thinks, as she drives away. She’s got to ask her son.
‘I have something I want to run by you,’ Jen says conversationally, walking to the corner shop with Todd. He will buy a Snickers. Last time, she bought a bottle of wine, but she’s not in the mood, tonight. They take this walk often. Todd because of his insatiable teenage appetite and – well, the same for Jen, actually.
There will be somebody in the corner shop wearing a trilby, and this trilby is Jen’s trump card. Unpredictable, vivid, true. She is glad she has remembered it. She can use it to convince Todd and then – if nothing else – find out what he would do in this situation. Her brainiac son.
‘Shoot,’ Todd says easily.
