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Nothing on Nicola. Name too common.
I have something on Ryan though – he’s dead.
Panic flashes across Jen’s body as if she has been doused in hot oil. She calls Gina immediately, but there’s no answer. She rings again and again and again. But Gina doesn’t pick up today; it’s gone. They’ll have to start from scratch tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, yesterday.
Day Minus Twelve, 08:00
Twelve days back and Jen opens her eyes on the exact day Nicola Williams texted Todd’s burner phone saying, It’s in place but see you tonight. Jen is therefore determined to follow Todd today, not to let him out of her sight. Personal investigators be damned. This has got to be the better way. Jen can’t start over again with Gina today. It’s too disheartening to lose it all when she sleeps.
She follows Todd to school and intends to wait outside, all day, in the car park. As long as it takes. She has absolutely nothing better to do. The only requirement of today is that Todd has zero opportunity to meet Nicola alone.
She sends some work emails while she waits, eyes on Todd’s car, and on the school doors. She researches local missing babies, and goes deeper into the probate registers, looking for Ryan, but she uncovers nothing.
It begins to rain around eleven o’clock, fat drops that land like falling pennies that disappear to nothing on her windscreen. She stares out as the car park becomes a moving, shivering river. She’d forgotten this. Mid-October had been unseasonably wet.
Jen stares up at the rain striking the windscreen, thinking about the weather, her son, and the ripple effects that can spread from a single raindrop.
She thinks about what the implications are for the changes she makes today. She wishes she understood it.
Maybe she can. It’ll just take a tedious explanation first.
She dials Andy’s office and is surprised when he answers straight away.
‘You won’t know me,’ she starts hesitatingly.
‘No, clearly not,’ he says, deadpan.
She explains her predicament as briefly as she can while he communicates a baffled and judgemental silence down the phone to her.
‘And that’s about it,’ she finishes.
A beat. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I do get these calls from time to time, so I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘No. Pranksters, usually, right?’ Jen says. She’s seen them about, too. She read another thread on Reddit this morning from somebody claiming to have time-travelled to 2022 from 2031. She didn’t believe it, despite experiencing much the same thing herself. This guy couldn’t even prove it. Says there’s a nuclear war in 2031, and nobody can disprove that anyway.
‘Yes, exactly. Hard to know who to believe, isn’t it?’ he says. She can’t bear it; she can’t bear for anyone – even this virtual stranger – to think her mad or needy or a malingerer, someone who calls up professors and bullshits them.
‘Yeah. Look – later on in October you’re shortlisted for – and win – an award,’ she says. ‘The Penny Jameson. This won’t help me much today, but – well. There you are. You win.’
‘That award is –’
‘Embargoed. I know.’
‘I don’t know I’m shortlisted. But I do know I’m in for it. But you shouldn’t.’
‘Yes,’ Jen says. ‘It’s all I’ve got, my proof.’
‘I like your proof,’ he says succinctly. ‘I’m happy to accept it.’ The clarity of scientists. ‘I’ve just googled that award. It isn’t anywhere online.’
‘That’s what you say the next time.’
Another beat of silence while Andy seems to consider things. ‘Where? Do we meet?’ His tone is noticeably warmer.
‘In a café in Liverpool city centre. I suggest it. You wear a T-shirt that says Franny and Zooey on it.’
‘My J. D. Salinger,’ he says in surprise. ‘Tell me, are you outside my office window?’
‘No,’ Jen says with a laugh.
