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Todd is eating edamame beans with garlic and chilli salt. He deftly shells them, popping the innards into his mouth, talking through his food. Kelly is reclining in his chair, just listening.
‘The thing is,’ Todd says, swallowing one of the beans, ‘Trump is actually just insane – as opposed to merely Republican.’
Jen’s heart feels both full and light, a pink candyfloss whorl in her chest. She gazes at her son. She knows the man he becomes, at least up until the murder, can see the seeds of him just here. He learns a lot more about American politics in the two years that follow this birthday, totally eclipses her understanding of it. They watch The West Wing together next year. He stops it to explain the electoral process to her; she stops it to explain the love interests to him. She’d totally forgotten that, too. The past disappears into the horizon like fog, but here she is, able to live it again, to sift through it.
‘Obviously, he will get voted in again,’ Todd says, stuffing another bean into his mouth. ‘It’s the whole fake-news thing, isn’t it? Anything negative about Trump is now fake news. Genius, in a way.’ He reaches down underneath the table to fiddle with his laces – bright green ones. That is what was in the small circular box. Jen was as surprised as he was.
‘He’s not a genius. He’s a pig,’ Kelly says dispassionately. ‘But I agree, he will get a second term.’
Jen hides a smile. ‘Bet you a hundred quid he doesn’t get in,’ she says. ‘And that Biden does.’
‘Biden? Joe Biden?’ Todd blinks. ‘The old guy?’
‘Yep. Deal?’ Jen says.
Todd laughs. His hair falls in his face. ‘Sure, deal,’ he says.
‘So,’ she says to her son. ‘What’re you going to wish for when the cake comes out?’
He puts his head in his hands, looking at her over his fingers. She remembers when she used to trim his nails when he was a baby. He was frightened of the nail clippers. She did hers, first, to show him it was fine, even though they didn’t need doing. ‘No, no cake or ceremony,’ he says, blushing, but he’s delighted, she can tell that, too, as though his emotion is hers also. They, mother and son, are a zip, slowly separating as the years rush by. And so here they are, closer than in 2022.
‘Only if you tell us your wish,’ she says.
‘You can’t tell anyone a birthday wish,’ he says automatically. God, his skin. He has no facial hair at all. His emotions still bubble near the surface, that blush, that embarrassed, delighted grin, the superstition about wishes. It is before he has learned to bury it all, to be so male.
‘What?’ he says curiously, looking at her.
‘Just – you look so old,’ she says, the sentiment the exact opposite of what she is really thinking.
Todd waves a hand, but he looks chuffed. Jen’s eyes moisten.
‘Oh, not the waterworks,’ he says casually.
‘It’s so weird in here,’ Kelly says, ever the evasive diplomat. Jen looks at his eyes. That navy blue. They are so distinctive. But maybe the person in the photograph … maybe they didn’t have them, not quite like this. Maybe Jen is mistaken. Kelly leans back and spreads his hands wide. ‘It feels like a … I don’t know. Like a school hall. Why are we so close to everybody?’
Their mains come. Katsu chicken curry for Jen, the only thing she likes on the menu. ‘I wish you could tell me your wish,’ she says to Todd.
‘If you promise it’ll still come true,’ Todd says, spearing a dumpling with a chopstick. He insisted on using the chopsticks, she remembers now. In the past iteration of this day, Jen had laughed at him. But she doesn’t today, thinking of what he said to her about science the other night at the dining table. The things that matter to him.
‘I promise,’ she says.
‘Just – for things to go well,’ Todd says simply. ‘To get the GCSEs. Keep working hard. To become something.’
‘What’s that?’ she says softly, holding his eye contact under the harsh lamplight. He looks pale. The air smells of the kiss of garlic hitting the pan and Jen immediately thinks of her father and the garlic bread in the oven.
He shrugs, a child bathed in the glow of parental interest, content to be witnessed thinking, dreaming, wishing. ‘Sciencey,’ he says. ‘Something sciencey. I’d like to come to the Earth’s rescue in the future, you know? I’d like to change the world.’
‘I know,’ Jen says quietly. How could she ever have laughed at this?
‘I think that is laudable,’ Kelly says. ‘Really cool.’
‘I’m not trying to be cool,’ Todd says.
‘I just meant it in the old sense of the word.’
‘Of course,’ Todd snorts, and Kelly laughs easily. As he looks up, distracted by something behind them, his expression changes completely.
‘Oh sorry, got to take this,’ Kelly says, jumping to his feet. He raises his phone to his ear, and his T-shirt rides up, exposing his slim waist. He walks to the other side of the restaurant, where they can’t hear. She stares at the phone in his hand, at his face as he talks into it. She’s sure it didn’t ring, didn’t light up.
