AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Are you joking?’ Ezra says. ‘Of course I didn’t let them put that baby on the ship.’
Ryan pauses, holding his breath. They’re teetering now, on the edge of something. Just as he’s about to ask, Angela reaches her hand out. You’d never know what it meant unless you knew.
‘Yeah, I mean – good call,’ Ryan says. His instincts agree with Angela, this time. But look where they got him first. He can tell his handler, who can tell the CID, that the baby is in this country. Not shipped out to the Middle East. Thank God.
Evidently, stopping was the right decision, because Ezra says: ‘I’m heading to see the boss tomorrow night.’
‘The mastermind,’ Ryan says. He is even starting to sound different. Phasing out the Welsh accent he inherited from his father. How easy it would be to lose yourself for ever in this life. To live – literally – the life of another identity so much that you might become it.
Ezra points at Ryan. It’s so cold that his jaw is trembling, the air that chalk-dust dry of snow.
‘You should come.’ He looks at Angela, then uses her undercover alias: ‘You, too, Nicola.’
Day Minus One Thousand Six Hundred and Seventy-Two, 21:25
Todd is thirteen.
He’s four and a half feet of thirteen-year-old boy. He smells of biscuits and the great outdoors. He’s currently in the back of their old car that they trade in for a better model in a few years’ time, kicking Jen’s chair in the way he did that she hated and is now nostalgic for. Sort of.
It is the first of April. As soon as Jen woke up this morning, the sun a yellow melted pool on their hallway floor, she remembered this day, this weekend. It is Easter Sunday.
They are on their way back now from a village fair, followed by dinner. Simple things, family things. Jen has forgotten herself for some of the day, laughing at her son’s banter, her husband’s quick remarks.
It was a perfect weekend, the first time around. The weather had made it. They’d spent almost all of it outside, with friends, barbecuing, a small party with their inner circle. And, on the Sunday, in this exact car ride, Jen remembers so vividly Kelly looking at her and saying, And we’ve still got a whole bank holiday tomorrow, too.
She wonders curiously why she remembers that exact phrase so well. Some days, she supposes, are brighter than others, more memorable. Some days, even the great ones, like their wedding, fade away into history.
And now here they are again. Jen remembers spending a portion of this car journey worrying she had upset her father at the office on the Thursday night about a directions hearing on a case. She wishes she could stretch an arm back into the past and shake that Jen. Life is so short. It rushes by. He’ll be dead one day, she would tell her, but she can’t. Jen is that Jen, today.
The car is dark and quiet, the radio on low, the heater on high, just the way she likes it. Her skin feels stretched. She had forgotten that they both got burnt, today, the first time, and they made exactly the same mistake today. That deceptive British springtime sun, the air refrigerated, the sun molten.
The sun set about five minutes ago. The sky beyond the motorway is rosewater pink.
They’ve been discussing Brexit. ‘They just need to get on with it, now,’ Todd adds, a view he will later retract. They should have been more considered, he will say, when the queues stack up at the ports.
It’s been the nicest day in the sun, and Jen can’t work out why she’s here. On every other day, she’s been able to find at least something, a small, confusing clue, something to change. A piece of the mystery. But this day has played out exactly as it did then.
Fuck it. She leans her temple against the passenger window and closes her eyes. Kelly is driving. In the present day, he drives much less. She had forgotten that he almost always used to drive. His left hand rests casually on her knee.
She will just enjoy the rest of the day. Maybe if she stops trying to learn from it, something will happen.
‘Can I stay up when we get in?’ Todd asks from the back.
Jen opens her eyes and checks her watch. It’s just gone half past seven. She has no idea what time Todd went to bed when he was thirteen. It became a blur, that creep towards adulthood. She looks across at Kelly, raising her eyebrows.
He shrugs. ‘Yeah, why not?’ he says.
‘Can we play Tomb Raider?’
‘For sure.’
Todd laughs, a happy sigh. Kelly looks at Jen. ‘You just like Lara Croft,’ she says in a low voice to him.
‘Oh yeah, you know how I love computerized tits.’
‘What?’ Todd calls from the back.
Kelly flashes her a grin. ‘I said, we’ve still got a whole bank holiday tomorrow, too.’
