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She stands outside Woolworths, the red-and-white sign so familiar to her. It goes bust in just five years’ time. The recent past, really, but it doesn’t feel it. Inside: the sealed plasticky floors, the stationery. She could stay here for ever, just looking in through the window, marvelling at times gone by, Christmases buying games and pic ’n’ mix, just staring at the changes that have overtaken the world over the last twenty years, the things lost and gained. She raises a palm to the glass, just as she did right at the very beginning of this, and waits.
Reflected behind her, she sees Kelly emerge from the pub. He’s now wearing the suit, the bag slung back over his arm. Hair freshly gelled. Black, shiny shoes on.
A woman seems to come out of nowhere, perhaps another pub, perhaps an alleyway. Jen watches her approach Kelly. She squints. It’s Nicola.
‘How was it?’ Kelly says to her.
‘Yeah, all right. Tough – they want to know all the methods.’
Kelly guffaws. ‘We can’t say those.’
‘I know. I said that. Judge didn’t much like it. Listen – good luck. And call me, you know? If … in the future. You ever want to come back.’
Nicola leaves Kelly there, in the street, without another word.
Jen gazes at him, unseen now in the crowds, thinking of the texts he sends Nicola in twenty years’ time, asking for help. Of the fact that she asks for something in return from him.
Jen follows Kelly at a distance, grateful that it’s Liverpool and not Crosby. She marvels at the fashions – flared jeans, boho tops exposing skin to the last of the summer sun, in September – and the old cars and shops, the world filtered vintage. Kelly walks with purpose but also with anxiety, Jen thinks. His head upright, a deer being pursued, or a lion in pursuit, she isn’t sure which.
Down a cobbled street, past brands that have and haven’t survived the last twenty years, Debenhams, Blockbusters. Into a striplit-bright mall full of jewellers, out the other side. Left, right. Up a side-street lined with industrial-sized bins. Jen drops even further back.
His pace slows on a wide, pedestrianized swathe of grey paving slabs. He’s surrounded by tall buildings. His body turns completely towards one of them, and then he walks forward, pulls the door open, and disappears.
Jen doesn’t need to look at a map or read the signs. She, a lawyer, knows this building well. How could she not? It’s Liverpool crown court.
Outside, there are old-fashioned streetlamps, the bulbs spherical and white, like pearls. The building is no different back here in 2003. A large seventies cuboid sprawl, dark brown cladding, tinted windows. An embossed crest on the front. For once, she’s glad of the justice system that never changes, creaking and ancient and fusty.
She waits in the sun for a few minutes, then follows Kelly inside, pulling open the glass double door to the courthouse.
She heads straight to the listings, glad of the legal knowledge that she has. They’re pinned on a corkboard in the foyer, four scraps of paper fluttering together, held by a single drawing pin that’s probably still in use today.
She knows what she’s looking for. She knows what she will find.
The dates align. She didn’t realize it, as she travelled back. The archived news story. The list of charges against him.
And there it is. She barely has to scan down at all.
R v Joseph Jones. Courtroom One.
So this is a life lived in reverse. Things happened that Jen had no idea about, that passed her by as innocuously as cars.
She heads into courtroom one and sits in the public gallery. It smells of stale teapots, ancient books, dust and polish. It is busy; a high-profile trial that she had no idea about at the time. And why would she?
She’s lost Kelly. She has no idea in which capacity he is attending. As a friend of Joseph Jones, she assumes with a wince; an accomplice.
The benches in the public gallery are laid out like pews. ‘All rise,’ a clerk says. He has reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, robes that sweep the cheap-carpeted floors. Jen is embarrassed by the pomp and circumstance of the justice system that she’s dedicated her life to. She gets to her feet as the judge arrives. She bows her head reflexively.
The defendant, in handcuffs, is led in by a security guard with one delicate hoop earring in his ear, and put in the dock.
Joseph Jones. Young, thirty-year-old Joseph. How strange it is to look at him and know the date on which – as things stand – he will die, Jen thinks, looking at those distinctive elfin ears, his goatee, his narrower shoulders, almost boy-like. He could be anyone’s son. He could be Todd.
The judge addresses the court. ‘Earlier, we finished hearing from the second witness for the prosecution, Witness A, and now, we call the third,’ he says simply.
The court is already in session. Jen works it through in her mind. So Kelly’s last-minute ‘conference’ must have been a witness summons. Trials never know which day they will need their witnesses on, until the previous one finishes.
‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ a barrister says. A woman with retro thick glasses. Her wig just covers their pale stems. Jen had forgotten it was the past until she saw those NHS glasses. They look almost like the ones kids wear today: funny how fashion works. ‘We heard yesterday from Grace Elincourt, HSBC employee, who confirmed that Joseph Jones regularly deposited and withdrew large sums of money into a company bank account.’ She looks pointedly at the jury. ‘We heard earlier from Witness A that he also regularly instructed his foot soldiers to steal cars. And to corroborate this, the state now calls the next witness to the stand and, for this, we must ask again that the jury and the public gallery temporarily depart.’
Jen’s mind is whirring. The public gallery and jury out only indicates a few things: evidential issues, matters of law and procedure, admissibility arguments.
