Wrong Place, Wrong Time (13)

‘Yes. A study on whether getting stuck in a time loop is possible. I proofread it. He did – what was it?’ Rakesh leans against the wall, arms folded, his suit bunched at the shoulders. ‘Theoretical physics and applied maths. With me – at Liverpool. And then he went on to study … God, something nuts. He’s at John Moore’s now.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Andy Vettese.’ Rakesh reaches into his suit trouser pocket, pulls an open packet of cigarettes out. ‘Anyway. Take these off me, please. I’m slipping back.’

‘Call yourself a doctor,’ Jen says lightly, holding her palm out for the box. She smiles at Rakesh as he turns to leave, but she is thinking about how she really, truly, is here: on Thursday. She feels calmer, having discussed it with somebody she trusts, more able to assess it objectively.

So how has it happened? How did she do it? Is it when she sleeps?

And what does she have to do to get out of it?

She stares down at the battered cigarette box. It must be that she has to change things: to change things in order to stop it. To save Todd, and to get out of it.

‘If I remember, I’ll wear different socks. The next time we meet,’ Rakesh says, with an enigmatic smile, one hand on the doorframe.

He leaves, and she waits a second, then calls out, ‘Quit!’ into the corridor, wanting to change something – anything – for the better. ‘It’s so unhealthy!’

‘I know,’ Rakesh says, his back to her, not turning around.

Jen fires up her computer and begins googling time loops. Why not research them? It’s what any good lawyer would do.

Two scientists, called James Ward and Oliver Johnson, have written a paper on the bootstrap paradox: going back in time to observe an event which, it turns out, you caused. Jen writes this down.

To enter into a time loop, they say you would need to create a closed timelike curve. They provide a physics formula. But, helpfully, they break it down underneath. It seems to happen when a huge force is exerted on the body. Ward and Johnson think the force would have to be stronger than gravity to create a time loop.

She scrolls down. The force would need to be one thousand times her body weight.

She sinks her head into her hands. She doesn’t understand a single word of this. And one thousand times her weight is … a lot. She breaks into a grim smile. An amount not worth contemplating.

She goes back to Google and clicks – desperately – on an article called ‘Five Easy Tips to Escape a Time Loop’. Is this just – is this a thing? There truly is something for everybody on the internet. The five tips are mixed: find out why, tell a friend and get them to loop with you (sure), document everything, experiment … and try not to die.

The last one unsettles Jen. She hadn’t thought of it at all. Something eerie seems to arrive in the room as she thinks of it. Try not to die. What if that’s where this is headed? Some place even darker than that first night, some maternal sacrifice, bargaining with the gods.

She switches off her monitor. There must be a way to make Kelly believe her: her biggest ally, her lover, her friend, the man she is her most silly, unpretentious self with. She will try to prove it to him. And then he can help her.

Her trainee, Natalia, walks by, wheeling a trolley of lever-arch files past Jen’s office that Jen has already seen arrive once before. She is about to steer the trolley accidentally into the closed doors of the lift. Jen closes her eyes as she hears the thump for the second time.

She’s got to get out of here.

Ten minutes later, she’s smoked four of Rakesh’s cigarettes outside the back of the building herself, health be damned.

She knows, deep down, somewhere she can’t name, that it’s her job, isn’t it? To stop the murder. To figure out why it happens, and to prevent it.

As though the universe agrees with her, it begins to rain as she’s finishing her fifth cigarette. Huge, fat drops that turn the air frigid.

Jen is slumped, back on the blue kitchen sofa. She left work early. Shouldn’t taking the knife have stopped the murder, and therefore ended the time loop?

Is there an alternative reality where it still happened? Is there another Jen, one who didn’t go backwards, but who is still moving forwards?

Todd is out. With friends, he said, the same as last time; more short texts, more distance between them.

Jen is googling Andy Vettese. He is indeed a professor in the department of physics at Liverpool John Moore’s University. He is easy to find. On LinkedIn, on the university’s own page, and he runs a Twitter account called @AndysWorld, his email address in his bio. She could write to him.

She sits up as she hears the front door.

‘Can’t stop,’ Todd barks, bursting into the kitchen in a blur of cold air and teenage movement, disturbing Jen’s hesitation over a message box.

‘Okay,’ she says. It isn’t what she said last time. Last time, she asked if there was a reason why he never wanted to be at home.

She’s surprised to see the softer approach works.

‘Been to Connor’s, now off to Clio’s,’ Todd explains, meeting her eyes. He bounces from foot to foot as he fiddles with a portable phone charger, full of verve, full of the optimism of somebody for whom life truly is only just beginning. Not the behaviour of a killer, Jen finds herself thinking.

Connor. Pauline’s eldest. There is something about him that Jen isn’t quite sure of. Some edge to him. He smokes and he swears – both things Jen does, from time to time – but, nevertheless, both offensive when seen through the ruthless lens of motherhood.