Wrong Place, Wrong Time (6)

Jen steps forwards and looks closely at Todd. No mark of the devil on him, no change behind his eyes, no weapons in the room beyond him. In fact, it looks untouched.

‘How did you get home – and what happened?’

‘Home from where?’

‘The police station,’ Jen says plainly. She finds herself keeping a distance from him. Just a step more than usual. She no longer knows what this person – her child, the love of her life – is capable of.

‘Sorry – the police station?’ he says, evidently amused. ‘Question mark?’ Todd’s expression twists, nose wrinkling up just like it did when he was a baby. He has two tiny scars left over from the worst of his teenage acne. Otherwise, his face is still childlike, pristine in that beautiful peach-fuzz way of the young.

‘Your arrest, Todd!’

‘My arrest?’

Jen can usually tell when her son is lying, and at that moment she registers that he is definitely not. He looks at her with his clear twilight eyes, confusion inscribed across his features. ‘What?’ she says in barely a whisper. Something is creeping up her spine, some tentative, frightening knowledge. ‘I saw … I saw what you did.’ She gestures to the mid-landing window. And that’s the moment she realizes what’s the matter. It isn’t the scene outside: it’s the window itself. No pumpkin. It’s gone.

Jen’s teeth begin to chatter. This can’t be happening.

She tears her eyes away from the pumpkin-less windowsill.

‘I saw,’ she says again.

‘Saw what?’ His eyes are so like Kelly’s, she finds herself thinking, for at least the thousandth time in her life: they’re identical.

She just looks at him and, for once, his gaze holds hers. ‘What happened last night, after you got back.’

‘I wasn’t out last night.’ The banter, the pretension, the posturing are all gone.

‘What? I was waiting up for you, you were late, but then the clocks changed …’

He pauses, maintaining eye contact. ‘The clocks go back tomorrow. It’s Friday today?’





Day Minus One, 08:20





Some internal elevator plunges down the centre of Jen’s chest. She pushes her hair off her face and heads to the family bathroom at the back of the house, holding up a finger to Todd for just a second. She shivers as she turns her back on him, like he is a predator she wants to keep an eye on.

She is sick into the toilet, the sort of sick she hasn’t been in years. Hardly anything comes up, just a sticky yellow stomach acid that sits right at the bottom of the water. She thinks of her pregnancy, when she told a doctor she was vomiting so much that only bile was coming up, and he apparently felt the need to say, ‘Bile is bright green and signals real trouble. You mean stomach acid.’

She stares and stares into the acid lining the bottom of the toilet. It might not be bile, but she thinks she might be in real trouble.

Todd does not know what she is talking about. That is clear. Even he wouldn’t deny this. But why? How?

The pumpkin. The pumpkin is missing. Where is her husband? She can’t think straight. Panic rises up through her body, a great pressure with nowhere to go. She’s going to be sick again.

She sits on the cold chequerboard tiles.

She gets her phone out of her pocket and stares at it, bringing up the calendar.

It is Friday the twenty-eighth of October. The clocks do indeed go back tomorrow. Monday will be Halloween. Jen stares and stares at that date. How can this be?

She must be going mad. She gets up and paces uselessly. Her body feels like it’s covered in ants. She’s got to get out of here. But out of where? Out of yesterday?

She navigates to her last text message with Kelly and presses call.

He answers immediately. ‘Look,’ she says urgently.

‘Uh-oh,’ he says, languid, always amused by her. She hears a door close.

‘Where are you?’ she asks. She knows she sounds crazed, but she can’t help it.

A beat. ‘I am on planet Earth, but it sounds like you might not be.’

‘Be serious.’

‘I’m at work! Obviously! Where are you?’

‘Was Todd arrested last night?’

‘What?’ She hears him put something heavy down on a hollow-sounding floor. ‘Er – for what?’

‘No, I’m asking you. Was he?’

‘No?’ Kelly says, sounding baffled. Jen can’t believe it. Sweat blooms across her chest. She starts to rub at her arms.

‘But we sat – we sat in the police station. You shouted at them. The clocks had just gone back, I was … I had done the pumpkin.’

‘Look – are you okay? I need to finish Merrilocks,’ he says.

Jen sucks a breath in. He said he finished there yesterday. Didn’t he? Yes, she’s sure he did. He was at the top of the landing, wearing only a tattoo and a smile. She can remember it. She can.

She puts a hand to her eyes as if she can block out the world.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she says. She starts to cry, water lacing her words. ‘What did we do? Last night?’ She leans her head back against the wall. ‘Did I do the pumpkin?’

‘What are you –’