‌Day Minus Seven Thousand Two Hundred and Thirty, 08:00‌

Jen is back in the flat when she wakes. She blinks, looking at the sash

window and the purple cushions below it. She flings an arm across her eyes.

She’s here.

She rolls over in her single bed. Still in the past.

He did it because he loved her.

He has been lying to her for twenty years.

What else was he supposed to do?

He isn’t who he says he is.

He gave up everything. For her.

He never told her her father was bent.

Why is she here? She pads out of her bedroom and into her kitchenette.

It’s full of early-morning January sun. She hasn’t yet met Kelly. His number isn’t yet in her phone.

He’s undercover. Investigating her father. That’s why he never tells her. That’s why he warns her, in the future, about looking into it.

That is why Joseph comes to the law firm, to find Kelly, to start things up again – and to notice which of his old associates may not be who they said. This is why Kelly says, in 2022, that she is in danger, that she should stop looking: Joseph assumed she knew what her father was doing. He said as much in the prison when they met.

She goes to the sash window that overlooks the crowded streets, already full of commuters in suits. Her husband-to-be is out there, somewhere,

working as a police officer, yet to meet her.

She turns away from the sunlight. January the twelfth. The date from the news story she saw after her shower. Today is the day Eve goes missing.

Tonight is the night she is stolen.

Jen takes the bus to Merseyside Police in Birkenhead.

It’s so like Crosby police station from the outside. A sixties building. A revolving door lets her into a bright foyer. Bigger than Crosby, but still as tired, the same kind of chairs bolted to each other. She thinks about how they sat in them on that first night, all those weeks ago but years into the future, Kelly vibrating with fury.

She supposes it is easy to disappear. Quit the police, go travelling in a camper van with the woman you love. Re-settle out of Liverpool. Never travel. Get married using a fake passport that nobody ever checks.

Thousands of people must do it, for reasons both more and less honourable than Kelly’s. Jen has never once in Crosby bumped into somebody she grew up with. She wonders if Kelly had any near misses. The world’s a big place.

A receptionist with thin, plucked eyebrows and her waterline pencilled in the way that everybody did in 2003 types at a boxy computer.

‘I need to speak to a police officer,’ Jen says. ‘He will go by the name of Ryan or Kelly.’

‘Why?’

‘I have a tip-off. About the crime-ring operation that he is working undercover on,’ Jen says. As she says it, a man pushes the door open. He’s old, maybe fifty, and has feathering grey hair at his temples.

His face arranges itself into an expression of surprise. ‘Kelly?’ he says to her.

“I need to speak to Kelly. I know he’s undercover.”

“You’d better come in,” he says, reaching out to shake her hand. “I’m Leo.”

Kelly is sitting across from Jen in an interview suite, and he doesn’t recognize her. It’s surreal, but it’s true—he has no memory of their past encounters.

“Look,” Jen explains patiently. “I can’t say how I know. But the house they’re planning to burgle tonight… they’re intending to take two cars.” She provides the address of Eve Green, as reported in the news story, which Leo and Kelly write down.

The address is nearly identical to the one on her father’s note, just one digit different: 125 Greenwood Avenue.

“Thanks,” Kelly says professionally. His blue eyes linger on hers. “No intel at all on where it came from?”

Jen meets his gaze. “Sorry—I can’t say.”

“Alright then,” he says, dismissing her with a polite but fixed smile. “We’ll be sure to check it out.”

Jen watches him, wondering where the line is between this Ryan and her Kelly. Whether he transformed into the latter or always was, deep inside.

In the police station, as she looks at the man she has loved for twenty years, she wonders if it matters. Does anyone care how or why we become who we are—dark, guarded, funny, or otherwise? Or does it only matter that we are?

“You will look into it?” Jen asks.

“Yeah—of course,” he replies lightly. “Life’s too long not to follow a lead.”

Jen waits on the road where everything will unfold that evening. She sits in an old, beat-up car, contemplating how her father could provide information to criminals, keep it from her, and let her marry someone undercover.

Spring rain begins to fall irregularly on her car’s roof. She remembers her father’s last words, that Kelly was straight-up. Why would he say that if he didn’t believe in Kelly’s integrity? Perhaps he knew something, perhaps Kelly had told him.

An idea suddenly occurs to her, as if from nowhere. The sign she saw at the NEC about abdominal aortic scanning. The technology that could detect the illness that killed her father. She wonders if it’s available yet. If so, she could call him now and suggest he get a scan, possibly saving more than one life tonight.

She rests her elbow on the window and her face in her palm, knowing deep down that it’s not the right thing to do.

She thinks of Kelly asking her to make garlic bread, content as can be. She also remembers her mother, who passed away before him. Maybe it was his time to go. You can’t save everyone. You just can’t.

Perhaps she had woken up on the day he died to speak with him and learn about the timeshares. That must have been the reason. Nothing else, but something still feels unfinished about it to Jen.

The police have surrounded 123 Greenwood Avenue with unmarked cars.

Around eleven-thirty, the suspects arrive—two teenagers, barely older than Todd. They step out of the car, dressed in black, their movements spider-like, and she watches them enter the house.

Despite knowing what will happen, she’s still awed by the reality of it. That she, forty-three-year-old Jen, is witnessing events she foresaw, the things she worked out, despite never believing she could be capable of it.

She watches them retrieve keys from the letterbox, knowing this is the end, however it concludes.

As if on cue, a weary-looking woman emerges from the house next door to 125, carrying a baby. She places the crying baby into a car seat, then pauses, patting her pockets. She hesitates, surveying the quiet street. She doesn’t notice the oddly parked car or the two boys dressed in black, blending into the house’s shadows.

At that moment: a blinding flash of blue light, as if the saturation was turned up to maximum.

Police flood the scene from cars, shrubs, and buildings, arresting the teenagers.

She hears someone reading the caution. She thinks of Kelly, absent for his own protection. He hasn’t yet done anything that would require undercover testimony. He hasn’t become Witness B or anyone beyond that. He hasn’t yet met Jen as he knows her.

The woman with the baby watches the scene unfold, oblivious to the danger she’s just escaped; we only focus on the misfortunes we endure rather than the fortunate escapes we experience.

Jen closes her eyes, resting her head on the steering wheel, and wants to sleep. She’s almost ready. There’s a profound understanding beneath everything, just as Andy predicted. She’s lived her life once and missed it all, but her subconscious knew.

She’s almost ready.

At almost one o’clock in the morning, the police return to Merseyside station, where Jen is waiting. Kelly is there too, just as Jen hoped.

The moon is out, the sky high and clear, and Jen feels she’s nearly gone. She knows it.

Kelly and Leo get out of an unmarked car. Leo heads straight to his own vehicle, but Kelly lingers. He walks slowly toward the station, his breath visible in the cold winter air. He pulls out a mobile phone, presumably to call a taxi.

Before he can dial, Jen gets out of her car. They’ve only met once earlier today, and uncertainty crosses his face. Confusion mingled with amusement: he is all Todd.

“Hi. We met earlier,” Jen says, hurrying toward her husband of twenty years.

“Alright,” Kelly replies, his frown deepening. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she says breathlessly, aware of how close she is to missing her chance. “I just wanted to know—about the burglars—my tip-off—did you catch them?”

“We did,” he replies carefully. He puts his phone back in his pocket but turns his slim body away from her.

The distance stops her in her tracks in the January drizzle, almost identical to the October mist. He doesn’t know her, she thinks, looking at him. This man she’s loved and laughed with, who fathered her child, said vows to her, shared a bed with her—he doesn’t know her. He greets her with the wary demeanor he reserves for strangers. He doesn’t need to be wary now, in the past, but he still is. He is still himself. The man she loves.

“I’m so glad you got them.”

Curiosity gets the better of him. “How did you know?”

“I can never reveal my sources,” she says, using the exact kind of banter he enjoys.

His face softens into a grin. “You asked for me. You said you wanted to speak to Ryan or Kelly.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Nobody’s supposed to know the connection between those names. I mean—I barely knew that…”

Jen shrugs, holding her hands out. “Like I said. No sources.” She’s getting wet in the cold drizzle.

“Ha, well. You know, we intervened so early that the main guy got away. Our arrest of his foot soldiers tipped him off.”

Joseph. Joseph got away. Jen shivers with more than just the cold. Shouldn’t she be cautious of unintended consequences? But didn’t she do the right thing whenever she could? She didn’t play the lottery. She didn’t save her father, not this time, even though she had the chance.

She let those things go. She pulls her coat tighter around herself and moves closer to Kelly, hoping everything will be okay.

“I think you did the right thing,” she says softly, sadly, thinking of baby Eve. Reflecting on how we never see the near-misses that slide past us, just grazing our skin.

He hasn’t called the taxi yet. His gaze meets hers. And she knows, she knows, she knows that look.

He raises an eyebrow. And then he says the sentence that changes everything: “I know this is a cliché, but do I know you? From before today?”

Jen can’t help but laugh. “Not yet,” she says, the banter with her husband flowing as easily as ever.

She meets his eyes in the car park. He fell in love with her so deeply that he gave up his life for her—his name, his mother, his identity. She doesn’t believe he was pretending throughout their marriage. She thinks he was trying not to.

“I’m Ryan, anyway. You?”

“I’m Jen.”

And this is the moment. Jen knows she’s ready. She closes her eyes, as if falling asleep. And she’s gone. Everything that has been is wiped away, just as she suspected.