Jenny Sparrow Knows the Future

by Melissa Pimentel

  I flinched and pulled away. Our eyes met, and we stared at each other for a minute, some wordless charge connecting us. I raised my hand to my face and touched the place where his thumb had been.

  ‘Did you get it?’ I said finally.

  ‘What?’ he asked softly.

  ‘The sauce,’ I said. ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Oh.’ He sat back in the chair and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Yeah, I got it.’

  ‘Good. Should we get the bill? It’s getting late, and I’ve got to be at work early tomorrow …’

  ‘Sure, sure. Of course.’ He raised his hand and signaled to the waiter.

  We didn’t speak again until we left the restaurant. The warmth had gone out of the evening, and a sharp breeze blew through the night, cutting through my thin leather jacket.

  ‘So,’ he said, rocking back on his heels.

  ‘Where are you going now? Back to your hotel?’

  ‘Nah, I think I might take a walk. I like walking around cities at night, when it’s quiet.’

  I nodded. ‘Well, my Tube station’s just over there, so—’

  ‘I can walk you to the Tube if you want—’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said quickly. ‘You go enjoy your walk. Thanks again for dinner. It really was delicious.’

  ‘Well, I’m just happy I could introduce you to this place. Maybe you can take Christopher here sometime.’

  I tried to picture luring Christopher into a cramped Indian restaurant under Vauxhall Bridge. ‘Maybe,’ I said doubtfully. The wind picked up and I hugged my arms to my chest.

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ I knew it wasn’t really a question, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. I realized he was worried I’d say no.

  I looked up at him. His blond curls had been blown around by the wind and were sticking up at haphazard angles from his head. There was a boyishness to his features in the dim half-light. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can book somewhere …’

  ‘No way,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I think tonight has proven that I’m the better plan-maker out of the two of us. And there was no puking, either, which means our deal still stands.’

  I smiled. ‘I know when I’m beaten.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear. Give me your number – I’ll text you the plan tomorrow.’ I read out my digits and he tapped them into his phone. ‘You get home safe, okay?’

  ‘You too,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your walk.’

  He smiled and raised a hand as he walked away. I could hear his footsteps fading behind me as I made my way to the Tube.

  10

  I woke up the next morning with a heavy sense of dread. It didn’t take long for it all to come flooding back – Jackson turning up at my office, the news that I was married to him – God, I couldn’t even think it without feeling sick – our crazy dinner. And tonight, I had to do it all over again. I rolled over and shoved my face in the pillow.

  ‘Get up, sleepyhead!’ Christopher leaned over the bed and pulled the covers off me. I groaned and buried my head more deeply into the pillow. Christopher climbed into bed next to me and kissed the back of my head. ‘Come on, you’ll be late.’

  I rolled over and shielded my eyes from the sunlight currently streaming through the bay window. Just my luck – of all the days, this would be the one that London chose to be sunny. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half seven,’ he said.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered.

  ‘Told you. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  I rolled out of bed and poured myself into the shower, studiously avoiding my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The truly heroic amount of spiced meat I’d consumed the night before had caught up with me, and I felt bloated and heady.

  I was toweling off my hair when Christopher appeared with a cup of coffee. ‘How was Ben?’ he asked, setting the mug on the dresser.

  It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. ‘Oh, fine!’ I said eventually. ‘It was just a stupid little thing.’

  ‘Good.’ He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. ‘I’ve got to shoot off. Are you in tonight?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said automatically. I took a sip of coffee and felt the gears in my head grind slowly into motion. ‘I mean, maybe. I might not be. I might be late.’

  He tilted his head. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Spin class!’ I blurted out. ‘I said I’d try this new spin class with this woman from work. It doesn’t start until eight, and then we might get a drink after, so …’

  ‘Hey, that’s great! I’ve been trying to get you on a bike for ages – maybe this will convince you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said weakly. Oh God. Now I was going to have to ride a bike, too. And it wouldn’t be just a leisurely pedal up to Hampstead Heath. Christopher was a ‘cyclist’, which meant he wore a spandex onesie and owned a bike that cost almost as much as a compact car. This goddamn Vegas nightmare was going to result in me careening down a hill in a spandex onesie too. I could just feel it.

  ‘Just make sure you drink plenty of water afterwards,’ he continued. ‘Spinning can seriously dehydrate you.’

  He was so nice. Look at him standing there, hair still damp from the shower, tie knotted around his neck, jacket slung over his shoulder. He was gorgeous. Even in a spandex onesie, he was cute. And so, so nice. And me? What was I? I was a monster. A married, lying, almost-certainly-crazy monster.

  I plastered a smile across my face. ‘Will do!’

  I heard the door shut behind him and stood deflated in front of the mirror. ‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ I hissed at my reflection. How was I supposed to get through a whole week of lying to him like this? The guilt was already chewing me up inside, and besides, I was a terrible liar. Always have been.

  In tenth grade, my friend Tara decided to throw a party. Her dad worked night shifts and her mom let kids drink in her house and even offered to buy it for them – one of those ‘they’re going to do it anyway so I’d rather it be under my supervision’ moms who actually just wanted some company while she sank two bottles of white Zinfandel at her kitchen table. I knew my mother would never let me go to a party at Tara’s house because she once saw Tara’s mom offer Tara a drag from her cigarette, but I had to be there, because Jimmy Sangillo was going to be there, and I’d decided that he was going to help me achieve Number 8 on my life list (fling with a bad boy) because he wore a leather jacket and kept a pack of Camels tucked up the arm of his T-shirt.

  Anyway, I told my mother that I was going to stay at Isla’s house, knowing that she wouldn’t call there because she was convinced that Isla’s mother hated her and gossiped about her behind her back. (She didn’t.) Of course, no more than ten minutes after leaving the house, my mother discovered that I’d left my retainer behind and – in one of her moods – called Isla’s house to tell me to come get it, which led to Isla’s mom telling her that she thought Isla was staying at ours that night, which led my mother to spin out, go through my emails, find out about the party, and show up at Tara’s house in her nightdress holding my retainer, the police trailing close behind. The party was broken up, and Jimmy Sangillo called me brace face for the rest of the year, even though technically a retainer and braces are two entirely different things. (We still ended up making out during a field trip to an apple orchard in my senior year, so I got to cross Number 8 off the list, even though by that point I suspected that he wasn’t so much a bad boy as a kid who’d watched Rebel Without a Cause too many times.)

  All of this is a long-winded way of saying I’m a terrible liar and would never last a whole week. But somehow, I had to.

  I flicked on a little mascara, scraped my hair back into a ponytail, and took one last sip of my now-tepid coffee before heading out the door and down to the Tube. After a half hour contorted like a circus performer (head lodged in armpit of middle-aged cyclist, leg twisted awkwardly to avoid his fold-up bicycle, back in spasm after holding it at a 45 degree angle to avoid the newspaper he consistently flapped in
my face), I emerged at Green Park to find a glorious spring day. The sky was a faultless bright blue, the daffodils sprouted in riotous bursts of yellow, the air sun-warmed and sweet. It all felt like an affront to my fraught nerves and cottony brain.

  Ben was waiting for me when I got in, coiled like a snake in his ergonomic chair. He sprang on me as soon as I tossed my bag on the floor.

  ‘Thank God you’re here. I need your help.’

  I looked at him closely. His hair, normally pomaded into submission, was unruly and wild, one particular lock standing straight in the air from his forehead like an antenna. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face was pale. But the really worrying thing was his shoes. He was wearing sneakers. And not trendy sneakers, either. Big, clunky sneakers that dads wear to go running on Sundays. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘I think I’m having a nervous breakdown,’ he said, chewing at a cuticle.

  ‘Jesus. Why?’

  ‘I can’t think straight, my heart is racing … Maybe I’m having a heart attack.’ He looked up at me, eyes filled with panic. ‘Do you think I’m having a heart attack?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re having a heart attack, but I do think you need to slow down. Just breathe for a minute.’ I waited as he inhaled and exhaled deeply. ‘Now walk me through what’s happening.’

  He exhaled one last time and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I met a girl last night.’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘We went to a bar, and then we went to dinner—’

  ‘On the first date? You never eat on a first date!’ I was well-versed in Ben’s three golden rules for first dates, the first of which was ‘no dinner’. He thought it signified too much commitment.

  ‘I know! But we were having a good time, and she said she was hungry, so we went for dinner.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Incredible.’

  ‘And then after dinner, I told her there was this great bar near my place, so—’

  ‘Wait, what?’

  He nodded. The look of shock on his face mirrored mine. ‘After we went for a drink, I took her back to my flat.’

  I threw myself into my chair. ‘But you never—’

  ‘I know!’ Ben’s second golden rule was ‘never tell them where you live’. If he took a girl home on the first date – and he did, often – it was always to her place, not his. He hid his flat like Bruce Wayne hid the Batcave, only his flat contained a PlayStation 4 and several pairs of limited edition Adidas trainers rather than a butler and the Batmobile. As far as I knew, at least. I’d never been to Ben’s flat. Or the Batcave, for that matter.

  I shook my head. ‘This is unbelievable.’

  ‘It gets worse. In the morning, I didn’t want her to leave. She said she was hungry, so I …’

  ‘You didn’t.’ Rule number three: no shared morning-after breakfast food or beverage of any kind.

  ‘Scrambled eggs on toast,’ he said gravely. ‘I even let her use my Italian espresso machine!’ He put his head in his hands. ‘All three golden rules, out the window in one night.’

  We sat there in silence for a minute, letting the enormity of the situation sink in. ‘And now you think you’re having a nervous breakdown?’ I said finally.

  ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’ A wave of realization washed across his face. ‘Unless she’s drugged me. Come to think of it, this does remind me of the time I ate half a tin of hash brownies at college …’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I don’t think she drugged you. You know what I do think happened?’

  He looked at me beseechingly. ‘Please, tell me.’

  ‘I think you might be in love.’

  He scoffed. ‘Are you mad? I am absolutely not in love. I’ve only just met the girl!’

  ‘You only just met her, and yet you broke all three of your rules for her, and now you’re sitting here like a heartsick puppy. I’d say you’re in love.’ I couldn’t believe it. The day after I lie to Christopher about Ben having some sort of romantic entanglement, and here he was, entangled.

  ‘Honestly, I came to you for genuine help and assistance, and this is what you offer me.’

  I shrugged. ‘I call them like I see them. What’s her name, anyway?’

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, slightly dreamily. ‘Lucy Claremont.’

  ‘Ooh, good name. Show me a photo!’

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I don’t know that I can find one.’

  ‘Ben, we live in the age of Google. You can find a picture of anything, anytime, anywhere. Right now, if I wanted, I could show you a picture of my fourth-grade teacher’s beagle. That’s part of technology’s terrifying charm.’

  ‘Maybe in a bit,’ he said shiftily. ‘I should really get back to work.’

  He spun around and hit the space bar on his keyboard, and his formerly dark computer screen lit up. I peered around his shoulder and saw a photo of a pretty, pixie-ish blonde with a dimple on one cheek. ‘That’s her, isn’t it? Aha! You’ve already looked her up!’ I crowed.

  He looked mortified, as if I’d just caught him looking at Furby porn. ‘I just wanted to see if I remember what she looked like!’ he cried.

  ‘You only saw her an hour ago!’

  I could see the blush surging up past his collar. ‘I wanted to double-check, that’s all!’

  ‘She’s very pretty,’ I said gently.

  He turned around and gave me a shy smile. ‘Isn’t she?’ He turned back and gazed at her for another moment. ‘She’s lovely.’ He paused for a moment and cleared his throat. ‘Who was that bloke you were with last night?’

  My heart lodged in my windpipe. ‘What guy?’ I asked.

  ‘I saw you meet him outside the office. Tall guy, blond. Looked a bit like a sort of cowboy Captain America.’

  ‘Oh, him? He’s just an old friend from home.’ I wondered, briefly, whether I was going to be sick.

  ‘Here for a visit?’

  God, who was this guy? Perry Mason? ‘Yep! Just for a week!’ My voice went up by an octave – always a telltale sign that I was lying.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said. He peered at me closely. ‘He doesn’t have anything to do with your fight with Christopher, does he?’

  Columbo, I thought to myself. He’s like Columbo. He even owns a trench coat. ‘I told you, I didn’t have a fight with Christopher!’ I snapped.

  He held his hands up. ‘Forget I said anything!’

  I spun around without saying another word and started clearing my inbox with thunderous speed, the keys clacking beneath my fingers. I felt bad about shutting Ben down like that, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about what was really going on. Not only was I worried about another person knowing about Jackson – I trusted Ben, but another mouth was another mouth – but I needed work to be a place where I didn’t think about it. Until Jackson showed up again, that is.

  There was a message from Isla waiting for me in my inbox. I double-clicked and it flashed up on my screen.

  Soooooo how was your first date with your husband?

  I let out a shriek of horror.

  ‘And I thought I was the one having the breakdown,’ Ben said over his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  I hit reply:

  1. It wasn’t a date 2. Don’t use the h-word over email!!!

  I hit send and leaned back in my chair. What was wrong with everyone? Had the entire world gone insane?

  Isla’s response flashed up.

  Sorry! From now on will refer to him as Agent Albatross. So how was your date with Agent Albatross?

  My fingers flew across the keyboard.

  Why Agent Albatross? Also, I hate you.

  Agent because it’s a secret, Albatross because you can’t get rid of him. Aren’t I goddamn hilarious? Soooooo …? Are you in LOOOOOVE?

  GOD NO. He’s just some dumb hick from Texas.

  I felt mildly disloyal as I typed out the message, but I couldn’t risk her writing stuff lik
e that to me, not even as a joke.

  Well, don’t rule him out without giving him a fair shot. You know what they say … they grow them big in Texas.

  FFS ISLA!

  There was a knock at the door of the cubicle. I quickly x’ed out of our email conversation and turned to find my boss leaning against the flimsy plastic wall, hand tucked rakishly in one pocket of an expensive wool blazer. Jeremy was in his late fifties, but was still clinging to the last vestiges of youth almost as tightly as the last few strands of hair artfully combed across top of his head.

  ‘Knock knock,’ he said, even though he’d already knocked and I’d already responded by turning around to face him. ‘How’s my favorite duo doing in here?’

  Ben and I beamed up at him like a pair of schoolchildren. ‘Good!’ we chorused.

  Jeremy hitched up his pants and cracked his neck. The sound made a shiver run up my spine. It wasn’t that Jeremy was a bad guy. He was actually a nice guy, and a decent boss, too. But there was something about him that was slightly off-putting. His shoes were too shiny. His teeth suspiciously white and even. His skin an unnatural shade of mahogany, despite us just emerging from the long, dark months of an English winter. In short, he looked like he’d been assembled in a factory before being discarded for being slightly irregular.

  ‘I’ve got a big case coming up,’ he said, pointing a pair of finger guns at me.

  I sat up straighter in my chair. I relished big cases. ‘Really? What is it?’

  ‘An old East End gangster is trying to pull the wool over our eyes with a phony claim.’ Whenever Jeremy talked about a case, he sounded as if he was in a Chandler novel. I secretly loved it.

  ‘Ooh! That sounds exciting!’ Christopher and I had just watched that Tom Hardy movie about the Krays, so I felt I was up to speed on the whole East End gangster thing. It seemed to involve a lot of mumbling and mindless violence.

  ‘You bet it’s exciting. We’re talking major property fraud.’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘And I need my best investigator on the case.’

  ‘Me?’ I feigned surprise. The truth was, I knew I was his best investigator, not least because he said as much every time he got a few sherries into him at the Christmas party. Plus, nobody enjoyed snooping around as much as I did. Speaking of which, why hadn’t I looked up Jackson yet? I zoned out as Jeremy spoke. He’d told me his last name, hadn’t he? What was it again … Grant? Gray? Gaines! I had his name and his home town – that should be plenty to dig up some dirt on the guy. Maybe enough so he’d agree to just give me the divorce without all the forced hospitality.