What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Jill Akkerman and Jacob Wallace have come to a rough spot in their marriage. For weeks, Jacob has been wanting to have a conversation that Jill has been avoiding because she is convinced that he is going to break up with her. They are both therapists, so she assumes she can identify signs that he is growing tired of their relationship; she also speculates that he is interested in his colleague Viviane, called Vi. They have both been married multiple times: Jacob once and Jill twice. They have Vi over for dinner; while Vi is out of the room, Jill tells Jacob that Vi has a crush on him, but he dismisses the idea. Jill and Jacob have known each other since childhood, when they were both in the foster care system.

Jacob eventually confronts Jill while they’re on the Tube. She reminds him that it was his idea to get married: He’d always wanted to marry her, and when he asked after her breakup with her last husband, she rejected the idea. He asked again the next day, singing a Korean love song called “What’s Wrong With My Age?”; she finally accepted. The two of them now reminisce about the proposal, and Jacob sings the song again. Jill realizes that he isn’t thinking about leaving her, but when he asks if she is thinking about leaving him, she can’t answer.

They go to their favorite restaurant, and Jacob asks her the question he’s been trying to pose for weeks: whether she would be willing to give up their summer vacation to test run the project, “Presence,” that he has been working on. He describes the project as an “implosion of memory” in which mourners can revisit memories of their deceased loved ones or even feel as if the deceased is there with them (190). The project is called “Presence.” Jill agrees to help him test the project but secretly worries that Jacob is using it to get away from her: The plan involves each of them pretending the other is dead for two weeks. He reassures her that he’s not leaving her, and she says the same to him.

They plan for Jacob to stay at their apartment, and Jill goes to the apartment in Catford that she leases to Radha and Myrna, who are away for the summer. Workmen come in to set up the project, putting various gas canisters into the walls to secrete the chemicals necessary for the experience. Jill and Jacob record three conversations on video before starting the project. The conversations will be used to put the mourner “in the midst of a familiar exchange, the kind we’re always having with friends and family, repeating ourselves and repeating ourselves, going over what we know about each other to prove that we still know these things” (193). The conversations include the one they’d had on the Tube about whose idea it was to get married and one about their first impressions of each other. The idea is that if either Jill or Jacob can’t find the other’s presence during the experiment, they will put on headphones, play the conversation, and respond with their “lines” to put themselves in the correct headspace. In the meantime, the intimate conversations rekindle the sexual spark between them.

Jill has been working in a youth prison and is very close to the boys. One boy named Solomon joined a gang, which was out of character for him. He had become convinced that killing someone would save his sick younger brother. Solomon likes Jill, but sometimes she worries that he could be dangerous if she doesn’t recommend his release. Nevertheless, he wishes her a good holiday just before she leaves for the break.

Jill arrives at the Catford apartment. She decides to take notes on her experience to help Jacob understand it better. Vi activates Presence remotely after Jill and Jacob have one final phone conversation. After a night’s rest, Jill wakes up feeling chilly. The clock read 12:30pm, and Jill can’t remember the last time she woke so late. She puts on two sweaters and makes tea, wondering why it feels so cold. Jill goes out and finds that it’s only 10:30am. She meets her friends Lena and Sam and tells them about what she’s experiencing, and they agree that it’s strange. Jill is relieved because for a moment she wasn’t sure what was real or not; she feared that Jacob might have died and that she was experiencing delusions. At the market, she buys a few winter foods to keep herself warm and comfortable. Afterward, she notices in the banking app that Jacob made a purchase around the same time for the same amount of money, but she decides that it’s just a coincidence and doesn’t make a note of it.

To Jill’s surprise, Jacob is at the Catford apartment when she returns; he comes out of a room and asks Jill why she’s shivering. She tells him that it’s cold. He touches her, recoils at how cold she is, and brings her two more sweaters. She makes a note that he didn’t need to be told where to find the clothes. He puts on tea for her and asks if she wants the heating on. She says yes and he turns it on. She can’t taste the tea, and she finds herself sweating, but Jacob looks comfortable. Jacob makes a snarky comment about the tea, but he has no shadow and doesn’t smell like her husband, which unnerves Jill. She asks him to leave, and he replies, “OK. But if you tell me to leave I won’t come back” (204). She bids him goodbye, and he cryptically tells her that he’s leaving but that everything between them will stay.

After a while (but also at 12:30), she worries about him saying he won’t come back, and she breaks the rules by calling Jacob. She asks him if he’s seen her yet, and he says that he hasn’t, but that when he returned home, the door was unlocked and an old Black man was in his apartment talking to him in Portuguese. He thought it might be his biological father but promptly told him to get out. The man said, “OK, but if you tell me to leave I won’t come back” (206). Just as Jill mentions the second part of what “Jacob” had said—“everything that’s between us will stay” (206)—the call is interrupted by one of their recorded conversations.

The recorded conversation discusses Jill’s adoption by the Akkermans, and Jill begins to speak her “lines.” She recounts how she used to wolf down food at school to make it look like the Akkermans were starving her; she would refuse food at home. Then the Akkermans would tell her that they still liked her, and they would refuse to eat until she ate, which worry for them would eventually prompt her to do.

As the conversation goes on, Jill grows so cold that icicles hang from her nostrils. She tries to shower, but the water is cold and turns her skin blue, and she can no longer feel anything. Hungry, she goes to the kitchen and finds a jar of pickles to eat. It is dark and still 12:30. She describes her experiences in her notebook.

The next day, Jill goes into the kitchen and sees a little boy who is 12 years old. He looks like a mix of her and Jacob, and he tells her that his name is Alex. She knows he is her son and thinks he is the most perfect child she has ever seen. Alex asks her for a skateboard, and she gives him 50 pounds to buy it. The boy thanks her and calls her “Mum”; he says he’ll come back but “if [she] send[s] [him] away [he] won’t” (212). Jill emails Jacob, asking if he’s seen their son. She then plays the last conversation they recorded, which consists of the question: “What’s the hottest time of the day?” (213). The question is a reference to the K-pop band 2PM and is something that the two of them know. His answer this time, “The hottest time of the day is 2PM” (213), bothers her both because the recorded answer is simply “2PM” and because she can see a glimpse of Vi’s hand in the shot.

Alex returns before she can play the conversation again, but he is now a grown man in his early twenties. She asks him to watch television with her, and he happily agrees. She studies his face as they sit on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders. The next morning, Alex comes back and is in his late thirties. He brings photos of his wife, Amina, and his daughter. Jill goes to the store to prepare for Alex’s next return, and she finds that over a week has passed in the real world. When she returns to the apartment, Alex is now in his fifties and older than she is. She can’t face him in his fifties, but she also can’t ask him to leave, so she takes a shower and leaves him sleeping in the second bedroom. When she’s finished, she leaves the apartment, locking the door behind her.

She stops at work to ask about the boys she works with. The front desk warden makes a few calls and then reassures her that everything is fine. She isn’t due back at work yet, so she heads to the apartment she and Jacob normally share. On the train, she considers that she might find Vi at home with Jacob. When she arrives, she finds the door unlocked and the apartment just as cold as the Catford one; Jacob is slumped over the kitchen table with headphones on. She takes them off and asks him, “What’s the hottest time of day?” (216). This time, he answers “2PM.” They embrace, and she tells him to scrap Presence. He agrees. Later, as they are comparing notes, Jacob mentions that he wishes he had a picture of Alex.