Second Chances Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  Now that he was back here and enjoying this amazing breakfast he began to wonder if his grandmother had been right. He hadn’t even considered the more likely explanation, which was that his taste buds were just keener when he was a child. They hadn’t been desensitised yet by decades of boozing and the large amounts of salt he poured onto everything he ate.

  Whatever the reason, he wasn’t too bothered. He was too busy savouring every mouthful. It tasted so good that he vowed to make sure he had some eggy soldiers when he got back to his own time. He rarely, if ever, ate breakfast before leaving the house in the morning, another thing Debs was always nagging him about. Well, that would have to change when he got back. It wasn’t as if he would be in any hurry to leave the house in the morning now he was unemployed. She would probably mock him, but sod her. If he wanted eggy soldiers, he’d bloody well have them.

  Thoughts of the future were banished as he heard the unmistakeable sound of Tarzan’s jungle cry coming from the living room. He got up and rushed in to find his sister, Annie, sitting in front of their old television, a huge, wooden box with four buttons on the front. She was watching an episode of a show he’d long forgotten about, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.

  Annie was 10, and growing up fast. She’d had a growth spurt recently and was now several inches taller than him. She had inherited her mother’s long, dark hair but had hers tied up in pigtails. Kent remembered how he used to pull them cruelly when they argued, but he had no desire to do that now. He was just really pleased to see her in this shape and form, before everything had changed.

  He had hardly seen her in recent years. When she was eighteen she had gone away to university in London. Apart from a few holidays as a fresher, she had never come back.

  She had met a young stockbroker during her second year of university. By the time she had graduated with a law degree, they had bought a swanky flat overlooking the Thames. They got married soon afterwards. Buying just at the right time, at the bottom of the housing market in 1995, that flat soon exploded in value and before long they were property millionaires. In the space of a few short years they climbed the career and property ladders, started a family and ended up in a stunning six-bedroom house in Surrey.

  None of that would have bothered him if it had not been for the fact that her husband, the utterly irritating Ian, couldn’t resist rubbing Kent’s nose in it every single time that he saw the pair of them. He was absolutely sick of hearing how much their house was worth. It seemed to go up by about a million every time he saw them. Thankfully the gaps between encounters were growing as Kent had done his utmost of late to avoid having to see them unless he absolutely had to.

  The most recent occasion had been a couple of years ago at a cousin’s family wedding. Kent had tried to invent a fictional work conference to get out of attending. He hated weddings, but Debs had seen through it and insisted he went along. Short of shooting himself in the foot to be invalided out of duty, there was no other way out of it.

  When they had arrived at the wedding reception, having successfully avoided Ian at the church, he was dismayed to discover that whichever bastard had organised the seating plan had put them at the same table. Ian had used this as an opportunity to spend the entire afternoon belittling Kent. He barely bothered to thinly veil his insults: in Ian’s mind he was above Kent on the social scale which gave him the right to talk down to him to his heart’s content.

  “So, still living in that old terraced house near the railway line?” was Ian’s opening gambit in his attempt to steer the conversation round to house prices.

  “We like it there,” said Kent.

  “Yeah, it’s not a bad little place that, I suppose. Pretty good for a policeman’s salary, I would have thought. Still, I wouldn’t want to be so close to that new HS2 line they’re building: that’s going to be a bit noisy when the trains start running.”

  “If it ever gets finished,” replied Kent. He couldn’t see the point of the whole project himself.

  “Oh it’ll get finished alright,” replied Ian, confidently. “It’s a shame you won’t have a station, but then you can’t expect it to stop at every common or garden little market town. That would be very inconvenient for those travelling from London to Manchester on important business.”

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t have that, could we, Ian?” Kent had replied with no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice. Ian wouldn’t notice: he was so thick-skinned it always went straight over his head.

  “So I expect you’ll be using the new line, then, important fella like yourself?” he added.

  “Oh definitely, one of our main clients is in Manchester and it’s going to be great zipping up there so fast. It’s OK in the current trains. My company normally pays for first class so I don’t have to muck in with the oiks but it’s a bit slow. Time is money to a man in my position. And the mobile signal keeps dropping out when I’m talking to clients – that’s very inconvenient.”

  “Sounds terrible,” said Kent, insincerely. He could imagine Ian on the train, talking loudly into his phone to demonstrate to the other passengers how important he was.

  “That won’t be a problem on the new trains; it’s all going to be built in – superfast broadband, the lot. Plus, on the new line I’ll be able to get there and back in a day, saves me staying overnight. I’m not that keen on Manchester. It’s alright, but full of northern people, you know what I mean? They just don’t have the same level of sophistication you get in London.”

  And so it had gone on, all through the meal and even during the speeches. The worst bit was when Ian began to describe his plans to install a swimming pool and how much it was going to add to the value of the house. He was predicting that it would be worth at least £7 million. All through this, Annie sat there lapping it all up as usual, nodding and agreeing with everything Ian said. It was pointless Kent trying to change the subject and start a conversation with her, he would just steer it back round to whatever he wanted to talk about. She clearly thought the sun shone out of the man’s arse, so what could he say?

  After that day he vowed that he was never attending another family wedding again, at least not until his own kids got married. At least then he’d have a say in the seating plan and could make sure Ian was as far away from him as possible, or preferably not there at all.

  Thankfully, Ian was yet to make his odious presence felt in 1984 so that meant he could spend some quality time with his sister before she’d been ruined by his greed and money.

  When she spoke, it was to set in motion the chain of events he was expecting. He had chosen to come back to this particular day for a specific reason, one that Annie was about to make possible.

  “I’m going to go into town this morning. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Will it be OK for me to come without Mum there?” asked Kent. His memory of the day in question was more than a little hazy. Had it just been the two of them? Children of their age were not generally allowed out on their own, were they?

  “I don’t see why not,” replied Annie. “She doesn’t mind us going to the park.”

  Of course she wouldn’t, mused Kent. It was just one of the many ways that the world had changed during his lifetime. In 2018, it would be unusual for a ten- and a seven-year-old to be allowed out without a parent, especially into town, but in 1984 it was nothing unusual. Parents at that time were far less protective of their kids than those same kids would grow up to be of theirs. A number of high-profile child abduction cases in the intervening years had created the perception that the world had become a more dangerous place.

  That was the belief, but if anything, it was probably safer. The paedophiles that had preyed on children had always been around, it was just that people had been less aware of them. People were far more clued-up now and there were far more protective and preventative measures in place to protect children than there had been in Kent’s day. What she was about to say was to make that abundantly clear.

  “What time do you wa
nt to go?” he asked.

  “In about half an hour,” she replied. “I just want to finish writing this letter to Jimmy Savile first.”

  Kent’s first reaction was one of horror. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked. “I thought you liked Jim’ll Fix It. Last week you said you wanted to be on it.

  What could he say? He could hardly tell her the sordid truth about the host of the show. As a seven-year-old he wouldn’t even be expected to know about such things. All he could do was offer a fairly lame response.

  “I did, but I’ve sort of gone off it recently. What are you asking him?”

  “I’m asking if I can dress up like a popstar and sing with Bananarama,” replied Annie.

  My God, thought Kent, she couldn’t have asked for anything worse. But then he stopped to consider it more closely for a moment and relaxed. He didn’t remember Annie writing to the show, but he knew for certain she had never appeared on it. He would definitely have remembered that. He doubted that she would even have received a reply to her letter. Thousands of kids probably wrote in every week. None of them could have had any inkling at the time that the host would turn out to be one of the worst child abusers in history.

  He wished there was something he could do to protect the supposedly lucky kids who did get on the show, but in his seven-year-old form, what could he possibly achieve? His adult colleagues in the force hadn’t managed to bring charges against Savile when he was alive, despite numerous allegations, so what could he do at the age of seven? He may as well let her get on with it, post her letter, and have it consigned to the bin at the BBC along with all the other failed applications.

  “Have you still got your pocket money saved up?” asked Annie. “You haven’t spent it all on sweets, have you?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll go and check,” he replied.

  Kent went back upstairs, which gave him a chance to have a proper look around his bedroom, packed full of memories.

  “My Mr. Men books!” he exclaimed, as he examined the white wooden bookshelf beneath the window, only three shelves high, but significantly taller than his seven-year-old self. What had happened to these books? He couldn’t remember getting rid of them, but he must have done at some point.

  He recalled a vague memory from his early teens of his best friend, Glen, ridiculing some of his childish stuff. Later that day he had chucked it all out in an attempt to look cool. Maybe that was when the Mr. Men books had gone. How he regretted that now. He could have kept them for his own kids. Peer pressure had made him do some bloody stupid things in his youth.

  He picked up his favourite, Mr. Nosey and flicked through it, laughing again at the scrapes that the character got into. How he had loved these books and had forgotten all about them. He may have chucked out his copies, but he should have remembered them and bought them again for his own kids.

  Why hadn’t he? Too busy with police work, that’s why, and where had it got him? Nowhere, and now they were teenagers and he’d missed out on their younger years. There was no point trying to get involved in their lives now, it was too late. They wouldn’t be interested, even if he tried.

  Remembering that he was supposedly allowed to go back in time six times, he made a mental note to make sure he used one of those days to go back and spend it with his kids when they were little and still hero-worshipped him.

  He put the book back on the shelf and looked around the rest of the room. Scattered about on the floor were a selection of Corgi and Matchbox cars and the long plastic tracks he used to race them down. There was also a Snakes and Ladders board and loads of Lego randomly strewn all over the place.

  He stuck three pieces of the stripy pink and white track together and placed one end on the bookshelf, securing it underneath a heavy children’s atlas. He picked up one of the cars from the floor, an Audi Quattro similar to the one his hero, Gene Hunt, had driven in “Ashes to Ashes”, and ran it down the track. He remembered spending hours doing this. He used to set two tracks up next to each other and race them in knockout competitions, starting with thirty-two cars until only two were left.

  He had been so creative like this when he was young, effortlessly finding ways to entertain himself which didn’t have to revolve around alcohol and the pub. There were no responsibilities and no worries in those days, but the inevitably of growing up had crept up on him unannounced. When did he stop doing all this stuff? He couldn’t remember the last day he had played with his cars. He probably didn’t even realise at the time that it was the last day. Life had a way of creeping up on you like that. He didn’t even have the cars anymore: had he got rid of them in embarrassment, too?

  Why had he had to grow up? Why did everything have to change, and why did everyone have to get old and die? The utter futility of it all suddenly filled him with rage. He grabbed the three pieces of track and flung them across the room. What was the point of this stupid angel sending him back here? To rub his nose in it, show him how great life used to be, and then make him go back to the shitty reality of his current existence?

  After this little outburst, he felt a little better. So what if he did have to go back to 2018 later? He may as well try and live for the moment now he was here. On top of the bookshelf he spotted his piggy bank, which was not a pig at all, but a yellow china rabbit. It rattled encouragingly with the sound of money when he picked it up.

  He turned it over and removed the plastic stopper from the bottom to get at the money inside. Out fell a fifty-pence piece along with five ten-pence pieces. They seemed huge, even allowing for the fact that he was holding them in his seven-year-old hands.

  He remembered someone saying to him once that everything seems bigger to a child and that seemed logical enough. The theory worked in reverse, too. He remembered going back to his old primary school a few years ago to give a road safety talk and being amazed at how small the assembly hall had seemed. In his memory it had been a vast, cavernous place, akin to the Albert Hall, but it hadn’t shrunk. He had grown.

  However, in the case of the money, it really was bigger in the past. These coins were seriously chunky and actually felt worth something. In 1984, they were. Before being devalued by years of inflation, fifty pence could actually buy you something worthwhile. As for the coins, they were twice the size of the modern versions.

  At some point during the 1990s many of the coins had shrunk, presumably to save on the cost of the metal they were made from. He could remember his aged grandmother, the same one who claimed it snowed every Christmas in her day, moaning about it at the time. She claimed that the new 5p coin, or a shilling as she referred to it, was too fiddly as she had rummaged for one in the bottom of her purse to give him as pocket money. He had accepted gracefully, despite being sixteen at the time. Like his mother, she had suffered from Alzheimer’s and in her mind 5p was a tidy sum to give a teenager for a treat.

  He was dragged out of his reminiscences by Annie calling from downstairs. “Are you ready yet, Richie?”

  He realised he was still in his pyjamas so he opened the drawers, pulled out some impossibly small-looking clothes and quickly put them on. Age 6-7, said the label on his trousers. Kent couldn’t remember the last time he’d pulled on anything under a 38” waist. During his thirties, his waistline had kept pace with his age.

  He pocketed the money and headed back down to the living room. The telly was still on but the morning programmes had finished. All that was on the screen now was a page from Ceefax, another blast from the past. Daytime TV shows about antiques and buying houses were far in the future and he was very glad about that. Debs seemed to spend all the days she wasn’t at the bakery watching them.

  “You’d better put your big coat on,” said his mother. “It’s freezing out there today. The weatherman on breakfast TV said that it might snow later.”

  She handed him his coat, a familiar old blue parka with a furry rim around the hood, and he started to put it on. Instinctively, s
he reached down to do his zip up for him. It was great being a kid, thought Kent. Everyone did everything for you.

  “Now, you look after him, Annie,” said his mother. “And make sure he crosses the road safely. Remember the Green Cross Code.”

  “Don’t worry, Mum, we’ll be OK,” replied Annie.

  Kent’s childhood home was on the main road leading into town, just a couple of hundred yards from the start of the town centre. As they walked towards the town, he marvelled at how much things had changed.

  For a start, there were the cars, a never-ending stream passing in both directions on the busy road. This was before the ring road had been built and long before the M40 was finished. Back then, the town got a lot of through traffic. This road still formed part of the main north/south route through the county.

  It was like being at some sort of classic car rally for crap cars. Austin Maxis and Allegros rumbled past in a variety of revolting colours, sporting varying degrees of rust. There were Mini Metros, Morris Travellers and even a bright orange Ford Capri. Inside the Capri were two young men with the windows down, slicked-back hair, huge mirror shades and the unmistakeable voice of Simon Bates on Radio 1 blaring out. Presumably they thought they looked cool but to Kent they looked ridiculous. It was a freezing cold February day with leaden grey skies for a start – hardly sunglasses weather.

  They passed by a couple of pubs on the way, old favourites of Kent’s that were long gone. One had been turned into a Thai restaurant, much to his disgust. Being an old school meat and potatoes sort of man, he hated Thai food. Why couldn’t they have made it into something he would have liked? Most of his life he had lived in this town and still no one had ever opened a steakhouse. It was all Thai this and Italian that.