Second Chances Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  “He got what he deserved,” said Kent. “I’m not a vindictive person but if anyone ever needed a dose of karma, Glen did.”

  “I agree,” said the angel. “Shame about your dad, though.”

  “What about my dad?” asked Kent.

  “Oh, it was just the carton of orange juice that you also laced with laxatives. He drank it when he got in from work and spent the entire evening on the toilet.”

  “Whoops,” said Kent. “I forgot about that.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” said the angel. “It was all in the other universe after all. Consider it collateral damage. Just goes to show, you can never plan these things too carefully. Imagine if you had been trying to kill Glen with real poison. By taking out your dad, too, you’d have brought the police straight to your door. Even a policeman of your abilities could have worked it out!”

  Kent decided to change the subject. The dig at his policing skills had irked him and yesterday was done and dusted as far as he was concerned. What he wanted most of all now was to spend some quality time with his family.

  “Moving on, I know where I want to go tomorrow, and it fits in with your original brief,” said Kent. “But right now, I’m going to go home and put my feet up.”

  “Back to the unsuspecting little wife, eh?” said the angel, teasingly.

  “Don’t start moralising to me,” snapped Kent. “You created the scenario to allow all of this to happen. I’m not going to let you put a guilt trip on me for something that happened twenty-five years ago in another universe.”

  “Relax, I’m just kidding,” said the angel. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Kent took his leave and went home. Debs had made a casserole for tea and seemed to be in a reasonably good mood. The kids were also at home which meant it was one of the increasingly rare occasions when they were all sat around the table together.

  Kent knew roughly what he wanted to do for his next trip, but it was worth tapping the family up for a bit of extra knowledge. Over dinner he steered the conversation around to holidays, reminiscing with them about their past trips abroad.

  They had been to many places over the years, and all four were in agreement as to where their favourite place was. They had been to Cyprus four times in the past ten years and Debs enthused about it over dinner, suggesting they went again soon.

  With the destination for his next trip established, now he needed to work out when. The angel was pretty good at pinpointing where to send him, even if he didn’t know the exact dates, but it was best to be on the safe side.

  After dinner, he went upstairs and had a sort through an old box file that he used to keep holiday paperwork in. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for, the booking confirmation from Thomas Cook for their first holiday in Cyprus, in May 2008.

  The discussion over dinner had brought back fond memories of the holiday. The children had been little, just five and three, and both claimed to remember it, although Kent wasn’t sure if they did. They had been back to the same hotel since, so may have been remembering a later visit. It didn’t change much over the years. The hotel was always lovely, as was the weather.

  It was perfect for what he wanted to do. He had no ulterior motive or big plan this time. He just wanted a relaxing and fun day with his family. He wasn’t even going to specify a particular day. One day was much like another on holiday and in his memories now they had all merged into one. The easiest way was to let the angel choose one for him.

  It was another freezing cold evening on the roof, so Kent had no intention of hanging about. He would issue his instructions as quickly as possible and get going. The sooner he got away from this miserable November afternoon and into the hot Mediterranean sunshine, the better.

  “Decided where you are going yet?” asked the angel.

  “As if you even need to ask,” replied Kent. “Take me back to the Oasis hotel in Cyprus, on a day between 14th and the 28th May 2008 – not the first or last day, though, I don’t want to spend half the day on a plane. Since you are all-seeing and all-knowing, how about you pick the best day for me? The one I enjoyed the most, if you can figure out that level of detail.”

  “Your wish is my command,” said the angel, doing a fairly decent genie impression, before whisking him away to sunnier climes.

  He awoke with a start, with the three-year-old Luke jumping up and down on his chest.

  “Daddy, Daddy! Let’s play!” he shouted, a beaming smile on his face.

  Kent sat up and looked around. He was pleased to see that he was exactly where he had hoped to be. He was in a whitewashed room, with gleaming marble tiles on the floor. The hot morning sun was already streaming in through French windows that led out onto a balcony. As package holidays went, this was by far the best room they had ever stayed in.

  They hadn’t had a lot of luck with hotel rooms over the years and initially this hotel had been no different. When they had arrived they had been allocated a room in one of the outside blocks. Although it was close to the pool and classed as a ground-floor room, it turned out to be more like a basement. Going down a flight of steps to the apartment door, they opened it to discover that the room was flooded.

  Debs had returned to reception and kicked up a fuss so they had given them this room instead. It could not have been more different. This room turned out to be one of the largest and most luxurious in the whole hotel. It had two bedrooms, a premium they had not been able to afford when booking. Usually when they went abroad, the kids had to sleep in the living room on a fold-down sofa. This usually meant it was impossible to get them to sleep at night.

  That wasn’t a problem here, but it did result in them getting up ridiculously early in the morning. Kent didn’t mind that today. He didn’t even mind Luke’s enthusiastic jumping now, right on top of his stomach, despite him feeling the after-effects of whatever he had consumed the previous evening. What father wouldn’t be happy for a chance to see his children again at this age? Within a few seconds, Jack had joined him and they were eagerly competing for his attention.

  “Hey, I want to go next to Dad!” shouted Jack.

  “No, it’s my turn!” yelled Luke.

  From the other side of the bed, Debs mumbled, “Will you two be quiet?” There was no novelty value in this for her like there was for Kent. Chances are she was more hung-over than he was. She didn’t drink much at home but it was a different matter when staying in all-inclusive resorts.

  “Move into the middle,” demanded Jack.

  Kent shuffled over, thankful that for once they actually had a double bed on holiday rather than two singles next to each other. This allowed ample room for one boy to slot in either side of him.

  “Yay!” shouted at Jack. “Now everyone gets to go next to Dad.”

  In just this one minute, the boys had given him more attention than he normally got from them in a month in their teenage years. When did he stop being their hero? Was it his fault? Had he spent too much time at work or in the pub? Or was it a natural part of the growing-up process that he just had to accept?

  “I want to go to the kids’ club!” said Luke, loudly.

  “I want to go to the swimming pool!” shouted Jack, even louder.

  Debs sat up and said, “Don’t you two come with a volume control?” Kent looked at her to see she looked tired and ruffled, with a real bedhead of hair. Had they done anything the previous evening? he wondered. She did tend to be a little friskier on holidays, plus this was over a decade ago, before their sex life had gone into a nosedive.

  She may have looked tired, it was more than compensated for by the years that the trip back a decade or so had taken off her.

  Just as on his previous trip, Kent’s thoughts reverted to his base carnal instincts, but he quickly dismissed the thought. There wasn’t much he could do with two small children bouncing around.

  Therein lay one of the sources of his frustration. Before the kids had come along they had had a fantastic sex life. After that
the desire was still there, but with two demanding little boys around all the time the opportunities were reduced. Parenting also meant that they were tired most of the time.

  Once the children were older and starting to have their own lives, it was too late. They had slipped into a middle-aged pipe and slippers routine. They rarely went out anymore, instead spending their evenings in front of the telly, lolling about in old clothes, snacking and putting on weight. It certainly wasn’t a scenario that lent itself to the passionate quickies on the sofa that they had enjoyed in their younger years.

  Kent made a mental vow that at the end of this day he was going to give Debs a seriously good seeing-to. And it wasn’t one he was going to have to feel guilty about this time. Even if this was a different Debs, the younger and alternate Debs of Universe 2.0, she was still his wife.

  “We want our breakfast,” said Jack. “There’s no food.”

  “There won’t be,” said Kent. “We have to go to the restaurant for our meals, remember?”

  “Have they got Clover butter?” asked Luke, who was a notoriously fussy eater. “I don’t like their butter.”

  “You know they haven’t,” said Debs. “They don’t do it here. You’ll just have to have what they’ve got.”

  Jack joined in, asking, “Will they have Marmite today?”

  “I told you yesterday, they don’t do that here, either,” said Debs. “I am sure you can find something to eat down there, they’ve got virtually everything else you could ever want.”

  She got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt. “Come on, you,” she said to Kent. “We’d better get up. It’s ten to nine already.”

  It seemed to take an age to get ready. Kent had forgotten how much longer everything used to take when the children were little. It was almost half past nine by the time they made it downstairs. He had fond memories of the restaurant where everything was self-serve and they ate two or three times a day. He had been in his early thirties at the time, before he had really started to pile on the pounds. Back then, he could seemingly eat and drink limitless amounts and get away with it.

  Before coming down to breakfast he’d taken a good look at his body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and was happy with what he saw. He was even happier when he found a much-loved old pair of blue and white swim shorts that he had long forgotten. Checking out the label, he noticed that they were a 32” waist. Nowadays it was more like 42”. When had he started to pile on the weight? It must have been around the time of this holiday.

  He could hardly be blamed, no one could. The food in the restaurant was fantastic. Although it was only officially a 4* hotel it could easily have passed for a 5*.

  Looking around the room at his fellow holidaymakers, Kent felt positively thin by comparison. There was no shortage of flab on display here and it would be even worse when everyone got to the pool. With Debs sorting out breakfast for the boys, he was free to wander up to the hot food counter. There was a lot more on offer to suit him here than there had been at Greenland’s and they even made omelettes and pancakes to order. He was going to make the most of this.

  That was if he could get near the food. Blocking his way to the counter were two women scooping fried eggs and hash browns onto their plates as if there was no tomorrow. As soon as he saw them he remembered who they were – Tess and Tina, the terrible twins from Tyneside.

  The two women were identical in every respect. They had the same bleached blonde hair, same piercings and even their tattoos were indistinguishable. Despite being barely five feet tall, between them they could easily have tipped the scales above the forty-stone mark. He would be lucky if there was any food left by the time these two were finished.

  Not only were the twins extremely fat, they were also extremely loud and argued constantly. Right now they were fighting over the last of the bacon. There were about twelve rashers in the tray, but apparently that wasn’t enough to share between them.

  When they turned away, having pulled every last scrap from the tray, Kent marvelled at how much food they had managed to pile onto their plates. It wasn’t so much the greed, that went without saying, but the sheer physical impossibility of it.

  From the base of their plates upwards, the food seemed to spread outwards like some giant mushroom cloud. He couldn’t see any way the food could be staying on the plate, it was as if it was defying the laws of gravity. Kent considered himself a past master at the skill of filling up a plate at buffets, but he was clearly in the infancy compared to these two. They had got the skill down to a fine art.

  As soon as they were gone, one of the chefs came and put out a new tray of fresh back bacon. That was another thing Kent liked about this hotel – they did proper bacon, not the horrible streaky stuff he often found on holidays.

  Sporting a plate piled nicely with hot food, he joined his family at the table. Even though he had less than half the amount the sisters had taken, it was still a sizeable feast. He looked to see if Debs was going to cast a disapproving look in his direction or make a comment, but she didn’t seem bothered. The kids seemed happy enough, both had toast, some yogurt and some cereal as well as orange juice. Neither was complaining about the butter or lack of Marmite, but chatting excitedly about the day ahead.

  The angel seemed to have done his homework picking out today, as it had definitely had a promising start – content wife, happy kids, plus fresh back bacon that the terrible twins hadn’t been able to monopolise. Most of the mealtimes when the kids had been little had been a battleground. They were forever complaining about the food, refusing to use cutlery and wiping their hands on their clothes and the tablecloth. There was none of that today.

  He had no idea which day of the holiday they were on, but did it really matter? The whole family were looking pretty tanned so they must have been here a few days already. He wondered what the day had in store. He was hoping for a pretty average day without venturing out anywhere. They didn’t tend to do much of that sort of thing on these trips, especially with the hotel being all-inclusive.

  “Anything special planned for today?” he asked Debs.

  “Just working on my tan,” she said, smiling. Her sunny disposition was a joy to behold. It made a nice change from what he usually had to put up with at home. If sunbathing was all she wanted to do today then that suited him just fine. He would just chill out with her around the pool and go with the flow.

  An hour later, Kent, Debs and Jack were at the poolside, with Luke safely enrolled at the kids’ club. It wasn’t hugely busy at the pool so they had no difficulty finding sunbeds. That was one of the many benefits of coming on holiday in May.

  It had been more difficult as they children had got older and they had needed to take their breaks during the school holidays. Kent remembered returning to this hotel in August a few years later when it was packed and they had no chance of finding four sunbeds together by the time they had finished breakfast. That August trip had also cost double the amount it had in May and it was also too bloody hot. Holidays out of season were definitely preferable.

  As Debs settled down for the morning with her iPod, he coated Jack generously in suncream, slipped his armbands on and the two of them headed for the water.

  “I’m going to go in the deep end today, Daddy!” said Jack excitedly. “I can go really fast now!”

  Kent recalled that this was the holiday when Jack had really gained his confidence in the water. Sure enough, soon they were splashing around and Jack didn’t even insist that Kent hold onto him like he had when he was little.

  “Do the shark, do the shark!” urged Jack.

  Ah, yes, the shark, thought Kent. Another thing he had forgotten about with the passing of time. It was the little fun things like the shark that really brought home the joy of being a dad. All too soon the kids had grown up and found such things childish, but now he was able to do it all over again.

  He swam about ten yards away from Jack who was excitedly chanting, “Go, Daddy, go, Daddy,
go, Daddy!” He turned around, dived underwater and swam back to his son.

  Just before he reached him, he leapt up out of the water, mouth wide open shouting, “RAAARRGHHH!” to Jack’s squeals of delight.

  “Do it again!” insisted Jack. And he did. About eleven times. His children never seemed to tire of these things. He could have done it a hundred times and they would still be asking for more.

  After about an hour they headed back to the sunbeds to dry off. As he was sitting on the bed he noticed Karl and Susie, two of the entertainment team coming around recruiting for the morning’s activities.

  Kent liked the entertainers at the hotel; they were fun, lively and brilliant with the kids. Admittedly it was all very predictable and formulaic: various pub games and quizzes during the day, then kids’ disco, bingo and karaoke at night, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t want anything too intellectually challenging at the best of times and certainly not while he was on holiday.

  “Are you up for a game of killer pool, Richard?” asked Karl, a fit young lad with short, fair hair and not a scrap of fat on him.

  “Yeah, why not?” he replied. He wasn’t great at pool, as his recent game in The Railway Arms had reminded him, but it would be a laugh. Debs could watch Jack for a bit.

  The pool table was over by the bar, underneath a loose bit of thatched roofing which did little to protect it from the elements. Despite the weathered appearance of the blue baize, it was more than serviceable once they had removed all the leaves and twigs from it.

  Kent looked around to see who else was playing. It was a mix of dads of various ages and a few young lads, about ten people in total.

  His main opposition was two fat blokes in their mid-forties wearing XXXL Chelsea football shirts, one with Terry on the back and one with Lampard. Never had two men looked so out of place in these shirts as these two. It was not even midday yet, but both were sporting full pints of lager and looked like the kind of men who had spent their entire lives in the pub. They would certainly know their way around a pool table.