Second Chances Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  If I was lucky enough to have already concluded my business the previous day, I’d just contrive a reason to miss my return flight and stay in the city for the day.

  Over the course of the year, I got to visit the Colosseum, check out the red-light district in Amsterdam, and drink coffee on the banks of the Seine. Life was good.

  It was on the latter visit that I got the chance to get up close and personal with Carol. We were in Paris for two nights for a meeting with a new perfume supplier who wanted us to stock their fragrance in our UK stores.

  Although I woke up alone in my hotel, a very upmarket establishment close to the Eiffel Tower, on the day we were due to fly back I had plans to change all of that.

  So the previous day, I decided that I was going to woo Carol. I could hardly be better placed to do it. Paris in the springtime was a beautiful place.

  Once our business was successfully concluded for the day, I suggested that we go out for the evening and find the best restaurant we could to celebrate closing the deal.

  We found a lovely old-fashioned little boutique restaurant with red and white-checked tablecloths, bread served in baskets, and a superb view of the Eiffel Tower in the setting sun.

  We sat, drank champagne, and talked about our lives deep into the night. The restaurant didn’t rush us and I could gladly have stayed all night in her company, but eventually, stuffed with food, drink and coffee we almost fell out onto the pavement. We were laughing and drunk, not just from the alcohol, but from the high spirits that only an evening in perfect company can provide.

  Our route back to the hotel took us directly past the Eiffel Tower. As we walked close by, I slipped my hand into hers. She seemed surprised, but not in a negative way.

  “You’ve never done that before,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve never been with you in the most romantic city in the world before,” I replied, and turned to her in the shadow of Paris’s most famous landmark and kissed her full on the lips.

  She responded enthusiastically, her tongue probing its way into my mouth. After that, we couldn’t get back to the hotel quickly enough and were soon tearing our clothes off each and flinging them across the room.

  It was one glorious night of passion, which more than lived up to my office fantasies. Sadly, it was one that I never did get the chance to repeat, as the opportunity never really arose again. In fact, although I didn’t know it at the time, this was to be my final liaison before married life beckoned.

  I was really glad that it had been such a memorable one.

  Sarah

  March 2018

  The two years following my romantic interlude with Carol in Paris passed relatively uneventfully.

  I enjoyed the social life and travel that my newfound vocation brought, whilst continuing to skilfully avoid doing any actual work.

  The weekly planning meetings were a source of much amusement to me. It was full of young graduate trainees all clamouring to impress me. They were incredibly eager to get their voices heard and climb the corporate ladder, but I just found them irritating.

  Kissing the boss’s arse and asking as many knowledgeable-sounding questions might have worked on some people, but I saw right through the falseness.

  There was a general sense of panic around the building due to the dire times that the company had fallen on in recent years. After decades of being one of the major food retailers in the country, the 2010s had brought one crisis after another.

  A surge of popularity for foreign discount chains undercutting prices had seen many former loyal customers desert our stores in droves. Various food scares and other scandals had dogged not just us, but the other big retailers as well. Most of them were also struggling, but not as badly as us.

  To try and combat the decline, it seemed we had launched all manner of initiatives, none of which seemed to have made any difference. So now, in these weekly meetings, my eager young charges competed desperately, trying to be the one to come up with the genius idea that would turn the company’s fortunes around.

  Listening to the various suggestions it seemed to me that we had completely lost sight of the golden rule of focusing on the customer. Everything seemed to be about money and manipulation – coming up with clever promotional ideas that worked well on paper, but were insulting to the customer’s intelligence.

  The whole BOGOF (Buy One, Get One Free) offer had been completely abused in recent years. Once a great way of giving customers fantastic deals, it had been cynically manipulated to try and trick the shoppers into believing they were getting a bargain when they weren’t.

  Modern shoppers weren’t falling for it. They were more clued up than ever before, thanks to price comparison sites and other resources. They didn’t like being taken for mugs and voted with their feet, heading off to the discount stores instead.

  Most of the ideas that were brought up in the meetings were just variations on the same old themes. Sometimes I decided to take the piss and throw in an utterly ludicrous idea to see what the reaction would be.

  “I know,” I said, one summer morning when I would much rather have been elsewhere. “Why don’t we forget about tired old BOGOFs and introduce Buy One Get Three Free instead? That will pull them in. No one’s ever done that before. We could do it on say, blocks of cheese. All we have to do is raise the price of the cheese from say, £3 a block to £10 and we’ll be laughing. They’ll be getting four for a tenner, but they’ll think they are getting the bargain of a lifetime!”

  It was a ridiculous suggestion. Although there might be the odd idiot who would think it was cheap, the vast majority of the general public would see through such a blatant con immediately. And who would want to buy four blocks of cheese at one time anyway?

  However, since I was the boss and I’d suggested it, all the sycophants in the room were eagerly nodding and agreeing. I was surrounded by yes-men and yes-women.

  The only exception was Carol, who had a disapproving look on her face, and when she questioned me about it later, I admitted I had said it for a joke. I was impressed with her for challenging me. I liked people who didn’t follow the herd.

  From March 2018 I found I was no longer required in work. I had been given three months’ compassionate leave following Sarah’s death. People had been very sympathetic on my return and even Barry had been nice for a day or two.

  It was just as well, really, as I had been waking up most days with an absolutely stinking hangover. Clearly booze had been my way of blotting out the pain. On the plus side, my tobacco cravings had more or less disappeared now, and the fags vanished from the house soon after. I must have passed the point where I had taken it up.

  Not going in to work gave me time to plan how I was going to prevent Sarah’s death. It also allowed me to spend time with a grieving Stacey who had grown progressively unhappy as the year had regressed.

  She no longer had David in her life to support her; they had met at Christmas 2018, so she was now alone, away at university and grieving over the loss of her mother.

  Just as I had grown younger, so had she, and far from being the confident young woman I had first known, she now seemed barely more than a child taking her first steps into the adult world.

  She had only been at university for one term when her mother died, and she had not been able to face going back for the next one. She had eventually returned in February, and I knew that I faced a January full of tears and heartbreak.

  To have her mother ripped away from her so suddenly and cruelly had completely devastated her world. I comforted her as best I could, but there was nothing I could do until the fateful day arrived.

  The hurt and pain she was suffering built up anger within myself, and I was determined that I was going to stop the man who had caused it, no matter how far I had to go.

  I knew everything I needed to know about him. His name was Mark Tompkins; he was 34 years old and lived on an estate in East Oxford. All the details had come out during the trial, after which he had been sen
tenced to fourteen years in prison for causing death by dangerous driving.

  Although that was the maximum the law allowed, it still wasn’t enough in my opinion.

  Ironically, despite the hatred I felt towards the man, what I was planning to do was going to save him from that prison sentence.

  It wasn’t just enough to make sure that Sarah wasn’t on the zebra crossing to be mown down at the appointed place and time. If I did that, there was nothing to prevent him carrying on his drink-driving and killing some other poor family’s mother, father or child. He needed to be stopped.

  How far could I go? Some dark thoughts clouded my mind. What would happen if I killed him during the day of the accident?

  No one would have any reason to suspect me. If I killed him before he killed Sarah, there would be no possible connection. She would live, and he wouldn’t be able to stagger drunk into his car ever again.

  Ultimately, I dismissed this thought. I couldn’t really see myself killing someone in cold blood. Instead I worked out a plan that would resolve everything to my satisfaction and got it ready to put into operation. Before any of that could happen, though, there was the funeral and Christmas to get through.

  December 2017

  Christmas 2017 was an awful, miserable time in our house. Sarah had been killed on the night of the 22nd, so close to the big day that the house was already decked out for the occasion.

  The turkey was in the fridge and the tree was decorated, with presents wrapped and laid out beneath it. Sarah’s were destined never to be opened. The day had been spent wallowing in grief and self-pity.

  Although I knew that all of this was going to be put right, I couldn’t cope with the sheer emotion of the situation, in particular Stacey’s anguish: so traumatic that I found myself also breaking down and sobbing. I thought the funeral which had taken place five days later had been bad enough, but nothing could compare to that awful Christmas Day.

  Somehow we got through it, and then there was one further day of suffering on Christmas Eve. After that came the 23rd, the day after Sarah’s death, when I had been steeling myself for more of the same, but as it happened, things turned out differently to how I had been expecting.

  I woke up alone in bed on what was to be my last day as a widower. I went downstairs to the kitchen where Stacey was already making breakfast. Two pieces of bread popped up from the toaster as I entered the room, and she keenly turned round to me and said, “Hi, Dad, where’s Mum?”

  I had become pretty good at anticipating things that might happen on a daily basis, but it hadn’t crossed my mind to think that she might not be aware yet of her mother’s death.

  “Oh, she had to go out early,” I said, thinking on the spot as I so often had to in my crazy life. “A bit of last-minute Christmas shopping, I think.”

  “Cool,” replied Stacey, as she grabbed a knife from the drawer and began to spread some butter on her toast. “I still need to do a bit myself,” she added.

  I hadn’t seen her like this for months. She was quite her old self, a bubbly, cheerful eighteen-year-old girl looking forward to Christmas.

  At that moment, I made a snap decision. I had absolutely no need to tell her of her mother’s death. I couldn’t bear the thought of inflicting that misery and pain on her. There had been more than enough of that over the past few weeks to last a lifetime. I had made up my mind. We were getting out of the city for the day.

  “As it happens, I still need to do a bit, too,” I said. “In fact, as it’s the weekend, and Mum’s going to be busy getting everything ready for Christmas, why don’t you and I go shopping together? It’ll be fun.”

  “I’d love that!” said Stacey. “You haven’t taken me shopping for years. It’ll be like when I was little and you used to push me around in the trolley.”

  “Apart from the fact that I don’t think you’ll fit in there anymore,” I joked. “Tell you what, let’s make a real day of it and go to London.”

  “Fantastic,” replied Stacey. “Do you think Mum will want to come?”

  “She’s going to be too busy today,” I replied. “She won’t mind us going. I’ll text her and let her know.”

  I had to make sure that no one could get in touch with Stacey. The last thing I wanted was someone contacting her with a text message along the lines of “Sorry to hear about your mum”. So, while she was upstairs getting ready, I took her mobile out of her handbag and hid it down the side of the sofa.

  I hurried Stacey out of the house as quickly as I could and down to Oxford railway station where we caught a train to Paddington. Once we were in London, we shopped like there was no tomorrow at Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. By the time we’d finished, it was already getting dark and it was time to put phase two of the operation into place.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting back?” asked Stacey. “Mum will be wondering where we are. I wish I had my phone. I’m sure I put it in my bag before we left.”

  “Yeah, bad news on that front, I’m afraid,” I said. “Mum texted me earlier – apparently all the train drivers have walked out on strike in a dispute over Christmas pay. We can’t get home by train today.” It was a pretty lame excuse, but she bought it and, since she had no phone, she couldn’t check the news to discover that I’d made it up.

  “What about the buses?” asked Stacey.

  “Let’s forget the buses,” I said. “I’m in one of the most famous cities in the world with one of my two favourite people in the world. Let’s stay over and make a night of it.”

  Stacey was thrilled. She had been to London before, as she’d already mentioned earlier in the day about the time I’d taken her to the Aquarium and the Science Museum a few years ago. This was her first time as an adult.

  Of course, I already knew London very well from my gambling-funded exploits, so I booked us a couple of rooms at one of my favourite hotels. Last time I’d stayed in this hotel it had been with one of London’s finest hookers at £800 an hour for the pleasure.

  All of that was long behind me now. Being with Stacey, enjoying some family time, was infinitely preferable.

  We dined at a lovely little steakhouse in Covent Garden, washing down our meal with plenty of drinks. I was certainly splashing the cash about. Unlike before when it had come out of the bookies’ satchels, this time it was all going on the corporate Amex.

  Plenty of other colleagues did it and just claimed it as “entertaining clients”, some getting into trouble for it, but I didn’t have any of that to worry about. It fell neatly into the box marked “No consequences”.

  I’d definitely done the right thing. Stacey had really enjoyed her day and I had got to spend some quality time with her. I had successfully shielded her from the news of her mother’s death and pretty soon, if all went according to plan, she would never have died in the first place.

  The following morning I awoke back at home. This had been the day that I had been looking forward to more than any other since my life had begun. I was not to be disappointed. I opened my eyes, and there, lying on her side, back turned to me was my beautiful, resurrected wife, sleeping peacefully.

  I sat up and took a while just to look at her. Her long, blonde hair reminded me very much of how Stacey’s had looked when I had first seen her. Her naked body was slender with smooth, pale skin unblemished by the passing of time. She looked much younger, at 39 years old, than I had expected she would.

  I lay back down, pulled the covers over and snuggled into her, touching her body for the first time. I had wondered for so long what this moment would be like, and now that she was here, it seemed almost unreal.

  I put my arm around her, and she awoke, turning to me and giving me the chance to see her face properly for the first time. I’d seen her in photos a thousand times, but they didn’t do her justice. She really was beautiful. There was no doubting where Stacey had got her looks from.

  Excited to be close to her naked flesh, I felt some familiar stirrings down below. She felt them, too,
pressing into her leg and, amused, she said, “To what do I owe this pleasure? It’s not my birthday, is it?”

  I had never heard her voice before, and it came as a surprise. I knew she had been born and bred in South Wales, but the accent still caught me unawares. I liked it, though: she had a lovely, lilting, tone that instantly attracted me, as if I wasn’t turned on enough already.

  “No, it’s not your birthday,” I replied, “but it is the first day of the rest of your life,” and, unable to contain myself any longer, I slipped my hand down between her legs and let nature take its course.

  Such was my state of excitement that it was all over very quickly, something Sarah wasn’t shy about remarking upon.

  “That was quick,” she said. “Not like you at all. I trust you’re going to help me finish myself off?” And with that she reached into her bedside table and pulled out a monstrous-looking device I’d later discover was known as a Rabbit.

  “My pleasure,” I said, getting to grips with the toy. “You know perhaps we should do it more often,” I suggested. “It might slow me down a bit.”

  “You’ll get no complaints from me on that front,” she said, sighing, as I got busy with the toy.

  This was a most promising start to married life. My gorgeous, sexy wife was clearly no prude, and all of this was in stark contrast to the bleak picture that Nick had painted of his two failed marriages. He was of the opinion that sex died completely after ten years with someone.

  Well, that might have been true in his case and this morning’s session may have had some novelty value for me, but Sarah didn’t seem like someone who’d lost any enthusiasm for sex and we had been married for eighteen years.

  I wasn’t planning on going into work on this most important of days, so I phoned the office and made up some story about driving to Norfolk to negotiate a new contract with a company that made bog cleaner.

  One of the great things about being the boss was that no one ever questioned me. Sarah was definitely going to work, though, and there was no point me trying to talk her out of it. She worked in a small legal firm, and today was the day of their Christmas party.