Second Chances Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  Fortunately the team behind the bar seemed to know what they were doing, ignoring the fat man who had rudely squashed into the right of me whilst waving a twenty-pound note in the direction of the barmaid. As if that was going to get him served any quicker! When I served behind the bar at college for a term, those idiots always went straight to the back of the queue.

  Kelly was on my left, and had attracted the attention of a barmaid who had done a grand job of pretending not to see the money-waving bloater next to me. Thank goodness she had. I needed to get away from him as soon as possible. The sweet, sickly stench of his cheap aftershave was overpowering in my nostrils.

  Clearly he had worked up a sweat hauling his bulky frame up to the bar because I could smell that, too. I really hoped he didn’t suffer from flatulence, as that would be the icing on a seriously unappetising cake. In my haste to get out of there fast, I had temporarily forgotten all about Gary and Rob.

  Kelly had ordered up two more cocktails, but just as she was about to pay, I heard a very familiar voice speak from her other side. The music was loud, The Pogues version of “The Irish Rover” blaring in the background, but I even over that, I still recognised his voice instantly.

  “Can I get those, love?” said Gary.

  He was right next to her on the other side. This was a bad start because she was in pole position. This was exactly as it had happened before. Was I powerless to change things? Was the future preordained?

  No, that could not be the case. If it was, how come I had managed to cause him to get killed the last time we had met? I could still turn this around, even though the opening exchange had gone against me. Kelly had already turned to accept his offer, eyeing him with a flirty glance. As for Rob, he was on Gary’s other side, almost out of view.

  There was nothing else for it. I was going to have to do something drastic. Fat boy’s B.O. next to me was really getting on my tits, so I felt no qualms about what I did next.

  As soon as I had my drink in my hand, I leaned back into him, and then quickly lurched forward, chucking my entire Tequila Sunrise all over Kelly.

  She shrieked, “For fuck’s sake, Amy, what are you doing?!” She was absolutely drenched. It was amazing how much mess just one drink could make. I had only intended to get it on her dress but it had gone all over her face and hair, too, completely messing her up.

  “Oh God, Kelly, I’m so sorry. It was this twat here, he just barged into me.”

  “What?” exclaimed the fat man, turning to look at me for the first time, eyeing me in my dress with his leery little eyes as he did so. What a pig. I thought he was going to deny it, but he didn’t. Perhaps he thought he might get in my knickers if he took the blame. Dream on!

  “I’m really sorry,” he said. “Let me buy you another.”

  “Never mind that, I’m fucking soaked!” shouted Kelly. Queen bees don’t handle these sorts of situations well and I was enjoying her discomfort immensely. I needed to take care not to show that, though.

  “Calm down,” I said, instantly wishing I hadn’t. I had learnt the hard way at school as a Scouser never to use this phrase, as everyone took the piss. “It’ll be alright, just go to the toilets and dry off.”

  Grumbling, she took a towel kindly offered by the barmaid who had been serving us and headed off to the toilets. The bumbling idiot next to me was blathering on, full of apology. As soon as I had the replacement drinks from him, I turned the other way, towards Gary and Rob who had been watching this whole display with amused detachment.

  “Is your friend going to be OK?” asked Rob.

  It was the first time I had heard him speak and he seemed a lot quieter and much less confident than I remembered from this night. Looking at the two of them side by side, there was no denying that I fancied Gary more. So why had I gone with Rob that night? Had I been simply settling for the silver medal because Kelly had claimed first prize? If so, it was a pretty poor starting point to base the next nine years of my life on.

  It really didn’t say much for me as a person, did it? Without realising it at the time, I had fallen into a trap that I think many people do. Instead of taking the time to pick the right person to have a relationship with, I had just settled for the first person who came along.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Shall we get away from the bar before there are any more mishaps?” suggested Gary. It was a fair question. It was getting a bit like a rugby scrum where we were standing and the replacement drinks I was holding were definitely in peril.

  Concurring, and ignoring the fat man who was still standing next to me, I took a firm hold of both my and Kelly’s new drinks. Leaving our fat friend behind us, the three of us vacated our spots at the bar, briefly leaving a void that was filled as swiftly as water rushing through a burst dam.

  Now we were out in the open, we all had a better view of each other. Looking me up and down in my newly acquired outfit, Gary remarked, “You look absolutely stunning in that dress.”

  It didn’t sound like a chat-up line but completely genuine and I took the compliment gratefully. I don’t recall him saying anything like that before, but on the previous occasion this night had played out, I had just been wearing some cheap top from Dorothy Perkins.

  “Quick, grab this table,” said Rob, as a group of four blokes got up to leave. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same table we had the previous time, as this one was by the window. The added time spent at the bar was already causing the timeline to deviate. The choice of table was a minor change, one that would have no long-term effect on the timeline, but now it was time to bring about a major change.

  Kelly returned ten minutes later, chastened and patched up, but still with an amusingly obvious wet patch on her right breast. By then, I had ensured that the battle lines had been well and truly drawn in my favour. This time it was me at the end of the table with Gary next to me, then Rob. I had ensured that there was only one place she could fit into this arrangement and that was on the other side of Rob.

  From then on it was plain sailing. I didn’t spend the night alone, waking up on New Year’s Day with Gary in his flat. A second bout of passion with him had been a welcome bonus from my night’s work, and thankfully this time it was all legit and above board. We were both single at this time so no one was going to stumble upon us, go into a rage, and bring about an improbable death armed with nothing more than a small vegetable knife.

  In many ways, it was a good deal more satisfying than last time. We were both almost a decade younger, fitter and with more energy, and I felt the earth move more times that night than I ever had with Rob. I wondered what sort of night Kelly had had with him, inevitably going back to his place as she had. I am willing to bet she wouldn’t have enjoyed herself as much as I had.

  Where would Gary and I go from here? It was impossible to say. If I was opening up a new timeline with each trip back in time, then maybe this might be one where he and I had ended up living happily ever after. Who knows, we might even have had kids?

  I had been a bit mercenary in getting what I wanted, blaming the fat man for the drink spillage and treading on Kelly’s toes. But I didn’t feel guilty about either. The fat man, he had been rude and arrogant, waving his money at the bar staff. He had also offended me with his terrible taste in aftershave and his B.O.

  As for Kelly, well, she had never been much more than a fair-weather friend and I saw her now for what she was. The knowledge that she was going to drop me faster than a ton of bricks within a couple of years when I was no longer of any interest to her was more than enough justification for my behaviour. I had almost got a kick out of messing up her hair and clothes, even though I had vowed not to use my time-travelling powers for any more revenge tactics.

  Just this once, it had been worth it.

  Now it was time to move on. I was heading back towards the noughties and some of the most difficult days of my life lay ahead.

  Chapter Thirteen

>   2010

  If I had been apprehensive about the previous New Year, I was positively dreading this one.

  2011 had been a dark year. Something happened that I was powerless to prevent at the time, and I would still be unable to do anything about at this particular point in time. Further back in time perhaps I might have a chance, but on this date it was already far too late.

  It was the year that my mother had died, just a few days short of the milestone that would have been her fiftieth birthday. She hadn’t been killed in a car crash or any other external influence. If she had, then I would have the ability to warn her. But what was going to kill her was already irreversible by now.

  It wasn’t a hereditary illness or contagion that was to take her, but a misadventure of her own making. Quite simply, and very sadly, she had drunk herself to death. Diagnosed with the advanced stages of liver cancer in January, she was dead less than three months later.

  I was dreading this trip because, unlike many of my birthdays, I remembered in great clarity what had happened that year. I knew what was coming, and I had scant hope that I was going to be able to do anything about it, but I had to at least try.

  Why did my mother drink so much in her later years? She hadn’t always been an alcoholic. Like most young people of her generation she had partied hard in her youth, drinking and smoking with her friends. She had gone to an all-girls’ school in Oxford and had often told me tales of what she and her friends had got up to. They used to go out at lunchtime for a sneaky snakebite at a pub close to the school that turned a blind eye to underage drinking.

  This was back in the 1970s when things were a lot more lax in that area. Such behaviour was almost seen as a rite of passage, as was buying single Silk Cut cigarettes from the man in the sweetshop at 5p a time.

  Then, in the early 1980s, she had met my dad who had come down from Liverpool in search of work due to the chronic unemployment on Merseyside at that time. One thing led to another and before too long she was pregnant with Rachel.

  My sister was born in the summer of 1983, by which time our parents had tied the knot, which society still expected in such circumstances at that time. Dad was a plumber by trade, and when offered a job back in Liverpool by a former colleague who had set up his own firm, he jumped at the chance. By the time I was born at the dawning of 1986 the family was firmly settled back up there.

  Life was good – for a while, and during my formative years I had no reason to suspect my mother might have a problem with alcohol. She was certainly no different to anyone else of her generation, enjoying a glass of wine in the evening and having a few in the clubhouse when we used to go on caravan holidays in Prestatyn. I never questioned any of this at the time – it just seemed like normal behaviour. The real problems didn’t begin until much later.

  As I moved towards the end of the first decade of my life I started to sense that all was not well at home. Mum and Dad had argued like most couples do but towards my tenth birthday the rows became more and more bitter. It wasn’t the case that they just weren’t getting on; they had reached a point where they actively seemed to despise each other.

  Then one day in the summer holidays, without warning or any proper explanation, my mother packed up a suitcase each for me and Rachel, got us a taxi to Lime Street station, and shipped us off down to Oxford. She said we were going to visit grandparents which we often did. But this time we never came back.

  After a couple of years, when the inevitable divorce had been settled, we were allowed to go back up to Liverpool to stay with Dad a few times a year. The full truth about why my parents had split did not come out until many years later. When it did, it was an entirely predictable story.

  My father had been having an affair with his mate’s wife – the one who had given him the job in his plumbing firm. My mother had caught them both in their bed while Rachel and I had both been at school. He lost more than his marriage that afternoon. When his mate found out, he got sacked as well.

  The story of him getting caught in the act came back to haunt me years later. When I caught Rob and Emma at it, I knew how my mother must have felt.

  The three of us stayed in my grandparents’ home for a while until we managed to get the council house on the Iffley Road. From there, my mother began to rebuild her life. She seemed happy enough to begin with, establishing a new social life once Rachel and I were old enough to be left alone in the late-1990s.

  Mum had a few boyfriends back then, but never anything serious. I remember her saying marriage had been a mistake and that she was happy it just being all us girls together. She was adamant that she had no intention of settling down again.

  She got a clerical job at the university which she seemed to enjoy and often went out drinking with her colleagues in Oxford after work. Even then the drinking didn’t seem like any big deal, particularly since I was out doing it myself by this time and on a much larger scale.

  Then Rachel died and everything changed. Mum hit the bottle really hard. Desperate for help, I called Dad who came down to try and help, the three of us reunited in grief. He seemed genuinely remorseful for his past behaviour and the two of them seemed to be getting on much better than they ever had when we had all lived together in Liverpool.

  I even harboured hopes that they might get back together but then came a second, devastating blow that was to put the final nail in the coffin.

  Just six months after Rachel’s death, Dad dropped down dead of a heart attack, just as he and Mum were on the brink of reconciliation. The two of them had gone to see the recently released War of the Worlds movie at the cinema, but in the foyer he began complaining of chest pains. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was dead.

  Grief-stricken, I threw all of my energy into my career, working as many hours as I could. I also went through a promiscuous phase, sleeping with random men in desperate attempts to bring temporary respite from my pain.

  For my mother it was far worse. Whilst I still had youth and energy on my side, she was worn out by it all. Her way of dealing with it was through drink.

  I went away a lot, working with the Red Cross abroad, and seeing the world. Every time I came back, Mum had got worse. She lost her job and her friends, and began drinking pretty much all day. I tried to help her and discourage her drinking but she became bitter and defensive, lashing out at me as if it was somehow my fault. It was as if I was to blame, just by being the only one of the three of us left alive.

  I realise now she was doing it because I was the only one left she could rant at. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone away so much and stayed to try and help her, but it was so difficult when she made me feel so unwelcome.

  This state of affairs continued for over five years, leading us to where we were today. During that period, she got worse and worse. Several years of serious alcohol abuse on top of a lifetime of drinking took their toll to the extent that, by this New Year, she was in a bad way.

  I could see this as soon as I stumbled downstairs, on this dark and dismal winter’s morning. I had woken up back in my teenage room again, unchanged since the last time I had seen it, but downstairs I was confronted by a completely different scene.

  Last time I had seen the kitchen, in the year after my mother’s death, it had been reasonably tidy. Now it was anything but. The sink was full of undone washing up; there were empty takeaway trays lying around, an overflowing ashtray on the kitchen table, and empty bottles everywhere.

  It looked like the sort of scene you might expect to find in a kitchen the morning after a party, but it had been a long time since there had been anything to celebrate in this house. This mess was entirely of my mother’s making.

  There were two empty red wine bottles and a three-quarters finished bottle of Bacardi Spiced Rum on the table. It was perfectly possible she had drunk all of that just the previous day. That’s how bad things had got. Of my mother, there was no sign. She must be sleeping it off either in bed or on the sofa, where she frequently crashed out.


  What was I going to do? What could I do? Hide all the booze? Tip it down the sink? That wouldn’t stop her and would just get me screamed at. It was way too late now, anyway.

  Perhaps I could try and talk to her. I remember I had tried in the past without much success, but now I had advance knowledge of exactly was going to happen, maybe I could get through to her.

  It was only just getting light outside, and just after 8am according the kitchen clock. Sweeping away some of the detritus littering the kitchen surfaces, I located the coffee machine and prepared to put together my morning fix. All that caffeine probably wasn’t doing me much good, but it was a lot less harmful than what was flowing through my mother’s veins.

  Once the coffee pot was bubbling away, I got to grips with the business of clearing up the mess my mother had left the kitchen in. I had tackled the dishes and the takeaway boxes when I heard the telltale creak of her footsteps on the stairs. It was early, but then she had probably gone to bed early after she had drunk herself into a stupor, as she did most days.

  I remembered my mother looking bad in her final days, but time had taken the edge off my memories of how bad a state she was really in.

  She hobbled into the room in a baggy old T-shirt and jeans which were both way too big for her. This wasn’t surprising and she had been losing weight continually during that last year, possibly a symptom of the illness inside her.

  The clothes looked dishevelled, and I strongly suspected she had not only been wearing them for several days, but had also slept in them. Also, even though I was several feet away from her as she entered the room I caught the unmistakeable whiff of alcohol.

  The skin on her arms and face was dry, almost parchment-like, and there was a yellowish look around her eyes. This was not my mother – not the mother I had grown up with. This was a hollow husk of what she had once been.