by Jason Ayres
Ignoring the now fading pain, Kent replied to the angel’s original question. “It was amazing. I really felt like I was back there, living it all over again.”
“You really were back there,” replied the angel. “I told you, I can take you to any day in your life that you want to go to. So how do you feel about things now?”
How did he feel? He thought for a moment before replying. “If I’m being perfectly honest, just as bad as I did before. I loved being there at the time but it’s all finished now. All this has really achieved is to remind me how perfect life used to be and then rubbed it in by bringing me back to the depressing reality of middle age.”
“You’re hardly middle-aged yet, are you?” replied the angel. “Age is all a state of mind. And people are staying young longer than ever these days. Forty is the new thirty, haven’t you heard?”
“I have heard that, yes, but I certainly don’t feel like I’m in my thirties,” replied Kent. “If I’m being perfectly honest I feel nearer fifty than thirty. Which, mathematically, I am.”
“Seems like we’ve still got a bit of work to do, then,” replied the angel. “Tell me, how did you feel physically when you were back in 1984? Pretty good, I would imagine.”
“Young, happy and full of energy, like I could run forever and never get out of breath. It was wonderful. Can’t I go back permanently?” he asked hopefully. “I can do things differently this time, live a healthier life and make better choices.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” replied the angel. “I can’t let people go living their lives all over again. If everyone did that we’d all be living in our own pasts and where would that leave the future?”
“Everyone?” asked Kent. “Do you make a habit of doing this sort of thing?”
“Not for everyone, no,” replied the angel. “Only for a very select few, mainly people who interest me.”
“And what makes me so special?” asked Kent. “I don’t feel particularly special and no one else seems remotely interested in anything I’ve got to say or do these days. Are you here to save me because I’m destined for great things in the future? Am I going to win the Nobel Peace Prize or be pivotal in some crucial world-changing event?”
“Nothing so grandiose, I’m afraid,” replied the angel, disappointingly. “I just happened to be in the area looking around, had a bit of spare time on my hands, saw you down on your luck and thought you looked like a guy who deserved a break.”
“Well, that’s true enough,” said Kent. “Things have gone a bit pear-shaped recently. Before you turned up I was thinking of jumping off this roof.”
“There you go, then,” retorted the angel. “Lucky I came along when I did. Now come on, cheer up a bit. You’ve had a brilliant day out revisiting your childhood, and you’ve got more opportunities to explore your own life to come. What’s there to be miserable about?”
Kent wasn’t really sure how he felt about all of this. Yes, he was grateful for the angel’s intervention and it had certainly made life interesting again, but he didn’t really know where all of this was headed. The angel had offered him six trips, but he hadn’t got a clue where he wanted to go next.
“Don’t worry about that,” said the angel, unexpectedly.
“I didn’t say anything,” replied Kent.
“You didn’t need to. I can read your thoughts, remember?”
Yes, he clearly could. Kent was going to have to remember that. And if this angel, or whatever it was, could read thoughts and send people back through time, what else could he do?
“Who exactly are you?” asked Kent.
“Oh, that would be telling,” replied the angel. “I’ve been known by many names, but you don’t need to concern yourself with that. Don’t worry, I’m not the devil, you haven’t got to give me your soul or anything.”
“That’s a relief,” remarked Kent. The thought had fleetingly crossed his mind. When weird stuff like this happened in films, it often turned out to be the devil. Clearly the angel had picked up on that thought as well. He decided to forget about that and concentrate on the task in hand, but he still wasn’t sure where he should go. Perhaps he needed a nudge in the right direction again.
“So, where next, then?” he asked.
“All in good time,” replied the angel. “It’s been a long day, and you don’t want to do too much at once.”
“So when do I take the next one?” Kent was eager to get on, but then he could use some time to think about all of this.
“Come back here tomorrow, same time, and I’ll be waiting. We’ll do it one day at a time. That will give you a chance to reflect on each trip before you take the next one. Now think carefully about where and when you want to go tomorrow and I will see you then.”
The angel clicked his fingers again and vanished, leaving Kent alone on the rooftop. Disappointingly there was no puff of smoke or any other sort of special effect. Clearly these were just cinematic techniques used to make genies and other such apparitions seem more dramatic in films.
If this one was a genie, he was much better value than your average movie genie. They normally gave out three wishes and he’d been given double that. Genie, angel or whatever, it didn’t really matter. He had been given an incredible opportunity and he must make sure he did not waste it.
He looked around him. Apart from a few scattered cars, the place was deserted. He hadn’t seen another real person the whole time he had been up there. Most of the shoppers parked on the lower floors where it was sheltered, especially at this time of year.
So, what now? he mused. Did he go home and face the music with Debs, or head off to the pub for a few hours to soften the blow of being sacked? Should he tell anyone about the experience he had just had or not? He decided not. Things were bad enough right now with him losing his job without people thinking he was going insane as well. That wouldn’t do his future employment prospects any good and they were looking bleak enough as it was.
He walked back across the roof towards the lifts that led down to the street below. By the time he reached the ground floor he had decided what he was going to do, at least for the rest of this evening. He had had more than enough excitement for one day so he was going to give the pub a miss and go home to his wife. He would have to tell her sooner or later that he had lost his job and he might as well get it over with. If he went to the pub and got tanked up first she’d only be angrier when he got back.
Kent lived in a spacious Victorian red-brick house. It was part of a terrace that led off the same road into town that he’d walked down earlier as a seven-year-old, just a few hundred yards away from his childhood home.
He hadn’t always lived in the town. He had spent the formative years of his career with the Metropolitan Police in London, but had returned home after some unpleasantness with a female colleague. He had bought the house when he married Debs, enabling him to be close to his mother in the later stages of her Alzheimer’s when it was quite obvious that Annie wasn’t going to lend a hand.
It only took him a few minutes to walk back to the house which was just as well since he no longer had a car. When he had unceremoniously been given the boot earlier in the day, they had taken that off him as well.
His wife was very proud of their home. The mature front gardens were adorned with rose bushes and shrubs, neatly framing each side of the bay windows. Even in November, the rose bushes were still flowering. It was fully dark by the time he got home, but the garden was brightly illuminated by the yellow glare of the street lamp directly opposite.
The house was also lit up from the inside, a bright glow coming through the bay window of the front room where Debs had not yet closed the curtains. Kent knew that she would have been home from her job for about an hour. She worked in the café at Josie’s bakery in the town, which closed at 4pm each day. Sometimes she brought back leftover doughnuts and cakes, but he rarely got his hands on them. The kids usually devoured the lot before he got home from work.
; By now she would be in the kitchen preparing the dinner. Whatever other problems they may have had, he couldn’t deny she was a fantastic cook. Unfortunately he had frequently disappointed her by failing to turn up for the meals she had devotedly prepared. He usually blamed this on the demands of his police work, but the reality was somewhat different.
The truth was, it was very rare for him to have to work late and there were only so many times he could get away with falling back on this excuse. The first couple of times he had said something like, “I’m sorry, love, but we brought in a murder suspect late this afternoon. I couldn’t just clock off, could I?”
Unfortunately his town was a crime backwater and murder suspects were practically non-existent. The third time he tried this excuse within a year, she didn’t believe him. He had of course been where he always was when he failed to show up for dinner. His absence was because he had popped into The Red Lion for a ‘quick one’ after work and lost track of time.
Things had come to a head a few months ago when he had committed the cardinal sin of forgetting his wedding anniversary. It had been a hot August day and after a boring day stuck in the police station he had been craving a few nice, cold beers in the pub.
At around 7pm Debs had turned up unexpectedly at the pub carrying a tray holding a plate wrapped in aluminium foil, complete with cutlery and salt and pepper pots. She had slammed it down on the bar in front of him where he was sitting with the regulars and said, “There. If you’re going to live in the pub, you might as well have your meals in the pub.” Then she had stormed out, to howls of laughter from the other drinkers.
Since then Kent had been trying to make more of an effort but it was hard to change his ways after so many years of marriage. How could he be romantic and show her gestures of love after all this time? It felt forced and unnatural.
Was this just a normal state of affairs for a couple married so long? He was quite happy to maintain the status quo and he was pretty sure she was, too. They might not be love’s young dream anymore, but they could just about put up with each other and seemingly that was enough for them both. At least that had been the case when he had a job, which kept them out of each other’s way most of the time. What was it going to be like now? She only worked part-time three days a week. He couldn’t be cooped up in the house with her all day. They would drive each other mad.
He turned the key in the lock and entered the long, narrow hallway that led down to the kitchen at the back of the house. Like all the houses in the terrace it was long rather than square, with the rooms stacked one behind the other. He took off his jacket, hung it on the end of the painted, white, wooden bannister to his left and headed for the kitchen, passing the doors to the front room and living room to his right. At the end of the corridor he took a deep breath and opened the kitchen door, steeling himself for what he expected to be a very difficult conversation.
There she was at the kitchen sink in front of the back window, cutting up potatoes into chunky chips. There were a couple of pieces of steak on a white chopping board on the side and some mushrooms and onions already sliced. This was an unexpected treat for a Monday.
She turned to him and he wearily prepared himself for the almost inevitable verbal onslaught he got most days, but unusually she seemed calm and almost friendly.
“Sit yourself down,” she said. “And pour yourself a beer.”
His eyes travelled across to the rectangular wooden table on the left-hand side of the room. There were just two places set which meant the boys weren’t around. His favourite beer glass was already on the table with his favourite brand of bottled beer waiting beside it. There was even a red, lit candle in the middle of the table.
This was highly irregular. Was it his birthday? No, of course it wasn’t. Some other special day he had forgotten about? But if it was, she wouldn’t be doing all this surely, and she certainly wouldn’t be in such an apparently happy mood. She would be angry with him for forgetting. Unless he had done something horrendously wrong and this was all some elaborate plan to soften him up before hitting him with it.
Whatever the reason, he really didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere by telling her about losing his job. Thankfully the next thing she said saved him the trouble.
“Before you start beating yourself up about how to break the news to me about your redundancy, I’ll save you the bother. I already know.”
So that was it. He’d expected her to react negatively to the news but her current demeanour suggested otherwise.
“And you’re not angry?” he asked, tentatively.
“Quite frankly, I’m delighted,” came the unexpected response. “Let’s face it: you’ve been miserable in that job for years. They’ve treated you badly, your health’s suffered, and that’s just for starters.”
“All true,” agreed Kent. “But how am I going to earn a living now? Aren’t you worried about how we’re going to pay the bills?”
“Is that all you think I care about?” she asked. “We’re not exactly in poverty. The mortgage is mostly paid off on this place, I’ve got my job at Josie’s, and I imagine you got a decent pay-off, didn’t you?”
“I did. That was the one saving grace of all of this. But how did you know?” he asked.
“Hannah told me. She came into the café at lunchtime. She didn’t think you’d mind.”
Kent did mind quite a lot. Hannah had been his second in command at the station for the past few years. How long had she known? Was she after his job? He had never been quite sure how to take her. Sometimes he thought she liked him, but she and her colleague, Adrian, spent an awful lot of time taking the piss out of him.
The fact that she had told Debs was not in itself that bad, but the fact that she had known at lunchtime and he hadn’t been given the bullet until mid-afternoon did annoy him. No wonder she’d dodged the question earlier that day when he’d asked her where she thought they ought to have the Christmas party this year. She knew he wasn’t going to be around for it.
“It’s not like any of this can have come as a surprise, can it?” asked Debs. “After what happened at that conference in Hampshire a couple of months ago. You were really unhappy when you came back from that.”
“Don’t remind me,” replied Kent. He hated what was happening in the force. There had been a major shake-up in the organisation. The government had decided that what was needed was stronger management, a more businesslike approach, and less actual policemen performing traditional police work.
It was reminiscent of what had happened in the NHS a few years earlier and various other government departments as well. Kent couldn’t see how these changes were going to lead to the arrest of more criminals and had made his feelings crystal-clear on the subject to his superiors. They had thanked him for his input and this was what it had led to – being booted out on his backside after over twenty years of loyal service.
Kent felt his hackles rising as he thought back to what had gone on at that conference. A new police commissioner had been recently elected, a former marketing guru who had promised to bring his business skills to the task of reforming the police. He was only about thirty-five, way too young in Kent’s opinion, and had no experience whatsoever of actual policing. He had summoned Kent and all the other detective inspectors from the region to a two-day conference and team-building event at a training centre somewhere in the New Forest.
Kent had taken an instant dislike to the man. He didn’t like the idea of elected commissioners and this individual was a prime example of why. He couldn’t believe that the public had elected this jumped-up little twat in his stripy shirt, ridiculous leather red tie and matching red-framed glasses. He was like some outdated, clichéd advertising executive from the 1990s. Even the man’s name was ridiculous: Gideon Summerfield.
The entire experience had been one of total humiliation. The final straw had been when Summerfield had made all the delegates carry around some rubber bendy dinosaurs all day, supposedly symbolic of their archaic polic
ing style.
Kent had dealt with some pretty difficult people in his career, on both sides of the law, but no one had ever pissed him off as much as Gideon bloody Summerfield. He couldn’t decide whom he despised most, Summerfield or his brother-in-law, Ian. It was a close-run thing. Thank goodness the two of them had never met; the idea of them ganging up on him didn’t bear thinking about.
“Look at it this way,” said Debs. “You’re still a relatively young man. This is an opportunity to start again and do something completely new.”
He didn’t feel like a young man, especially having just returned from his little sortie back into his past. “Like what?” he asked.
“Give it time,” she said. “We’ll think of something. I’ll help you. Maybe we could even do something together, like open a restaurant. You know I’ve always wanted to do that.”
This was quite the nicest Debs had been to him for months, if not years. Perhaps he had done the old girl a disservice, neglecting her like he had in favour of the pub. She wasn’t so bad underneath it all. Then again, she could just be being nice because she wanted to get her hands on his redundancy money.
He dismissed this unworthy thought. She may have nagged him over the years but she wasn’t a money-grabber. He thought about what she had said and decided she was right, this was an opportunity and it was not the only one that had come his way today. The police had given him a very decent pay-off, so keen were they for him to go quietly. He hadn’t even had to work his notice, so officially he was still employed for another three months. As for the exact amount he was going to get, it would be substantial. A month’s wages for every year of service would amount to something like two years’ salary – tax-free. They weren’t about to go hungry anytime soon.
And what Debs didn’t know was that he also had his friendly angel along to help out. A nice pay-off from the police was all well and good but a little tinkering about in the past could net him a good deal more than that if he planned it well. He would have to think very carefully about where to go next. But for now, he was going to enjoy his beer and his steak and chips.
