Second Chances Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  The cat looked disgusted, too, and he slunk out of the room.

  Thanks, Tommy, at least someone around here’s got some loyalty.

  Holding the tablet steady, I pressed the button which was to start broadcasting the live action.

  Oh yes, this wasn’t just some video I was going to humiliate or blackmail him with later. This was making full use of social media to broadcast the video of his infidelity live to the watching world.

  If I had set this up correctly, Rob’s friends and family should be getting a notification about now along the lines of “Rob West is live now”. They would then be able to see the action unfold right in front of them. Hopefully it wasn’t too late and they had all gone to bed. On a normal night they most probably would have, but fortunately this was New Year.

  My plan wasn’t foolproof. A number of things could have gone wrong. Rob might have spotted the gap in the wardrobe door and closed it. His tablet might not have been logged into Facebook, ready for this ultimate frape. The two of them might not have left the light on, turning my video into an audio-only broadcast. Better than nothing, but not as easily identifiable as him, even if it was coming from his account.

  Thankfully, none of those things happened. He was about to broadcast to the world what an absolute shit he really was.

  The two of them were locked in a passionate kiss, hands ripping at each other’s clothes. Then Emma pulled away briefly, and with a lustful look in her eyes said, “Are you sure Amy’s not going to be back tonight?”

  “No chance,” he replied. “The stupid cow won’t be back for hours.”

  Oh you’ve done it now, I thought.

  Far from hurting me, being long past caring, his words filled me with glee. He had painted an even worse picture of himself than I could have hoped for. The reaction he was going to get for that ought to be enough alone to condemn him.

  If I was lucky this whole thing might go viral and the whole world would end up despising him, never mind his friends and family.

  The two of them practically fell onto the bed, and I carried on filming as the clothes came off. Within five minutes, she had her back to me, long, red, curly locks bouncing around down her back as she rode him.

  It felt rather odd watching other people having sex in this way. I had never seen myself as voyeuristic or had any interest in taking part in dogging or any other such dubious activities, but I was getting a great deal of pleasure out of this. It wasn’t sexual pleasure, but the satisfaction that I was getting from carrying out a successful act of revenge.

  Did that make me a bad person? Whatever, I didn’t care.

  Holding the tablet as steady as I could in my hand, I could see the comments starting to come in below the video which simply enhanced my pleasure even more.

  WTF Rob – how could you do that to Amy?

  That was one of the more polite ones, from a mutual female friend.

  You wanker, I’m going to chop your bollocks off and shove them down your throat.

  That was a less restrained offering from his mate Gary, a dead fit and rock-hard rugby player, who I knew had always had a soft spot for me. I certainly wouldn’t mind him offering me a shoulder to cry on.

  But topping the lost and my undisputed favourite came from his dad and simply read:

  You’ve brought shame upon this family, boy.

  There were many, many more. It turned out my timing had been spot on, as there were many people on social media wishing each other Happy New Year. I doubt any of them had expected to see anything like this.

  The video was bound to get reported and taken down shortly, but no matter – the damage was done. And now it was about time to put the icing on the cake. I couldn’t see Rob, but judging by the noise he was making, he wasn’t far off from deploying his troops. It was time to make my presence known.

  I shoved the wardrobe door aside as hard as I could so it made a loud bang as it hit the side, triumphantly stepped into the room, and uttered as loudly as I could, “Surprise!”

  It certainly was for them. Emma leapt off him, job not quite finished with a cry of “What the fuck?!”

  With her out of the way, I had a clear view of his face which had a look of pure horror on it.

  “Busted!” I declared, triumphantly, still pointing the tablet right at him. As I did so, I heard his phone beeping in the pocket of his jeans which he had discarded by the side of the bed a few minutes previously.

  “Oh, you might want to get that,” I added. “I think your dad might be trying to get hold of you.”

  I was absolutely relishing all of this as I watched him squirm, still holding the tablet in front of me.

  “Are you…are you filming this?” he stammered as the full horror of the situation began to sink in.

  “Yep, you’re live on TV right now,” I said, grinning. “Jools is going to have to come up with something pretty special for his Hootenanny next year to top this!”

  Emma was hurriedly putting her clothes on, panicking as she tried to put a sock on and losing her footing, causing her to fall back onto the bed. I turned the camera back towards her and she made a lame attempt to cover her face.

  “Don’t point that at me,” she hissed. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? – he said you were at work.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said in a blatantly insincere tone. “I just live here. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re still watching this is Emma Richards, of Jeune Street in Oxford. Now remind us, Emma, what is it you do again? Ah yes, that’s right: you’re a primary school teacher, aren’t you? Well, what an example to be setting to the younger generation this is, I must say.”

  “Turn that fucking thing off!” she screamed and tried to grab the tablet from me, but I neatly sidestepped her.

  “Tut-tut, I really hope you don’t use language like that in the classroom. It’s hardly Topsy and Tim, is it?”

  I was absolutely loving this.

  She lashed out again, this time successfully knocking the tablet out of my hands and sending it flying across the room. It hit the wall and landed face-down. It had probably smashed the screen, but that didn’t matter now. The damage had been well and truly done.

  “Ah, that wasn’t very sporting, Emma, was it?” I teased. “Rob’s friends were enjoying that. Never mind, you can watch it back on the internet later, assuming it hasn’t been deleted. You never know, someone might load it up onto SpankWire. You’ll be famous.”

  “You complete bitch!” she screamed. She had totally lost it.

  “Yes, I rather think I am,” I added. “Now I think you had better get dressed and skedaddle. You can’t go outside in just your underwear and one sock, can you? It’s mighty chilly out there tonight, I should imagine. It usually is at this time of year – and I should know.”

  “Amy…I’m sorry,” said Rob from the bed, looking all pathetic and mournful. Well, if he thought that was going to work he was sorely mistaken. It hadn’t worked the first time around when I still cared, so it certainly wouldn’t now.

  “And you can take this sorry specimen with you,” I added. “You’re welcome to him.”

  He was too weak and shocked to argue, and within five minutes I was ushering the pair of them out of the door. Mission accomplished.

  Now that it was all over, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of champagne from the half-drunk bottle left over from their earlier celebrations. It had gone a little flat by now, but certainly not as flat as their evening.

  Champagne in hand, I went through to the living room, and put a couple of logs on the fire. It was a feature many of the houses in this area still had and I loved it.

  As I sat sipping on their champagne, I reflected on a job well done. All things considered, it had been a fine evening’s work. Once I had finished, I started on an unopened bottle of Bacardi left over from Christmas and sat watching the flames flickering in front of me until tiredness claimed me.

  When I awoke, I was still on the sofa. Daylight was pou
ring into the room now and the fire was down to a few embers. I flicked the TV on, which was showing some kids’ panto. I had a raging hangover.

  I had celebrated rather too well and the streaming cold I still had was making things worse. Perhaps if I was planning to drink this much again I should do it on the second night of each of my trips so I could escape the hangover when I jumped back in time. Never mind, it had definitely been worth it. Now it was time to see what additional fallout there had been from the previous night’s work.

  I checked my phone to find that the offending video had been deleted. That was no surprise. I don’t know if he had deleted it himself or it had been censored, but it didn’t matter. The damage had been done.

  I also noticed that quite a few people had posted on my wall. Many of these were simple birthday wishes from people who hadn’t seen the video, but judging by the numbers asking if I was OK, many had. I also had a stack of private messages expressing varying degrees of sympathy towards me and anger towards Rob.

  I replied to each one, playing the hapless victim to the hilt. So what if I had engineered the situation to cause him the maximum damage? He was still the one who had committed the crime.

  One message in particular stood out. It was from Gary, his rugby-playing friend.

  He’s a tosser, and you’ll be better off without him. I’m gonna kill him when I get hold of him, don’t you worry. I’m really sorry you’ve had to go through this, Amy. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.

  Oh, there was plenty Gary could do for me – or should I say to me. He was hot and I knew full well he fancied the arse off me. It had only been a matter of chance that I hadn’t ended up with him in the first place. Had things happened differently the night we first met, I may well have ended up with him, rather than Rob.

  Nothing had ever happened between the two of us because, unlike Rob, I was the faithful type and Gary wasn’t the type to mess about with a mate’s girlfriend. Maybe I could find some way to change that. Why not? I had already decided I was going to live life to the full and here was a prime example of a missed opportunity I could have a second crack at.

  I thought back to the night when I had first met Rob and Gary. Back then, when I was still in my mid-twenties, my main drinking buddy and partner in crime had been Kelly, a girl I had been at school with.

  We were out on the town every Friday and Saturday night without fail, revelling in our youth. Back then it seemed that those carefree times would never end, but eventually life moved on and we went our separate ways. Nothing lasts forever.

  It had actually been on my birthday, back in 2012, when Kelly and I had met Rob and Gary for the first time. We had been in a pub down George Street when they had started chatting us up at the bar. We accepted their offer of a drink and an invitation to sit with them followed.

  Those first few minutes were crucial in deciding the outcome of not only the evening, but also the next nine years. There’s an unwritten rule in the dating game that when two men and two women meet on a night out, it is decided very quickly who is going to go with whom. Whether that happens verbally or through body language, once the lines of battle have been established you don’t cross them.

  Both Kelly and I were drawn to Gary initially, but she was more forceful in the short walk to the table, getting there ahead of me and plonking herself down next to him. It was a small, circular, bench-style sofa that surrounded a small table in a booth with room for just four.

  Kelly had engineered things successfully by sitting in such a way that left me with no option but to go round to the other end of the sofa and squeeze in next to Rob. Thus, we were seated clockwise in a semicircle with Kelly on one end, then Gary, then Rob, then me.

  The boundaries were well and truly laid down and now had to be adhered to. Kelly had well and truly staked her claim to Gary, so I was left with Rob. Something as simple as who sat where at a table in a pub was enough to change my destiny. If we stop and look back we can probably all see that our lives have been full of these seemingly inauspicious forks in the road that have life-changing consequences.

  She shagged Gary that very night, and had a brief and passionate fling with him that soon fizzled out. By the time it did, I was going out with Rob.

  I hadn’t really thought about it much since then, but Gary’s message had left me thinking about what might have been. Now maybe it could be. With that first meeting taking place at New Year, it seemed I was going to be given a second shot at it.

  Things changed between Kelly and me soon after that when she met Mr Right. She quickly settled down, and within two years had got married. I was head bridesmaid but after that our friendship declined. Our nights out dwindled until she got pregnant, which spelled the beginning of the end of our friendship.

  We still liked each other’s stuff on Facebook, and wished each other Happy Birthday for a while, but even that dwindled after a while. We were in two different camps now – the parents and the non-parents. Judging by the constant stream of pictures on her with other mothers and babies on her timeline, she only had time for those in the former camp now.

  Then a few years later I noticed she had unfriended me. It took me ages to work out why, but in the end, I figured it must have been because of a comment I wrote on a local Facebook group.

  Someone had been complaining about some local primary school kids who had been plastering rude graffiti all over the local bus stops. When some do-gooder suggested it might not be their fault because they might have ADHD, I had written underneath:

  ADHD? Isn’t that just a posh modern term for what our parents used to call being a little shit?

  In hindsight it wasn’t the most sensible thing to write, not with all the snowflakes around who get so easily offended these days. It was meant as a joke and, although I got a lot of Likes, some people didn’t see the funny side. I got slated in a lot of the comments underneath.

  It was around this time that Kelly unfriended me. I didn’t make the connection at first but later I remembered. She had a lot of problems with her eldest son who had ADHD.

  I missed her and the times we had shared. Soon I would get to live some of them again, including that fateful night with Gary and Rob. I didn’t feel a huge amount of loyalty towards her, bearing in mind how she had dropped me after getting married. Her thing with Gary hadn’t gone anywhere in the long term anyway, so I would make sure she wouldn’t muscle her way to the table in front of me this time.

  As for Gary, well he fell squarely into the category of unfinished business. Already I was making plans for him – and they did not just involve the night of that first meeting.

  I had derived a huge amount of pleasure out of humiliating Rob in the way I had, but why stop there? I was on a roll and wanted to play up my winnings.

  The phrase, ‘get your retaliation in first’, popped into my head. I already had done it to great effect with the video, but there was no reason why I couldn’t go in for a second helping.

  I made my way downstairs, desperate for some coffee to relieve my parched tongue and throat. Already the seeds of a new devious plan were beginning to form in my mind. Inwardly, I was chuckling uncontrollably, like some evil madman in an old B movie as I once again plotted and schemed.

  Those B-movie villains and I had one thing in common and that was power. I could use mine for good or I could use it for evil. What I was doing was possibly a bit of both, but whichever it was, I could see how easily one could be consumed by the desire for revenge, especially if one had the means to do it.

  Those baddies in those old films often had some sort of super power and I certainly had mine. Using it for making mischief was becoming quite addictive.

  I needed to tell myself that I wasn’t a baddie. I wasn’t planning to take over the world or unleash a global apocalypse. I was just stitching up an unfaithful boyfriend and if this was a movie, I am pretty sure that women the world over would be cheering me on.

  I could get Gary to come round right no
w but perhaps it was worth waiting. If I played this right I could cause even more pain and humiliation for Rob than I already had. Plus, with the hangover and the cold I wasn’t feeling particularly sexy. I would wait until my next jump back. That would give me ample time to plot my next diabolical plan.

  As far as the rest of the day went, I was at somewhat of a loose end. I felt lousy and really just wanted to go back to bed, but I didn’t have the luxury of days to squander in that way. I’d never been much of a subscriber to the “seize the day” mentality, but in my current situation that was exactly what I needed to do.

  My mind was made up. I definitely wasn’t sitting around the house all day. Besides, Rob might try and get back in and I really couldn’t be dealing with that. I’d had my fun and had no desire to get bogged down in a post-mortem.

  Credit card in hand, I got back on the phone and found myself the swankiest hotel I could in London. This turned out to be remarkably easy and much cheaper than I expected. I guess they didn’t have a huge number of bookings on New Year’s Day. The previous night would have been a different matter, but many of those who had stayed over for the fireworks would be going home today.

  I dosed myself up with Lemsip, booked a taxi to take me to the station, and within an hour of arriving at Oxford station found myself in Central London.

  I went for a walk around Harrods looking at all the things I could buy if I so desired, but there seemed little point as I couldn’t take any of it back through time with me. In the end I just settled on a very expensive silk negligee which no one else would ever see but I could wear tonight to make me feel good.

  Then I took myself off to my £800-a-night hotel where I got a pleasant surprise when the man on the desk offered me a free upgrade to the penthouse suite. I gave them my credit card details and told them to charge everything to that. Then I got on with the business of spoiling myself rotten – massages, spa, room service, the lot.