The '86 Fix: A 1980s Time Travel Novel

by Keith A Pearson

  “I have dozens of meetings every week, and to accurately recall the key discussion points, I record every meeting as a matter of course. Unfortunately for you, Pelling, I’ve also recorded your crude blackmail attempt, and your admission you punched me.”

  “Wait, what? I never said I punched you. You know it was Dave,” I protest.

  Marcus swipes his finger back across the screen and plays the part of our conversation where I acknowledged a punch being thrown. I never mentioned that it was actually Dave who punched him.

  “Notwithstanding the crude blackmail attempt, which in itself is a criminal act, your failure to mention the Neanderthal’s name would suggest that you and I argued, and you punched me. Purely in self-defence, I had no option but to restrain you. The bruising to your neck occurred during that restraint. It’s all here, Pelling, plain as day. But if you’d rather implicate your friend, and make this a legal issue, be my guest.”

  Checkmate. Even if forging my exam results wasn't a sackable offence, I had gifted Marcus a bullet-proof failsafe. I can't believe I've been so stupid. What the fuck was I thinking?

  Noting my horrified expression, Marcus leans forward and withdraws a pen from his jacket pocket. He carefully places it on top of the resignation letter and sits back in his chair.

  “I’ll give you thirty seconds to sign the letter. If you don’t sign it, I'll head straight to the nearest police station. I’m sure they’d be very interested to hear my recording. If you think it'll be tough getting a job now, just think how much harder it will be with a criminal record for attempted blackmail.”

  My mind furiously explores every avenue of escape from my current plight. None of them lead anywhere good. If I sign the letter, I kiss goodbye to my redundancy pay, but if I don’t, Marcus now has enough ammunition to seriously undermine my future career prospects, and maybe even my liberty.

  “Twenty seconds, Pelling. Sign it.”

  I pick up the pen which is probably worth more than my car. One signature and it’s all over. Twenty-six years of service, and I walk away with nothing.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I don’t make great decisions even when I've time to think them through. This is too big a decision to make on the spur of the moment.

  “Five, four, three...”

  I sign the letter.

  Marcus snatches the signed letter, folds it up, and slips it back in his jacket pocket. A sickly feeling rises in my stomach as the finality of my action sinks in.

  “Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll give you five minutes to get your belongings together. I'll then escort you off the premises. If any of the staff ask, tell them you’re not feeling well and you’re going home, but I think it would be better for all concerned if you avoid speaking to anyone.”

  There is no emotion in Marcus’s voice, which remains calm and businesslike. I wonder if he’s still recording the conversation, not that it makes a shred of difference now.

  “You want me to leave now?” I reply in surprise.

  “Don’t panic, Pelling. You’ll be paid until the end of the month, but I don’t want you here, stirring things up. Think of it as gardening leave.”

  “But who'll tell the staff about the branch closure?”

  “Not that it’s any longer your concern but I’ll tell them at the end of the day. Somebody from head office will arrive tomorrow to oversee the final trading days, and the closure process.”

  Marcus stands up, opens his briefcase, and rifles through some papers. I continue to sit in my chair, bewildered.

  “Come on, Pelling, get your act together will you. I’ve got things to do, and I want you out of here. Now.”

  After my preparations earlier, it only takes a few minutes to get my sorry box of possessions together. Marcus takes a cursory glance in the box to check I haven’t stolen any RolpheTech property before demanding I hand over the store keys and the code for the alarm system.

  As I follow Marcus from my office and down the stairs, I feel like a death row prisoner, taking his final walk to the chair. Mercifully, we don’t bump into any of the staff, and twenty seconds later, I’m stood at the door to the staff car park. Marcus pushes it open and ushers me out. I don’t know why, but as I cross the threshold into the car park, I stop for a moment, and stare across the tarmac vista. I must look a forlorn figure, stood there clutching my cardboard box. I expect to hear the door slam behind me, but Marcus can’t resist having the final word.

  “Remember what I said last week, Pelling? What goes around, comes around. It may have taken thirty years, but you mess with Marcus Morrison and there will only ever be one winner.”

  I turn to face him. I can feel tears welling in the corner of my eyes, and a lump dances in my throat. I’m about to lose it, but with my last ounce of resistance, I clear my throat and muster a reply.

  “A winner, with a tiny cock.”

  He slams the door shut.

  8

  The alarm clock shrills at 7.20am. I nudge Megan awake and continue my search for the sanctuary of sleep. I toss and turn for half an hour, but I’m constantly dragged back to consciousness as Megan bangs and slams her way around the house. I told her about my new employment status when she came home from work yesterday. Considering she’s been nagging me for years to find a better job, I assumed that she might see the positive side of leaving RolpheTech. I was wrong, and she went ballistic. I touched on the idea we could re-mortgage the house to invest in the franchise, but she shot that down immediately, and made it clear she wasn’t willing to risk her half of our home to solve a problem I’d created. Her mood this morning hasn’t improved.

  Megan eventually leaves the house and silence is temporarily returned, only to be broken once more when the neighbour’s fucking dog starts yapping. With the prospect of sleep looking unlikely, I get up, visit the bathroom and plod down to the kitchen. I fill the kettle and pull a mug from the cupboard. As the kettle rumbles away, I spoon coffee granules and sugar into the mug. It’s the same routine I’ve enacted every morning for years, although at this time of the morning I’m usually stood in the RolpheTech staff room. But not today, or ever again. I fill the mug with boiling water, give it a perfunctory stir, and take it into the sitting room.

  I drop into my armchair and draw a sip of coffee, trying to get my thoughts into some order. I pluck my mobile phone from the coffee table and open the calendar app. I count back the days to last Tuesday, when my life was mundane, but comfortable. Nine days. It has taken just nine days for everything to collapse around me. The shock of yesterday has now given way to cold realisation. I've made some lousy decisions, and now I’ve got to fix them. It’s a daunting task, and I don’t even know where to begin. In lieu of any real answers, a series of alternate scenarios play out in my mind. What if I hadn’t attended the reunion? What if I hadn’t tried that stupid blackmail stunt on Marcus? What if I had made more effort in my marriage? The first two questions invoke more regret than the last, but it’s all part of the same core problem — I can't do right for doing wrong.

  My mind drifts further back, trying to unravel the threads of my life before they all tangled together into my current noose: Tessa, my exams, Video City, Megan, the baby, RolpheTech, Marcus. There are so many ways that my life could have played out if I’d made a different decision at any point. But did I make bad decisions, or did bad things just happen to me? Was I unlucky, or simply an idiot? Perhaps it wasn’t the decisions I made, but the way I dealt with the consequences of those decisions? The more I think about it, the more it gives me a headache, and the pointlessness of the exercise becomes all too apparent. I need to concentrate on finding solutions to my immediate problems, rather than over-analysing the reasons I have them.

  I open the web browser on my mobile phone, and as I’m about to search for retail management jobs, a message pings up to remind me I’m due at my parents’ house this afternoon to clear out my old bedroom. Great, an afternoon wading through boxes of junk. I consid
er calling the old man and postponing, but the chore won’t go away and he’ll only pester me daily until they move. Then another thought crosses my mind. It’s not a thought I really want to explore, but given I’m fresh out of alternatives, I need to consider it. As my parents are selling their house and buying a cheaper property, they’ll have some free capital soon. Perhaps I can persuade them to lend me the ten grand I need to buy the franchise. I’m fairly sure Mum would be willing, but the old man is not renowned for his philanthropic generosity. It’s at least worth asking.

  I return to my job search and spend the next hour scouring various websites, but my heart really isn’t in it. Not only are most of the jobs advertised poorly paid or require formal qualifications, but I’ve all but convinced myself that I don’t want to spend the next twenty years of my life as an employee. While the opportunity to work for myself is not without risk, the prospect of continuing a retail management career now fills me with dread. I never wanted a retail career in the first place, and it was only circumstances that pushed me in that direction. If I’ve learnt anything over the last week, it’s that I need to get a grip on my destiny, rather than standing by and letting it happen.

  Clutching at my new-found hope I head upstairs, take a shower, and get dressed. I then head back to the kitchen and fill a bowl with bland cereal before I take a seat in front of the TV to eat. I endure twenty minutes of daytime TV before my will to live is completely eroded. I switch the TV off and pick up my mobile phone. I contemplate calling Lucy, but think better of it. I do feel guilty that I wasn’t able to tell the staff about the branch closure as I doubt that Marcus would have been particularly empathetic. But what does any of that matter now? I’m actually worse off than many of them, and Lucy can start her new life with an unexpected redundancy payment. I need to look forward, to think about myself.

  After wasting another hour mindlessly browsing the Internet, I leave the house and make the short journey across town to my parents’ house. With most residents at work, their street is less crowded with parked cars. I pull into the parking space at the front of the house and take a deep breath before ringing the doorbell. Seconds pass and the old man opens the door with his usual sour expression.

  “Morning Dad.”

  He mumbles a complaint that I'm early and shuffles back into the sitting room. I follow him in and give Mum a kiss before taking a seat on the sofa. As Dad lowers himself into his armchair, he looks at me with a frown.

  “You forgotten where your bedroom is? You won't get much done sat on your fat arse down here.”

  “Actually Dad, there was something I wanted to have a chat with you about before I get started.”

  “If this is about your bloody marriage, we don’t want to hear about it, do we Janet?”

  Mum offers a faint smile, but keeps quiet.

  “No, it’s nothing to do with my marriage Dad. It’s to do with my career.”

  Dad eyes me with suspicion as I give him a highly edited version of what happened at RolpheTech, and then a textbook pitch about the opportunity to work for myself.

  “So Dad, I need about ten grand to invest in a franchise I’ve been looking at.”

  The ticking of the carriage clock fills the silence as the old man slowly rubs his chin with a gnarled hand. I look across at Mum, but she’s now staring out of the window, lost in her own world. There will be no support from that corner of the room. I know that Dad knows what my next question will be. He won't make this easy and obviously wants me to ask it.

  “I was wondering if there is any way you could lend me that money? I’ll get a proper loan agreement and repayment schedule drawn up, so it’s all above board. If I had any other option, I wouldn’t ask, but no bank will touch me now I’m out of work.”

  The old man leans over and pulls a large brown envelope from the side of his armchair. He extracts a ream of paperwork and thumbs through the pages, eventually finding what he’s looking for. He holds it out for me to take.

  “Those are the service charges for the flat we’re moving into. Have a good read.”

  I reach over and grab the wad of paperwork, unsure how this answers my question. The page contains a table with three columns labelled Standard Care, Enhanced Care and Total Care. There is a list of services running down the left side of the page, and each cell in the table contains a cross or a tick. I scan the page, without knowing what I’m looking at.

  “Because me and your mum aren’t in the best of health we’ve gone for the Total Care package.”

  My eyes move to the bottom of the page and then water when I see the monthly charge of £450.

  “£450 a month?” I say in disbelief.

  “That's why you’re begging in the wrong place. Once we’ve paid for the flat, we’re investing all the remaining equity into a pension fund which should cover the service charges for as long as we’re both still around.”

  “And this pension fund will swallow every penny of your equity?”

  “Yes it will. I want to ensure we have a decent quality of life for our remaining years.”

  “So you can’t help me then?” I sigh. “You do realise I’ve got no other options?”

  “Why don’t you do what I did? Get a bloody job and save up. That’s the problem with your generation, you want everything now, and don’t have the discipline to wait. It’s no surprise the country is in such a bloody mess when everyone is borrowing money left, right, and centre.”

  He then begins ranting about the state of the country before I interrupt.

  “Dad, if you’re not able to lend me the money, I need to get on,” I snap. “I’ll deal with the bloody bedroom and then I have to sort out my life.”

  Before he can reply, I storm out of the room and stomp up the stairs to my old bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I lean against the door and close my eyes for a moment. Fuck. What do I do now?

  I pad across the room and sit on the edge of my old single bed to think. The bed where my mum held me as I cried over Tessa. The bed where Megan and I first consummated our relationship. The bed that hosted my teenage dreams about being a computer programmer. I gaze around the room and feel an overwhelming sense of regret. Every object in the room holds a memory from a time when I had hope. When I had a future. If the objects could talk, I wonder what they’d say about the forlorn figure sat before them today? Would they ask what happened to the intelligent, ambitious young boy who spent countless hours beavering away at his computer? I stare up at a faded poster of The Pet Shop Boys, fixed to the pale blue wall with drawing pins. The enigmatic duo stare down on me with a look that could be construed as disappointment. I remember putting the poster up not long after I first heard 'West End Girls’. It was the first pop song that truly resonated with me, and I played it to death in this very room.

  As I sit and wallow in reflective self-pity, it dawns on me that in a few weeks’ time this shrine to my youth will be no more. Reduced to an empty shell with every memory stripped away. Maybe the new owners will have a child, and this will be their room, their little den of dreams. A fresh, blank canvas, ready for some lucky child to create their own visions, their own memories. I hope they create something worthwhile, because I sure as hell haven’t, and for that, I feel guilty, I feel angry — most of all though, I feel sorry for myself.

  I accept there’s little to be gained by dwelling on what might have been. For now, this is still Craig Pelling’s bedroom, and it won’t sort itself out.

  9

  I reluctantly get to my feet and survey the room, looking for the easiest place to begin my task. It’s not a huge room, maybe just about a double, and it feels much smaller now than it did when I was a child. A fitted bedroom unit stretches the length of one wall, comprising a double wardrobe, a chest of drawers and two large storage cupboards. A friend of my dad’s built it not long after we moved here, and I’m amazed it’s still standing, such was the sub-standard quality of both the materials, and the workmanship. I suspect the first thing the new owners of
the house will do is rip the damn thing down.

  Apart from my bed, the room also houses a pine bedside cupboard, a narrow bookcase, and a desk covered by a dust sheet. Despite Mum’s poor mobility, she has always included my bedroom in her limited housework regime. I wonder how many hours she’s wasted over the years, cleaning a room I had no intention of ever occupying again, and why she’d go to the trouble. I guess it must be hard for a mother when their one-and-only child leaves home, particularly if that mother is left to live with someone like my dad. Maybe Mum sits in this room occasionally and thinks back to my childhood when she was the centre of my universe. A time when her life had purpose, other than waiting on my dad. Maybe clearing out my room would be like purging the last remnants of motherhood. I’ll never ask her.

  I wander over to the window and stare out across the poorly maintained garden, and the houses beyond. The dark blue curtains smell strongly of fabric conditioner from a recent wash. It’s the same brand of fabric conditioner Mum has used for decades, and it jolts a memory of freshly laundered school jumpers, cotton bedsheets and denim dungarees. I stand for a few minutes, content to wallow in the nostalgic scent of my childhood and the temporary sense of comfort it bears. Sadly, the comfort is fleeting as a screaming child in the neighbour’s garden pulls me back to reality, and the tedious job ahead of me.

  I decide to tackle the wardrobe first and pull open the wonky door. Apart from a few wire coat hangers, the hanging space is empty. The bottom, however, is full of random junk I’d chosen to be out of sight, and therefore out of mind. It’s unlikely there will be anything in here I wish to salvage. After a few minutes of delving through old school books, empty boxes, and discarded items of clothing, my suspicions are confirmed. I close the wardrobe door and move on to the four drawers alongside.

  The first drawer produces more school books, my old pencil case, several plastic rulers, and various odds-and-ends. On initial inspection, drawer two looks equally uninteresting, but a quick delve beneath the pile of computer magazines unearths my teenage porn stash. It’s a fairly meagre collection, comprising three copies of ‘Escort’, a single copy of ‘Penthouse’, and a Dutch magazine called ‘Blue Climax’, which I smuggled-back from a school trip to Bruges.