The Time Bubble Box Set 2

by Jason Ayres

  I must have bought that suit 50 times over. It was the ultimate in repeat business for the store. Usually by 5pm I’d be safely ensconced in some luxury suite somewhere looking forward to an evening of the best pleasures money could buy.

  My indulgences grew and grew. Sometimes I’d order two girls together and then we’d really have a party. Aged 50 and acting like a playboy, some might have looked at me and seen a man having a mid-life crisis.

  I preferred to see it more as a young man sowing his wild oats and getting it all out of his system before marriage and parenthood beckoned. I already had Stacey with me during the holidays, and it wouldn’t be too much longer until she was back with me full-time. Then I would “grow up” and become a responsible adult.

  Even now, it wasn’t debauched champagne orgies all the time. If Stacey was at home, often I’d go into London after the races and buy the most luxurious delicacies I could find and take them home to Oxford for the evening. So we dined on everything from Beluga caviar to Wagyu steak.

  One time I even brought home a 7kg Ibérico ham I had seen hanging in the food hall at Harrods. It cost over £2,000 and was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.

  It was in booze where I really excelled. I found an antique wine dealer in London and frequently brought home a bottle that had cost me over £10,000. As with the suit, it was often the same one. There were only about twenty of these bottles left in the world, apparently, but I must have drunk that particular one at least that number of times myself.

  Stacey had no idea of the value of the wine she was enthusiastically glugging down beside me. To have told her would only have raised awkward questions. Officially I was well off, but not that well off.

  So that was my life in 2021, a carefree paradise where I could have whatever I wanted. I enjoyed it tremendously for several months, but in the end it began to lose its appeal. For all my fun and games, and despite the fact that I had Stacey, I felt lonely and as if my life lacked direction.

  As 2021 gave way to 2020 there were changes on the horizon that I hoped would remedy that.

  Work

  October 2020

  My big “Five-O” was approaching, a landmark birthday. For many, this marked the turning point from the last gasp of youth into middle age. I was more than happy to be going the other way, having seen some significant improvements in my appearance over the past couple of years.

  Despite still being fat, my hair was growing quite encouragingly. The bald patch in the middle was noticeably smaller and there were some welcome flecks of black appearing amongst the grey.

  I had a few minor health niggles that I was hoping would disappear as time went by. My eyesight without my glasses was abysmal so I went into Specsavers to try and find out more about my optical history. I was pleased to discover that I’d only had to start wearing glasses in my mid-forties.

  My teeth weren’t in particularly good shape and I’d lost two of my rear molars in the past year. One of these caused me no end of aggravation at the time. I had to go to the dentist three days running on emergency appointments to have the same tooth removed, such was my pain on awaking each morning with the rotten tooth in my mouth.

  It was all very well drinking the same expensive bottle of wine several times, but repeating the dentist experience was something I could have done without. On the third day I stuck a quid under the pillow before I went to bed, figuring I must be in debt to the tooth fairy.

  It was gone in the morning, but the tooth was back. She must have waved her magic wand, because the pain had thankfully subsided enough on that fourth morning for me to cope with it.

  My birthday was on the 21st of October and it coincided with another milestone event, my retirement from the retailer I had been with for over 25 years. Since leaving, I had been out for a drink with Nick a couple of times, which had enabled me to find out more about my past career.

  We had both started in the mid-1990s working in a flagship superstore outside Oxford. I had been a supervisor in-store, whilst he was a manager in the warehouse. We’d worked our way up together, gaining jobs at Head Office early in the new millennium and climbing the corporate ladder.

  By 2017 I had been promoted to Marketing Director. However, it seemed that things had rather gone to pieces after Sarah’s death.

  I had taken her death very hard, understandably, and had been given some compassionate leave afterwards. I found it difficult to get the precise details out of Nick, as clearly he felt uncomfortable talking about it. Reading between the lines, it was clear that my heart had no longer been in it when I went back to work.

  A difficult trading climate, poor results and a new CEO meant that I was allowed to leave gracefully in 2020. In other words, in recognition of my years of good service, I’d been offered a golden handshake and a comfortable pension as a polite way of saying “piss off”.

  It sounded like a reasonable enough deal to me. I’d been left with enough money to live on for the rest of my life hence my apparent lack of interest in getting another job in the years that followed.

  That wasn’t to say that I hadn’t been offered plenty. A number of headhunters had rung up to try and tempt me into a new position during the 2020s, but I had turned them all down in this life, presumably just as I had in my previous one.

  My reluctance to return to work left one nagging doubt in my mind. Could it be that my lack of activity and direction in the years following my retirement had been contributory factors in my death? It may not all have been down to the purely physical causes of my cancer, such as smoking.

  Had my body, sensing that my mind had given up, also decided to give up? I had heard stories about people who had lost the will to live in such a way after the death of a partner, following them to the grave soon after.

  Perhaps this was something else I could change. If I saved Sarah, perhaps I would save myself. It was less than three years now until her date with destiny. Until then, it was time to leave my retirement behind and see what working life had to offer.

  My last day at work had taken place on Friday the 23rd of October, but a “surprise” lay in store for me on the Saturday evening. My friends and family had arranged a joint 50th birthday/retirement party for me at a local hotel.

  They had no doubt done a fantastic job of keeping it a secret from me. However, not knowing of my backwards existence, no one thought to keep it a secret afterwards.

  Having seen all the pictures on Facebook and hearing Stacey and David enthusing about what a great night it had been, I was quite looking forward to it. Judging by the horrific hangover I woke up with on the Sunday morning, it must have been a good one.

  On the day of the party, I played suitably dumb about the whole thing, allowing Stacey and David to believe they had duped me into thinking we were going to the hotel for a meal.

  When we arrived and went into the suite where the party was to take place I did my bit to feign surprise. In fact, there was a surprise waiting for me, and that was the sheer scale of the event. I was amazed at just how many people were there, it must have been well over a hundred and they all seemed genuinely delighted to see me.

  I had become so used to living as a social recluse over the past few years that it came as quite a shock to realise just how many friends I apparently had. But where had they been in the years that followed? Was this what happened to people when they got older, or left work? Did they just fade into obscurity? Other than Nick, very few people had kept in touch, a couple of Christmas cards, and that was about it.

  I spent the evening getting to know as many people as I could. I found putting names to faces quite difficult at the best of times, but to avoid future embarrassment I made a huge effort to try and remember as many as possible.

  I also met some family members I hadn’t seen before, a couple of cousins and an ancient uncle who spent the whole evening complaining that he had to go outside to smoke his pipe.

  Stacey had hired a DJ who was about my age, and he was playing an e
xcellent set. Clearly he’d been told beforehand about my musical tastes. I’m glad someone had, because I still didn’t know what a lot of them were myself at this point. I had been working my way through some of the playlists on my iPod but even so, I got to hear a lot of tunes that were new to me that night, and very agreeable.

  As he played some classic old skool dance hits from the 90s I invariably found myself drawn towards the dance floor.

  “Remember this one?” Nick called across at me, also on the dance floor. “Takes you back, doesn’t it? Ibiza ’98? Those were the days!”

  I’d never heard the tune before, which I figured by the lyrics was probably called Horny, but I knew all about Ibiza ’98. Nick had been reminiscing about it one night when we had been in the pub. It had been the holiday of a lifetime for us at the time, not to mention a milestone moment in my life as well. It was on that holiday that I’d first met Sarah.

  I really got into the party atmosphere as the night wore on. Up on the dance floor, in the multi-coloured beams of light casting patterns across the room, I heard the soundtrack of my life played out. Many of the songs, even if unfamiliar now, I sensed had had special meaning to me at certain points in my life.

  From the dance floor fillers to the early 90s indie rock and Britpop, I was enjoying every moment. For the first time since my new life had begun back in that hospital bed in 2025, I really began to feel like I had a place in the world.

  I had another pleasant surprise at the end of the evening. A red-headed beauty with a dress to match her strawberry blonde curls grabbed hold of me when the smoochy numbers came on and led me to the dance floor.

  I’d been introduced to her earlier as “Carol”, and I knew that she worked with me in my office. She was younger than me, mid-thirties at a guess and being dragged onto the dance floor by her was a major ego boost.

  On the floor she wrapped her arms around me and, with her head on my shoulder, said into my ear, “All these years we’ve worked together, Tom, and I’ve never had the courage to tell you this until now, but I bloody fancy the arse off you.”

  I pulled back a little to look at her face, which was just crying out to be kissed, and leaned in instinctively. Well, why not? It was a lovely, romantic snog, without any sexual overtones, just full of affection. This was something my life had lacked. Contrary to popular opinion, most of the escorts I had been with in London had kissed, but that was a mere prelude to sex and it had all been fake anyway.

  As for Lauren, she hadn’t seemed particular interested in kissing at all, always wanting to get straight down to the action.

  Kissing Carol was the first time I think I had felt genuine affection from a woman. Later I would find out more about the years we worked together, confirming that nothing like this had happened between us before. Perhaps that could change.

  “Will you call me?” she asked tentatively.

  “Of course,” I said. But clearly I wouldn’t be able to and perhaps my other self in my former timeline hadn’t either, as I had no inkling that any of this had occurred until today. She hadn’t attempted to contact me either, so perhaps this little romantic moment hadn’t occurred in the original version of this day.

  It didn’t matter one way or the other: all I knew was that I had a good friend here, whether I managed to take it further in the past or not.

  I hadn’t been too sure how I was going to handle work. In fact, I had been dreading it, but meeting so many of my colleagues that night had certainly helped. Before the party there had only been Nick, but now there was Carol and others, too.

  As long as I could bluff my way through the first few days I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t pull it off, even if I was going in completely cold. It was going to be the ultimate case of on-the-job training and I’d just have to figure it all out as I went along.

  There was no obligation to go in at all really. After all, I could just phone in sick anytime I fancied a day off. It would only be one day, as in theory I’d go back in the next day. I could do it every single day if I wanted to, and carry on as before, but quite honestly I’d had enough of that.

  Now I’d met Carol, I wanted to get to know her and have some proper human interaction. I was not going to get that sitting around the house all day in my underpants watching old quiz shows on a channel I’d discovered called Challenge.

  So, on the day following my party, I dug out my old suit that I had not worn since my trip to Cheltenham, and headed off in the company BMW to work. This had rather impressively appeared out of nowhere on my driveway that morning.

  Presumably, with it being my last day I was going to have to give it back. I’d been managing without a car for quite a while now. It seemed I’d gone almost two years without one before I bought the Mercedes.

  It was cold and raining, and the traffic around the Oxford Ring Road was horrendous. Eventually, I pulled into the driveway of the aging and ugly office block which had served as the company’s Head Office since the 1960s. Then I realised I had a problem, the sort of thing I was always running into.

  The entrance to the car park was controlled by a barrier which was opened using a keypad which meant yet another PIN number that I didn’t know. I pressed the button to call security and got a rather angry-sounding response from the other end.

  “Is that you, again, Scott?” bellowed a voice out of the speaker. “You’d forget your bloody head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” I meekly responded. “I can’t seem to remember my entry code.” There must be a camera somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. How else would he have known it was me?

  “How long have you worked here?” he replied. “Too long, I reckon. I think it’s time you retired. In fact, I’m personally going to chuck you out myself at the end of the day.”

  With that, the intercom cut off, and the barrier went up. Unfortunately for me, I was soon to face the same problem when I reached the entry door to discover another keypad blocking my way.

  I pressed the button again, and a large man, roughly mid-fifties and dressed in a security uniform, appeared in the doorway looking furious. There were no prizes for deducing that this was the same man who had spoken to me before.

  I later discovered that his name was Barry and he used to be a sergeant major in the Army before retiring and taking this job. As I was soon to learn, he kept up a constant stream of banter with everyone and, despite his belligerent behaviour, was a hugely popular character around the building.

  “I’ll swing for you, Scott, I really will,” he said as he opened the door. “I’m not surprised they bloody sacked you, how are you supposed to run a multinational corporation when you can’t even open the fucking door? No wonder the share price has gone to shit.”

  I retorted lamely with the first load of drivel that came into my head. “We are busy making all sorts of crucial business decisions every day at board level, you know. Remembering trivia like the key code to get into the building isn’t that high on my list of priorities, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” said Barry. “I bet you don’t even know how much a tin of beans costs in one of your shops. I suppose you want me to let you through the internal door as well?”

  “Please,” I replied, and he swiped a card through a feeder on the edge of the keypad.

  “Unbelievable!” exclaimed Barry, theatrically, and then turned his attention back towards the main door as a young woman entered, dressed rather glamorously. As I went through the internal door I heard Barry giving her some stick.

  “What on earth have you got on today?” I heard him ask. “This isn’t a fashion show, you know. And where’s your coat? Summer’s finished, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  The door closed behind me. Chuckling, I made my way along the corridor, hoping I’d be able to find my way to my office. All I’d managed to find out from some subtle questioning on Saturday night was that it was on the second floor, so I took the lift at the end of the corridor and trusted to luck.
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  The lift doors opened out at level 2 into a small communal area by the entrance to a modern-looking café. I noticed one or two vaguely familiar faces around from the party and was very relieved to see Nick queuing up to get a drink.

  He spotted me and called over, “Hey, Tom, fancy a coffee?”

  From there it was plain sailing. I asked him if he’d walk back to my office with me, making sure he led the way.

  “Catch you later,” said Nick, when we got there. “I’ve got a meeting to get to.” I was on my own now, but reasonably confident I could bluff my way through.

  The marketing department was a large, open-plan area with individual work areas laid out in small cubicles, nicknamed “pig-pens” by the employees. I recognised most of the staff here from the party, but couldn’t put names to faces, despite my best attempts to remember.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to. The company had been thoughtful enough to install nameplates above each pig-pen, which gave not only the names of people but also their job titles, which was extremely helpful.

  Everyone seemed very pleased to see me. Whether that was because I was popular or because they were pleased it was my last day, I couldn’t tell. At least the nameplates meant that I could call people by name, with only the odd slip. If people stuck to their own desks, I wouldn’t have had to have gone through the following exchange:

  “Morning, Tom,” said one.

  “Morning, Roger!” I replied, enthusiastically.

  “I’m not Roger, I’m Philip,” said the man. “Roger’s not in today!”

  “I know,” I replied. “It was a joke. I thought when I came in, Roger looks different today!”

  “That old chestnut,” replied Philip, laughing. “I’m going to miss you, mate,” he said.