Rock Bottom (Second Chances Book 2)

by Jason Ayres

  Kay was very excited at the prospect ahead. She could leave her current woes behind her, if only for a day, and contemplate the voyage of self-discovery that lay before her. She had better get herself ready.

  “Shouldn’t I put some clothes on first?” she asked. She had suddenly noticed that she was shivering. She had become oblivious to the cold, so distracted had she been by the bizarre conversation of the last few minutes.

  “No need,” replied the angel, “You’re going back into your old body and your old clothes. You can’t take anything from here back with you. So, are you ready?”

  “No time like the present,” said Kay, and then quipped, “Or do I mean the past?” It was the first time she had felt in good humour for weeks. If all this was for real, she was about to go on an unprecedented adventure and she couldn’t wait to get started.

  “How does it work?” she added.

  “Like this,” said the angel. She winked at Kay from the mirror and the room around her dissolved into nothingness.

  Chapter Four

  June 1995

  The next thing Kay was aware of was that she was back in bed, waking sharply as if from a vivid dream, just as she had when waking in the flat an hour or so earlier.

  For the first second or two, that was what she thought had happened. She had dreamt all this as well. She might have known it was too good to be true.

  A second or two after that, as consciousness took proper hold, she realised that things were not as they should be. For a start, she was warm and the bed was incredibly comfortable, not at all like the horrible, stained and flea-bitten mattress she had to make do with in the flat. Not only that, there was someone snoring beside her.

  She had been drunk last night, just like every other night, but not so drunk that she wouldn’t have remembered taking someone home with her. It was such a rare event of late that there was no way she would have forgotten it. But there was definitely somebody beside her. She couldn’t see who, as it was extremely dark in the room.

  But this wasn’t the night after last night, she reminded herself. If the angel had come true on her promise, it was over twenty-three years ago. This wasn’t her bedroom in the flat, of that she was certain. It was never this warm, even when the heating was working. If it really was Saturday 17th June 1995 then she was pretty sure she knew where she was, but it was too dark for her to be absolutely certain.

  She got up out of bed and headed over towards a tiny glimmer of light, high up in the room where she could see the join of the curtains. As she made her way across the room she realised that not only did she not have a hangover, but she also felt extremely light on her feet.

  She pulled the curtains apart and was greeted by glorious early morning sunshine, bathing the front of an airport terminal. There was no doubting where she was now – she was in the hotel at Heathrow where she had spent the night before she had been due to fly to Helsinki.

  The shafts of sunlight penetrated across the room to the sleeping figure on the bed. She already knew who it would be before she even turned to make the confirmation. There he was, the man she loathed, back in the days when she thought the sun shone out of his arse.

  Now it was shining on his arse which was sticking out of the side of the bed. She was pleased to see that opening the curtains hadn’t woken him up. It gave her time to think about what she was going to do.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the front of the wardrobe. Again she saw the youthful image of herself that the angel had appeared as in her flat. But this time it was a true reflection of her as she was at this moment. She stood for a while and gazed upon her young, perfect body.

  “What fantastic tits I used to have,” she murmured out loud. She cupped them both in her hands, revelling in how full and firm they were. She felt herself starting to get horny and quickly let go, trying to suppress a succession of erotic thoughts that suddenly crept into her mind.

  She had forgotten how high her libido had been when she had been young. She looked across at Alan, remembering how they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other in those early days of their relationship.

  Later, when she had grown to despise him, she couldn’t bear to have him anywhere near her, not that it was ever a problem. He had long since embarked on a string of affairs by that time and no longer had any desire for her.

  Looking at him now, her head was filled with conflicting emotions. This Alan in front of her wasn’t the bastard she had grown to hate, he was the younger one she had adored and lusted after. With hormones surging through her youthful body, she felt long-forgotten desires resurfacing within her. Could she blame this younger Alan for his sins of later years?

  “Get a grip,” she said to her reflection, even though this version couldn’t talk back. “Come on, Kay, think with the contents of your brains, not your knickers.”

  She swiftly reminded herself that Alan was a bastard and always had been. Any glorious honeymoon period she may have enjoyed with him had been based on his deception and lies. She had allowed her lust for him and her inexperience with adult relationships to blind her to his true nature. If she touched him now, she would be betraying herself all over again.

  He stirred, rolling over and opening his eyes.

  “Morning, gorgeous,” he said. “What time is it?”

  She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “Nearly twenty to six,” she replied.

  “Come back to bed,” he said, pulling back the covers to leave her in no doubt as to his intentions. “There’s plenty of time before you check in.”

  “I can’t,” she replied. “I’ve just come on.” It was an easy lie and one she had used plenty of times before. He always accepted it.

  “Can you sort me out, then?” he asked hopefully.

  “I think you had more than enough last night,” she replied, based on vague memories from nearly a quarter of a century ago. She tried to make it sound light-hearted. She didn’t want him to have any reason to suspect she was not who she appeared to be. Later he was going to try and stop her getting on the plane. She didn’t want to say anything now that might make him want to bring those plans forward.

  The memories of that morning were flooding back to her now. Quickly, she formed a rough plan of what she needed to do. All she had to do was act normally until she got into the airport. Once they were surrounded by people, there was no way he would be able to stop her. Here, where they were in private, he could.

  He looked disappointed at the lack of sex, but didn’t push the issue and went into the bathroom. It gave Kay time to familiarise herself with her surroundings, paying particular attention to her luggage.

  There was a large, red rucksack in the room, stuffed full with everything she needed for the next three months. There was also a smaller, denim handbag, which she immediately went for.

  It contained her purse, a notebook, pen, and various make-up and sanitary items. Her flight tickets were also there, together with her passport, the old-fashioned, black, pre-EU edition. She quickly double-checked the flight and check-in times. She could check in from ten past six, so there wouldn’t be long to wait. The sooner she was shot of Alan, the better.

  She felt like there was something missing from the bag as she rummaged through, and then she realised what it was. There was no mobile phone. Of course, there wouldn’t be. She didn’t have one. Very few people in 1995 did. How strange it was going to seem, living in a world where there was no internet, no Facebook, no way at all with communicating with the wider world. How on earth had people managed to stay in touch with each other?

  Then again, maybe it was a good thing. She liked the idea of nobody knowing where she was or being able to get hold of her. It seemed bold, even dangerous, by modern standards.

  She knew she had a camera in her rucksack and lots of rolls of films, ready to photograph anything and everything on her trip. It would be odd not uploading them straight to Facebook. In this time period it would be a case of
keeping the films until she got back to the UK and then taking them down to Boots to be developed.

  Ruefully she reflected that there would be no point taking any photos of the midnight sun, as she wouldn’t get the chance to show them to anyone. If she had interpreted what the angel had told her correctly, by tomorrow she would be back in 2018 and it would be as if none of this had ever happened. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t find a twenty-three-year-old Kodak film case in her pocket when she got home.

  After Alan had finished in the bathroom she took a long, hot shower and luxuriated in the fast, powerful streams of water. It was way better than the pathetic excuse she had for a shower in the flat, which was more like a garden sprinkler than a power shower, which was what McVie had laughably called it. Even when she did have hot water, it was difficult to get enough of it onto her to keep warm.

  She worried that Alan might try and come and molest her in the shower, but her fears were unfounded. He generally kept his distance from her when she was on her period. Thankfully she wasn’t, but he wasn’t to know that. She really didn’t want that inconvenience to deal with if she was going to be travelling all day.

  When she was finished in the shower, she wrapped a towel around herself and made her way back to the bedroom. She tried not to make it too obvious that she felt uneasy at him looking at her naked body and made sure she dressed quickly. The sooner she got out of this hotel room and into the terminal building, the better.

  She indulged in a little small talk as they crossed the road to the terminal, anxious to get this over with as quickly as possible. He was rambling on about some big golf tournament going on in America, something she had not the remotest interest in, but she feigned interest just to pass the time. She hadn’t remembered him being this boring. Perhaps she had just been too busy enjoying all the sex at the time to notice. Well, she was certainly noticing now.

  “Yeah, this new golfer, Tiger Woods, he’s playing in his first US Open this weekend,” he said. “They reckon he’s going to be something special.”

  Although she hated golf, she had of course heard of Tiger Woods. She couldn’t not have, as Alan had idolised him and gone on about him all the time.

  Thankfully the check-in queue was not long at this early hour and she soon was free of her rucksack, watching it disappear on the conveyer. There was an hour and a half left until the flight.

  “I really ought to be getting through to the other side,” she said.

  “Don’t go just yet, darling,” said Alan. “I don’t want to be separated from you until I absolutely have to. Come on, let’s go and grab a coffee.”

  This was word for word what he had said the first time she had been here. The word “darling” grated with her, but she had to smile and go along with it. She knew what was to come, and when it did, she’d be prepared, unlike last time.

  Sure enough, as soon as they were seated, it started.

  “I can’t believe you’re really going,” he said. “I love you so much, I can’t bear the thought of being parted from you for one day, let alone three months.”

  “I know,” she replied. “But the time will fly by, you’ll see. And when I come back, we can be together all the time.”

  In Kay’s current mindset, that was a total lie, but she was sticking to the script for the moment. Although it would have been easier to just get up and walk off with the minimum of fuss, she wanted to see him beg pathetically, just like he had before. But this time she would not cave in.

  Suddenly he began blubbing uncontrollably, like a baby.

  “Please don’t go, Kay,” he pleaded. “I love you. I can’t live without you.”

  This was so typical, she thought. It was all about him and his feelings. It was alright for him, he had his career and his fancy job travelling around vineyards, but what about her plans and her dreams? He had never cared about any of that. All he cared about was how it would affect him.

  “You know I’ve got my heart set on this trip, Alan. I’ve dreamt of doing it since I was fifteen.”

  “Please, Kay, I’ll do anything. You can still travel. Look, I went down to the travel agents earlier in the week and booked us this.”

  He pulled some tickets out of his bag and showed them to her. She didn’t even need to look at them to know what they were. She had been through all of this before. It was a package holiday for two to the Algarve.

  “Two weeks in the sun, just me and you together. I’ll pay for everything, don’t worry, and you can go travelling later. In fact, I’ll get a sabbatical from work and we’ll go travelling together.”

  This was the point at which she had capitulated before but she wasn’t going to be fooled a second time. He never did let her go travelling, despite several attempts on her part to rearrange it. The sabbatical of course never happened – apparently he was too indispensable at work to be spared. Not long after that, he had talked her out of going to university as well by fixing her up with a full-time job in his department.

  As for the holiday in the Algarve, on the first day he met a boorish group of city types and spent half of the holiday going off to play golf with them, leaving Kay on her own by the pool with only her Walkman and a bunch of cassettes for company.

  “Please, Kay,” he whined, tears pouring down his face. “Don’t leave me. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.”

  She could quite easily have cut him to shreds right then. It would have been so easy to humiliate him right in front of everyone at the neighbouring tables, whose attention they were beginning to attract. But she didn’t want a scene right now. There would be better opportunities to get her revenge on later trips back to the past. Today, her focus was elsewhere. She just wanted to get away and get on that plane.

  “I’m sorry, Alan,” she replied. “I’m going and that’s that.” Without saying any more, she got up, turned around and walked away.

  “Don’t leave me, Kay!” he shouted behind her. “I’ll kill myself if you do.”

  “Be my guest,” she said under her breath. This was getting ridiculous. She had never seen anything so pathetic from a grown man. It had been bad enough the first time round, but at least he had stopped after she had said she would stay. This was downright embarrassing.

  “Just keep walking,” she kept saying to herself, over and over again, and she did not look back until she had reached passport control.

  Chapter Five

  June 1995

  Only when she was safely in the passport control queue did Kay dare to take a look behind her. It was a relief when she saw no sign that Alan was following her.

  She fumbled in her bag for her passport and had a momentary panic when she thought she couldn’t find it. She wouldn’t have put it past him to have taken it out of her bag as a backup plan to ensure she couldn’t go, but then she realised he couldn’t have. She had shown it when she checked in. Then she remembered she had put it in a small, zip-up side pocket of her bag.

  Once she was through passport control and security a palpable sense of relief washed over her. She was safe now, wasn’t she? She certainly hoped so. She wouldn’t put it past him to buy a ticket for the flight, follow her onto the plane, and either beg her to get off or insist on her coming with him.

  She had seen similar scenes in films, but she dismissed it as unlikely. Things like that just didn’t happen in real life. Besides, he probably didn’t even have his passport so it really wasn’t worth worrying about.

  She browsed around the duty-free shops and bought an overpriced sandwich and a drink. Even by 2018 standards the prices were outrageous. Then she went out into the main departure lounge to see if the gate number for her flight had come up yet.

  The airport was still quiet given the early hour, so it was easy for her to get a seat in front of one of the boards giving out flight details. She was not best pleased to discover that her flight was one of a number that had been delayed.

  It had been pushing it, aiming to reach Rovaniemi by midnight, even if the
flight had been on time. When she had initially planned this trip, back in 1995, she had not intended to do the whole journey in one day at all. She had planned to stay in Helsinki for a day or two and then get an overnight train north, saving the cost of a night in a youth hostel by sleeping on the train. It was a long journey, something she had discovered when she realised that the Scandinavian countries were much larger than she had originally thought.

  The capitals of Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki were more or less on the same latitude, but far further from the Arctic Circle than she had believed. Initially she had considered travelling to Norway, but had been put off when she found out that it was over a thousand miles from Oslo to Tromsø, which was the main city in the north. That was some serious mileage.

  She had settled on Rovaniemi as it was a more achievable five hundred miles, but even that was going to take over twelve hours on a train. Under any normal circumstances that wouldn’t have mattered, but these were not normal circumstances.

  She only had one day, and she wasn’t even sure how much of that day she had. Would it end at midnight, whisking her away back to the dismal reality of her flat? Or would she get a full twenty-four hours? She should have asked the angel when she had the chance.

  It was clear that with the flight delayed, reaching Rovaniemi in one day wasn’t going to be possible by road or rail. But the angel had said it was achievable, and there was one other option open to her.

  She reached into her purse where she had a wallet containing her cash and traveller’s cheques. The money was meant to last three months, but she didn’t need it to last that long anymore. It only had to last a day, so she may as well make use of it.