by Jason Ayres
Despite her tiredness, she immediately perked up when she saw her daughter. Jess had always been her number one priority whatever crisis came up at work. Seeing her on a daily basis filled her with joy. She was also a constant reminder of Jess’s father, long absent from their lives, but never far from either of their thoughts. All being well, the day was fast approaching when they would see him again.
Hannah had a relationship which was unusual to say the least. In fact, as far as she knew, in the history of the Earth, it was quite possibly unique. The man she loved was a time traveller and she hadn’t seen him since June 2024, which had been an achingly long time. Jess was only four at the time, but the memory of the night when she’d last seen her father was etched indelibly on her mind.
Peter was trapped, by his own design, in The Time Bubble, in a railway underpass constructed during the building of the HS2 railway line. He’d been suffering from an incurable illness and had decided to jump forward in time to a point where a cure was available.
That time had come some four years ago. Unfortunately, Peter had already gone into The Time Bubble and was stuck there for a fixed amount of time. As far as she knew, there was no way of altering that, so she and Jess had no option other than to wait it out. He was due to return the following January, and they were already counting down the days.
When Jess was very small, Hannah had told her all about her time-travelling dad. She accepted it all as quite normal and just assumed it was something that all dads did. When Jess told the grown-ups at the nursery about it, they joined in the joke. After all there were plenty of single mothers who took their children there. Jess’s tale was just a little more imaginative than those of some of the other children with absent fathers.
As she got older she came to realise that a time-travelling dad was an unusual thing and to heed Hannah’s advice not to talk to anyone about it. Unlike some of her friends at school who had lost touch with their dads completely, she knew that hers was a good man: he had not run out on his family, and would one day return.
“Thanks for taking care of her again today,” said Hannah.
“You’re welcome, anytime. You know how much I love looking after her,” replied Kaylee. “You never know, you might be babysitting for me soon.”
“Ooh, exciting!” said Hannah.
“Are you going to have a baby, Kaylee?” asked Jess.
“Well, no news yet, but fingers crossed.”
“Does Charlie have to put the baby in your tummy?” asked Jess.
Kaylee and Hannah looked at each other, not sure quite what to say. Jess continued. “It’s OK, Mum. I know how babies are made. Nathan in Year 6 told me.”
“Did he now?” replied Hannah, wondering who this Nathan was who was corrupting her daughter. “Oh well, I guess you have to find out about these things sooner or later. Perhaps we had better have a little talk.”
“She probably knows more than you do,” said Kaylee. “You know what kids are like these days. Anyway, I am going to have to go. Charlie will be home soon and I want to be there when he gets back.”
“So he can put the baby in your tummy?” asked Jess.
“Jess, really!” exclaimed Hannah. “What are you like?”
“It might already be in there,” said Kaylee. “I might find out tonight.”
“Well, make sure you ring me and tell me!” said Hannah. “I want to be the first to know. Remember, you were the first person I told when I fell with Jess.”
“You will be,” replied Kaylee. “After Charlie, of course.”
Hannah thought back to the day she found out she was pregnant, almost ten years ago. “Well, one thing is for sure, it’s not going to be as big a shock to him as it was when I told Peter. Do you remember? He was in The Time Bubble when I found out. When he came out, the first thing he saw was me standing in front of him, 37 weeks to the good. You should have seen the look on his face!”
They could have carried on chatting and laughing all night, but Kaylee was eager to get off home to see Charlie. She made her farewells and set off on the walk home. Her route took her back through the railway tunnel where she’d once been trapped in The Time Bubble for two days and everyone had thought she’d been abducted.
That had been over a decade ago, but it still gave her goose pimples every time she walked through there. It was strange to think as she reached the exact spot near the centre of the tunnel that Peter was in there somewhere, frozen in time, until it was time to reappear.
It was quiet in the tunnel. It always was. Ten years on, the HS2 project was still not complete. It had been a complete embarrassment to successive governments. Some questioned whether it would ever be completed and if it would even be needed if it was. Holographic conferencing was rapidly doing away with the need for business travel.
She emerged into the warm afternoon sunshine and into the new estate. The cherry trees that lined the streets of the estate were in full bloom, filling her with the joys of spring as she admired the pretty pink flowers. She turned right into their road and saw that his car was just turning onto the drive.
Charlie hadn’t had the best of days. His positive mood of the morning had evaporated. Some days he really began to tire of the office lifestyle. He’d sat through over two hours of listening to his boss coming out with every cliché in the marketing buzzword handbook during the morning meeting. He was fed up with hearing about “game-changers” and “thinking outside the box”.
When the boss wasn’t rambling on, various sycophants were trying to outdo each other by seeing who could ask the cleverest question. Their only goal in life seemed to be climbing the corporate ladder. That didn’t really appeal to Charlie. He was good at his job and the opportunities were there if he wanted to pursue them, but he wasn’t sure that he did. Perhaps it was time to consider a change of career.
His mood brightened considerably when he saw her walking up the road, the pale pink dress she was wearing matching almost perfectly the cherry blossom on the trees behind her. She still took his breath away, just like she had done every day since he’d first clapped eyes on her in reception class.
He saw the smile on her face as she came towards him and thought not for the first time how amazingly lucky he had been. If the others wanted to stay in the office late every night to further their careers, that was up to them. Charlie knew where he wanted to be.
“I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “Tonight’s the night.”
They kissed and went into the house.
Chapter Five – 12th April 2029 (8.30pm)
Lauren was making the final preparations for the weekly karaoke night at The Red Lion. There wasn’t a great deal that needed to be done, if truth be told. Long gone were the days of DJs risking their backs lugging in heavy speakers, huge cases of discs and all manner of other bulky equipment.
Everything was pretty much built in – the speakers were embedded within the walls and everything was controlled from one central touch screen on the wall.
There was no need to buy songs anymore – everything was done via an on-demand subscription service linked up to the internet. From the panel on the wall, Lauren could instantly call up any song from out of over a quarter of a million songs stored in the cloud. Over a century of popular music was available at her fingertips.
About the only piece of equipment still needed was the wireless microphones, and, as long as she had a good supply of batteries to hand, there was very little that could go wrong.
That karaoke survived as it did in The Red Lion was a bit of an anachronism. Karaoke had come to be seen in general as a rather naff activity: the sort of thing that was OK in a three-star, all-inclusive hotel on the Spanish islands along with the bingo and kiddies’ disco, but long past its sell-by date back home.
Very few pubs did it anymore. The only reason the Red Lion did was that for some unexplained reason it did pull in a crowd on a Thursday night. Kent personally hated it, but he couldn’t argue with the takings coming in through
the till. He’d tried dropping it at one point and replacing it with a quiz, but there had been uproar from the regulars.
After a couple of weeks of finding the takings down by several hundred pounds, he’d had a change of heart and reinstated it. He claimed this was in the interests of “listening to his customers”, conveniently neglecting to mention the financial side of things.
So every Thursday at 8.30pm, the diehard karaoke crowd descended upon the pub. They had been coming week in, week out for a good couple of decades now. There was a large round table at the back of the pub, close to where the action took place, known as “karaoke table”.
At least twelve people could fit around it and it was invariably full by the time things kicked off. A more diverse group of people you couldn’t expect to find gathered in one place. They ranged from students up to pensioners, with people from all other walks of life in-between.
Lauren was a natural at hosting the entertainment. She oozed confidence and charisma and always caught the crowd’s attention. She dressed to impress. Tonight she was wearing a tight, pink, cropped top exposing her pierced belly button, and some tight denim shorts that she hoped some lucky man, or maybe a woman if one took her fancy, would be peeling off her later tonight.
As always, she got the show underway by performing the first song. As befitted her nature, she always went for something a little suggestive, and tonight it was that old Madonna classic, Like a Virgin.
She’d seen the old video of the song and did her best to cavort around on the stage like Madonna had on the canal boat, many years before Lauren had been born. As she reached the chorus and the words appeared on the huge screen behind the stage, she got a few ironic cheers. She was pretty sure she also heard someone shout out “bullshit” from the karaoke table. She was enjoying every minute. She had always loved being the centre of attention.
As usual, the names of the singers were coming up on her touch screen with the songs they wanted to sing. In the past, people had written their names down on a list. Now it was all done remotely from their various gadgets. She groaned when she saw the name of the first singer to come up.
Alec was a proud Scotsman of indeterminate age. All anyone knew was that it seemed as if he’d been living in the town forever. Every week without fail he came to the karaoke, and every week without fail he performed the same song by The Proclaimers.
He had resisted all attempts to persuade him to sing other songs over the years, so for approximately the thousandth time he stepped up to the stage to perform it.
Between songs, Lauren generally mixed and flirted with the crowd. Kent and Debbie were well aware of what Lauren got up to, but they weren’t bothered in the slightest. She was a huge asset to the pub and they knew it.
She got on with most people, but there were exceptions. After she’d introduced Alec and handed him the microphone, she stepped down from the stage and found herself face-to-face with someone she could quite safely say if she never saw him again, it would be too soon.
Dan Fisher was not a very nice person. He’d been unpleasant enough back in the day when she’d had the misfortune to be in the same class as him at school, but he’d grown up to be a really nasty piece of work.
He did a manual job in a local factory, which meant that, although he was overweight, he was also pretty fit. Few people wanted to get into an argument with him. It was well known he’d had a conviction for violent conduct in the past. He also frequently boasted that he was the only England supporter who’d been deported from the host country of the last World Cup.
Football violence was very rare nowadays, but Dan was fascinated by all the tales of what used to go on in the late-20th century and seemed to glory in it. He supported Millwall.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he was well known for his racist and homophobic outlook on life and was an active member of an extremist far-Right political party. He didn’t do anything to disguise this and mostly went around wearing T-shirts bearing the flag of St George – tonight being no exception.
“What are you letting that Jock sing for?” was the first thing he asked Lauren.
She ignored his question, and replied with one of her own. “What do you want, Dan?”
He eyed her up and down lecherously. “I think you know the answer to that, love.”
“Let’s get something straight, Dan, once and for all,” she replied. “I am not, never have been and never will be your love. I don’t know how many more times I have to tell you that.”
Dan despised Lauren. She was everything he wanted and couldn’t have. He did not have a lot of luck with women and couldn’t understand why. He didn’t think he was particularly bad-looking: no worse than anyone else, so why could he never pull?
He was unable to see that his outdated misogynistic approach was a huge turn-off to the opposite sex.
What made it worse was that Lauren was seemingly so free and easy with her morals. He knew she’d been with most of the blokes in the pub at one time or another, so she should be easy game. So why not him?
He resented her, he was jealous of all the other men who’d had the pleasure, and was determined one day that he’d find a way into her knickers.
“Never say never,” he replied. “You don’t know what might happen in the future.”
“I can safely say it won’t be happening with you. Now please go away, you sad little man.” Alec had finished his weekly rendition and she turned away to take the microphone from him.
“Yes, let’s hear a big hand for Alec,” she announced, to some half-hearted clapping from the karaoke table. “What an original choice that was!”
As she continued her banter, feeding off the admiration of the adoring crowd, Dan looked at her, his eyes full of hate. How dare she reject him, the stupid whore? Full of dark thoughts, he headed over to the bar where his mate was getting a round in.
Ryan was tall and thin with short-cropped, ginger hair and something of a social inadequate. He’d been unemployed for years, having left school with no qualifications, and spent most of his time building model planes and re-enacting World War II battle scenes in his bedroom. He also had an unhealthy obsession with guns. Needless to say, he did not have a girlfriend.
He’d hung around with Dan since their schooldays because he’d never found anything better to do. Dan found him incredibly irritating at times but kept him around. He liked having a sycophantic social inadequate as a friend whom he could feel superior to.
“Did you get anywhere, then?” asked Ryan. Dan was always telling him about all of the women he pulled. It was entirely fictional, of course, but Ryan was gullible and naïve enough to believe it most of the time.
“No, mate,” replied Dan. “She’s a rug muncher, mate, told me herself. She said if I was girl she’d jump me like that.”
“I don’t think she is a lesbian, Dan,” replied Ryan. “Nick from the kebab shop shagged her the other week. He told me.”
“You don’t want to listen to anything he says, mate. He’s always chatting shit.” Dan decided to change the subject. “Come on, let’s finish these and go up to the Craphole. There’s always loads of loose muff in there.”
Dan began to outline his plans for the evening’s female conquest. Ryan listened avidly, despite the fact that on 99% of occasions such plans always ended in dismal failure: at best, a mild rebuke; at worst, a kick in the nuts.
Lauren hadn’t been perturbed by Dan’s attentions at all. She was quite used to dealing with sad, desperate men and he was one of the worst. Right now she was dealing with another kind of problem – a troublesome karaoke customer. After ten hours’ drinking, Andy was ready to entertain his imaginary fans with a song.
“Why can’t I sing?” he protested. “I’m a good singer. I was on The X Factor once, you know.”
“Yes, I know. You tell me every week. I didn’t say you couldn’t sing, I just said you couldn’t sing that particular song.”
The previous week, Andy had decided to give the pub his rendit
ion of the old Sex Pistols classic “My Way”. His rendition included bellowing the “C” word as loud as he possibly could over the microphone.
It was loud enough to be heard in the restaurant next door. Debbie was extremely annoyed and had given strict instructions that he was not to sing that particular song ever again. It had gone onto the banned list, along with Yogi Bear, and various others that Debbie had objected to over the years.
“What about Eminem, then?” asked Andy, swaying and slopping his pint all over the floor.
“Right, for a start, Debbie wouldn’t like it and secondly, there’s no way you’d be able to keep up with the lyrics in the state you’re in.”
“Living Next Door To Alice?” he suggested.
“What’s that?” she asked? It sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place it. It was long before her era.
“Just an old seventies classic,” replied Andy. “Nothing dodgy.”
“Alright, we’ll give that a go then,” she said and she called up the song. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 9pm. It looked like it was going to be a long night.
Chapter Six – 12th April 2029 (9.20pm)
The champagne cork emerged from the bottle with a loud pop and hit the kitchen ceiling. Quickly Charlie began to pour out a glass before it bubbled over. He and Kaylee had something to celebrate.
“You do realise I won’t be able to have any of that, don’t you?” she said.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” replied Charlie. “You can have a little sip, though, can’t you? Just so we can have a little toast. I’ve been saving this bottle for a special moment and I can’t think of any more special than this.”
“Go on then,” she replied.
He poured a small amount into a second glass, and they raised glasses to each other.
“To us,” said Charlie. “The three of us.”
“Could be four,” said Kaylee. “Twins run in my family.”
