by Jason Ayres
“Why does that not surprise me?” said Kent. Then he asked the question he really wanted the answer to: “What about Kay? Have you seen her?”
Kay was Kent’s teenage love interest, one with whom he had shared an intriguing adventure many years before when both had time-travelled into their own past. Lauren knew nothing of this and that was the way he intended to keep it. So it seemed they both had secrets they wanted to keep from each other.
“I haven’t seen her in the flesh for years. I don’t know if she still lives around here,” replied Lauren. “However, I have seen her on the TV, would you believe? She’s one of the presenters on that show, The New Australia. Have you seen it?”
Kent hadn’t, but he was going to make sure that he did as soon as he got the chance.
The two of them continued catching up on old times until they were interrupted by further banging on the door. Lauren looked up, noticing the time on the old-fashioned analogue clock behind the bar.
“Bloody hell, it’s ten past eleven. That’ll be the pensioners wanting their coffee. Come on, you can give me a hand.”
Lauren was starting as she meant to go on. She was determined that there was going to be no bossing her about anymore if they were going to be partners. If anything, the boot was going to be on the other foot.
They opened the door and half a dozen or so senior citizens shuffled in slowly. Many remembered Kent, and expressed their surprise at seeing him again. They didn’t seem unhappy about it, which encouraged him. Once they were settled with their coffee in their usual seats by the bay window that faced the street, Lauren turned her attention back to Kent.
“By the way, I’m going out for a meal with some friends tonight,” she began. “So you can look after the place for me. It’s only Tuesday so it shouldn’t be too strenuous. It will give you a chance to get back into the swing of things.”
“Hey,” protested Kent. “Who’s in charge, here?”
“We both are,” said Lauren. “Remember, you’ve been away a long time. A lot of things have changed. Until you get back up to speed, it’s probably best you follow my lead.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” said Kent sarcastically. It didn’t look like much had changed to him. A pub was a pub. How hard could it be? Pulling a few pints, sticking the money in the till?
“Now then,” he added. “I’ve got all my stuff in the car out the front. Where should I put it?”
“The room at the back overlooking the garden is free,” replied Lauren. “You can have that.”
Lauren knew that room was tiny, but there was no way she was giving up the large room at the front.
“I was kind of hoping to get my old room back,” said Kent, obviously meaning hers.
“Let’s be honest, Kent,” she said. “Who is more likely to need a double bed these days – me or you? It’s me, isn’t it? And at least down at the back of the pub, you’ll get a bit of peace and quiet – you know, when I’m entertaining.”
It wasn’t actually that sort of screaming she was worried about. She didn’t want him to hear her having her nightmares.
Kent didn’t reply, but just shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious from his body language that he couldn’t think of a response.
“I rest my case,” she said. “Now, you had better get your stuff in, as the lunchtime crowd will be in soon and I could use a hand.”
He didn’t argue, heading back out of the front door to collect whatever belongings he had left in his car.
Lauren was pleased with the way things had gone. This ought to all work out very nicely. She was in charge and she was going to make sure it stayed that way.
With everything sorted on the home front, she was now ready to turn her attention to the evening ahead. Her mind was made up. It was time to tell the others about her dreams.
Chapter Three
July 2040
Hannah Benson, head of the local police, and her daughter, Jessica, were the first guests to arrive at the restaurant.
Hannah checked her look in the mirror as their driverless car crunched its way up the gravel drive, sending up clouds of dust as it went. The ground was bone dry on this gorgeous summer evening, the kind which she and everyone else in Britain had been starved of in recent years.
She felt she looked pretty good for her forty-nine years, although she had to work hard now to fight the natural signs of aging. She dyed her hair regularly to keep the grey at bay and moisturised her skin daily, but it was worth it. In a few months’ time she would be reunited with her lover for the first time in sixteen years. She wanted to preserve herself so that when he first saw her, his reaction would be that she hadn’t changed a bit.
Beside her in the car was her beautiful and blossoming daughter, Jessica. Just turned twenty, she was a stunner, inheriting her mother’s looks and more. Hannah had been pretty in her youth, and still was, but she knew she had never been as beautiful as Jess was right now. Clearly she had inherited some good genes from her father.
Hannah was thinking about Jess’s father now, wishing he could be here with them tonight. He had been absent on so many occasions while Jess had been growing up. Peter was the man she had met and fallen in love with around the time the team had first discovered the first time bubble. It was that discovery and the subsequent consequences that had brought them together, but had also turned out to be a double-edged sword, keeping them apart for all these years.
Her consolation and constant reminder of him through all this time had been Jess. Their daughter, conceived in the tunnel beneath the railway line after one of his trips through time, had inherited not just his looks, but his brains, too. Following in her father’s footsteps, she had just completed her second year of teacher training. With college finished for the year, she had recently returned home to spend the summer with Hannah.
Life had been tough for Jess, having to grow up without her father, through no fault of his own. She was not the child of a single mother, abandoned by an errant father, but a victim of unique and unusual circumstances. Jess’s only memory of him was of a fleeting meeting in that same railway underpass where she had been conceived. It was a long time ago – she had been just four years old.
Why had he been gone so long? He had been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer, for which a cure was being developed, but not soon enough to save him. Taking inspiration from famous people who had frozen their bodies in the hope that medical science might later be able to revive them, Peter had come up with an idea. He took the decision to freeze himself, not in ice, but in time.
Neither he nor Hannah had expected him to be gone this long. He should have been back with them ten years ago, but the unfortunate timing of the Black Winter had left him trapped underground and unreachable. Rather than die in an icy tomb, he had been left with no other option but to enter the bubble again, knowing it would take him forward a further decade in time.
Since then, both Jess and her mother had been counting the years until they would see him again. Finally, that time was approaching.
“You have reached your destination,” announced the car in a soulless female voice. “Please do not remove your seat belts until I have parked.”
This same female voice had been used for countless devices going back to the early days of sat navs. It was something Jess had noticed and now decided to comment on.
“You’d think they would make these driverless cars a bit chattier,” remarked Jess. “Our vacuum bot’s got more personality than this.”
Jess had grown up in a world where talking appliances had become commonplace. Everything from toasters to shower heads seemed to give a running commentary on what was going on these days. Hannah found it annoying and intrusive, feeling nostalgic for the days when you weren’t quite sure exactly what the temperature would be when you stepped into the shower. All these technological advances had made life a little too predictable for her liking; even if it meant avoiding the occasional scalding if someone flushed the toilet while the shower
was running.
Getting out of the car, the two of them soaked up the warm evening sunshine which was pouring down across the cornfield opposite the restaurant. It made Hannah feel reassured about the world, as she gazed at the heads of the developing crops swaying gently in the breeze. There were a few bees buzzing around some wild flowers growing at the edge of the field. She wasn’t sure if they were real bees or the artificial ones from this distance, but they looked real. That was encouraging, too.
Hannah hadn’t taken much notice of such things before Britain’s ecosystem was ravaged by the Black Winter. Before that, people had taken such things for granted, but the struggles of the past decade had made everyone more aware of environmental issues. For Hannah, seeing bees, real or mechanical, and food growing in the fields was immensely heartening. It showed that Mother Nature was bouncing back.
The team had arranged to meet at 7.30pm at a delightful little Italian restaurant in a small village a couple of miles out of town. Mario’s had survived more or less in its current guise for almost sixty years, resilient even after the ravages of the Black Winter. Hannah liked it for the same reason she felt nostalgic about showers that didn’t tell her what temperature the water was. It was reassuringly old-fashioned and she had a developed a notable taste for such things as middle age approached.
Was this something that happened to all people in their forties? Probably, she could remember her parents going on about the golden era of 1980s pop music and how the old songs were so much better. It must just be a generational thing.
Hannah had suggested this particular date for the meal, July 12th, for a very good reason. They were here in part to celebrate Peter’s 70th birthday – except he wasn’t really that age at all. True, it was the 70th anniversary of his birth on July 12th 1970, but since he had spent so many years frozen in time, he was, in reality, much younger. His actual biological age hadn’t changed so physically he and Hannah would now be around the same age. She had caught him up while he had been away.
As they entered the restaurant, Hannah was pleased to see that it was still exactly as it had been on all previous visits. The large, rectangular room had a rustic feel about it, with uneven wooden tables covered in traditional red and white chequered tablecloths and conservatory-style wicker chairs.
Statues of various Italian landmarks were placed at random intervals in front of a faded mural along the right-hand wall. It depicted a traditional scene of a family enjoying a meal al fresco somewhere in rural Italy that always reminded Hannah of an old Bertolli advert.
An impressive wine collection took up much of the wall on the opposite side of the restaurant. The eponymously named manager, Mario, was very proud of his collection. There must have been as many as a thousand bottles there.
The open kitchen at the back of the room was already busy, and Hannah savoured the unmistakeable smell and sizzle of fillet steaks searing on the griddle which wafted temptingly in her direction as soon as she stepped through the door.
There was a refreshing lack of technology in the restaurant. This included the staff who were all human. The robot revolution had invaded the restaurant trade, too, despite opposition from a number of high-profile celebrity chefs. One in particular had ranted and sworn on TV about how no robot would ever be able to replicate the skills and nuances of a fully trained human chef.
It wasn’t just chefs who were becoming automated. Robot waiters were becoming ubiquitous now in many large chains. Hannah had not been impressed on a recent work trip to London when one of them had had the cheek to ask her for a tip. It was one thing tipping poorly paid staff to help top up their wages – she was fine with that, but she drew the line at tipping a robot. It was just adding pure profit for the restaurant chain.
Thankfully, there were no robots in this place and hopefully never would be. Here time had stood as still as it had for Peter while he remained in the time bubble. Looking around, Hannah decided that one of the first things she would do on his return would be to bring him here for dinner. In a world full of technological advances, a place familiar and unchanged such as this might help ease him through the culture shock that being thrust into the future was sure to bring.
At the front of the restaurant they were greeted enthusiastically by Mario. Not only was he the owner, but he seemed to do pretty much everything else as well, bar the cooking. He was maître d’, head waiter, barman and wine expert, seamlessly multitasking them all.
Mario was of indeterminate age and seemed to have been there as long as the restaurant had. If Hannah had to guess his age she would have put him around mid-sixties, but he could easily have been much older. Other than a little greying around the edge of his impressively cultivated handlebar moustache, he seemed to be holding the years at bay remarkably well.
“D.I. Benson,” he said, in his impeccable Italian accent, which was as strong as ever, despite him having lived in England most of his life. “It is wonderful to see you again. I have your table ready for you, over here.”
He led them over to a long, wooden table on the right-hand side of the restaurant, in front of a six-foot-high statue of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Ever the gentleman, he pulled their chairs out for both her and Jess, seeking assurances that they were comfortable, before heading off to get them some bread rolls and the wine list.
Hannah wasn’t comfortable at all. She had a wobbly chair with a wonky leg, but she didn’t let on. She didn’t even mind, really. It was all part of the charm of the place.
Next to arrive were Charlie, Kaylee and Lauren. About ten years younger than Hannah, they had all met her after the police became involved during the initial discovery of the time bubble. Lauren didn’t have a car so had begged a lift off the others with the promise she would buy the first round of drinks. It would likely be the first of many.
Charlie and Kaylee had been teenage sweethearts, marrying in their twenties and completely devoted to each other. They had achieved that rare thing that few found in the modern world – they had found their soulmate at the first attempt.
The two of them had busy lives, combining bringing up two young children with careers in meteorology (her) and marketing (him). Their home was only a few miles away, a lovely 19th-century cottage in a nearby village that they had bought a couple of years before.
Kaylee was stunning, tall, blonde and beautiful, her body in great shape for a woman who had given birth to two children. Charlie was starting to show some early signs of approaching middle age, his jet black hair starting to thin and a paunch beginning to develop around his middle. He liked to blame this on his job, but a devotion to fine food and wine had also played its part.
Working as a buyer at the head office of a big company in Oxford, he spent more time than he would like chained to his desk or in the car travelling to meet suppliers. These meetings invariably involved large lunches and business dinners which he never seemed to find the time to work off.
A mere moment after the three of them had got out of their car, Josh and Alice pulled into the car park. They had come from further afield, driving up from Oxford, about twenty miles away.
They were scientists based at the university. She was an astrophysicist, he a physics professor and lecturer. Both spent every spare moment on their researches into time travel, a subject on which Josh considered himself to be the world’s leading expert. It hadn’t made him famous, though, in the same way that the likes of Stephen Hawking had been. In Josh’s case, he had to curb his natural streak to boast about his achievements.
Because of all the time-travelling events he had already experienced since discovering the original time bubble at the tender age of seventeen, he and the others had decided that everything they knew must remain a secret just between them.
Apart from Jess, who had not even been born at that time, Alice was the only member of the team who had not been around in those heady days of 2018. Not long after Josh had begun a relationship with her, he had quickly realised that her knowledge would be an asset
to the team.
At one of their regular meet-ups he had asked the others if they minded bringing her into the circle. They were happy to oblige, which was just as well, as the two of them were married now. Her help had been invaluable and he would not have got anywhere near as far in his research without her.
The five of them headed inside, where Mario dutifully ushered them through to join Hannah and Jess.
Within a couple of minutes, all seven were seated at the table, excitedly exchanging greetings, and eagerly ordering drinks.
“The wine rack is looking as impressive as ever, Mario,” remarked Charlie, casting his eye over the display of bottles lined up on the wall directly opposite him. “I think we had better have a couple of bottles.”
“Red or white?” enquired Mario. “I remember you like your red wine, Mr Adams. I have some very nice Chianti right now. It’s a ’28, which I am sure you will know is an excellent year.”
“It certainly is,” remarked Charlie, who knew his wines. Anything from the 2020s was infinitely preferable to the more recent vintages. Although Italy may not have been as heavily hit as Northern Europe by the Black Winter, generally poorer weather in the 2030s meant that most of the wines produced during that period were nothing to write home about.
The older wines were definitely worth getting hold of, and Charlie had been busy on that front of late. Their recently acquired cottage had its own cellar, and he hoped one day to have a collection to rival Mario’s.
“We’ll definitely have a bottle of that,” said Charlie. “And we’d better have some white, too.” He didn’t drink white wine, but he knew that it was Kaylee and Hannah’s preferred choice. “Whatever you recommend,” he added.
“One bottle of each, sir?” asked Mario.
“That’s not nearly enough,” piped up Josh. “Better make it two of each. That should do for starters.”
“Make mine a vodka and lemonade,” chipped in Lauren who wasn’t a wine drinker. “Better make it a double. You joining me, Jess?” She knew the young girl liked her vodka.
