Midlife Crisis (Second Chances Book 1) Page 8

  “There you go,” he said, handing him several huge wads of notes. “I think you’ve more than earned this today. And would you believe it, despite paying you out all this we’ve still made a tidy profit on the race. It seems like you were the only punter in the entire town who backed it!”

  Kent looked at the money and wondered how he was going to get it all home. This was the ultimate win-win situation. Not only had he prevented the robbers getting away with £30,000+, but he was also now copping the lot all for himself. And he hadn’t even had to do anything illegal.

  “You haven’t got that wheelbarrow handy, by any chance?” he joked.

  “I’ll have a look in the back, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a rucksack I can lend you. It’s the least I can do under the circumstances.”

  While he was in the back, another thought occurred to Kent. As this had gone so well, perhaps another little investment might be in order. When the manager came back with the rucksack, Kent was waiting eagerly with a new request for him.

  “I was wondering,” began Kent. “What odds would you give me against Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2016?”

  Fools Gold

  November 2018

  Kent was back on the rooftop, having thoroughly enjoyed his trip back to 2013.

  After the excitement of the afternoon he had been determined to make the most of what remained of the day. He had showered Debs with cash on his return home and immediately whizzed the whole family out for the evening. They had headed to Oxford, starting off with some tenpin bowling and following it up with a slap-up meal at one of the city’s finest restaurants.

  Debs hadn’t thought they would get into the place. Michelin-starred restaurants didn’t tend to have vacancies on Saturday nights, but a swift hundred pounds slipped into the maître d’s pocket had soon sorted that out. It was true what Kent had heard but never previously been flush enough to find out. There was always a table available at the right price.

  Kent had immediately ordered a bottle of champagne with which to toast their good fortune. He then proceeded to order the best of everything on the menu. There was no house red or the second-cheapest bottle of wine on the menu this time. He went straight to the £70 bottle at the bottom of the list. It complemented his fillet steak perfectly.

  He didn’t have to worry about driving; it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford the taxi fare home. As for the kids, they had behaved impeccably for once. Luke, a notoriously fussy eater as a child, had not even complained at the lack of chicken nuggets on the menu.

  During the evening the family had excitedly discussed what they would do with the money. When he added his internet bets to the money he’d taken from the betting shop, Kent worked out he had won over a quarter of a million pounds on Aurora’s Encore. He had come clean to Debs, slightly concerned that she would be furious when she realised how much he must have bet to have won that amount in the first place. But she wasn’t angry in the slightest, not with £250,000+ in the bank. If the horse had lost, she would have strung him up by his bollocks but it hadn’t, so all was well.

  He also said nothing to her yet about the money he’d put down on Leicester City. That could wait. By the time he got back to 2018, he was expecting to be a millionaire and they would be living the life of Riley.

  For now, Kent had modestly suggested paying off the mortgage and having a nice holiday but Debs was more ambitious than that. Once again she mentioned her oft-quoted desire to open a restaurant. With a million plus quid in the bank, that could certainly be on the cards.

  As for the kids, they knew what they wanted – a holiday in Florida. Kent was more than happy to agree, it was just a shame he was going to miss it, jumping five years back into the future at the end of the night. Still, he would be rich in 2018 so he could holiday wherever he wanted then. And if the police still wanted to kick him out, who cared? He wouldn’t need to work anymore anyway; he could take early retirement and really begin to enjoy life at last.

  Arriving back in 2018, Kent was excitedly looking forward to finding out what changes he would find in his life. What would his world be like now? Would he even be living in the same house? That could be a problem. How would he get home if he didn’t know where home was? As problems went, it was a rather nice one to have. He wondered what his new place would be like. It might have a swimming pool. Or maybe even some stables.

  Kent shook himself out of his daydreams when he saw that the angel was waiting for him, still in the familiar guise of his younger self.

  “So how did that go, then?” he asked. “Did you do everything you wanted to do?”

  “Absolutely brilliantly,” beamed Kent. “In fact, it went so well, I’m not sure I’ll even need you again. My life’s about to get a whole lot better.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” replied the angel, with a knowing look on his face. “Don’t be too hasty dismissing my services. You’ve still got four more trips to look forward to. You may as well enjoy them.”

  “I think I’m going to be too busy enjoying myself in the here and now to be honest,” replied Kent, cockily. “Thanks for all you’ve done for me, but perhaps you should go and find someone else to cheer up now. I’m sure there must be plenty of other deserving cases.”

  “But isn’t there anywhere else you’d like to go? Any old family members you’d like to visit, old friends you’d like to see?”

  All Kent was interested in right now was the money. “No, what’s the point? There’s no point living in the past, is there? Look to the future and all that. Mine’s looking pretty rosy, but then I expect you know that already.”

  “Well, just in case you change your mind, I’ll be back here at the same time tomorrow,” said the angel.

  “Sure, whatever,” replied Kent, in a blasé and dismissive manner. “Catch you later.”

  “Oh you certainly will,” was the angel’s final comment before vanishing.

  Kent headed for the lifts and the long walk home. It was windy on top of the car park and starting to rain, the chill of the November wind slicing into his old and inadequate jacket. Never mind, he could buy himself a new one now. He quite fancied one of those big sheepskin coats, the kind that the football commentators used to wear on Match of the Day.

  He remembered his earlier thought about where home might or might not be and pulled out his wallet. Checking his driving licence, he was semi-relieved to see that his address hadn’t changed. They must have paid the mortgage off and stayed put, then. That was fair enough; perhaps they had decided to enjoy the money rather than tying it all up in property. He just hoped he hadn’t foolishly blown the whole lot in the intervening years. He wasn’t going to get any enjoyment out of it now if that was the case.

  He walked out of the town centre with a spring in his step, despite the rain which was now starting to lash down around him. By the time he got back to the house he was soaked.

  “Doesn’t look any different,” he remarked out loud. Debs’s old Peugeot 206 was still on the drive in its usual place. That was odd. He would have thought she might have got herself a better car with his little windfall. He certainly wouldn’t have denied her if she had asked. She almost certainly would have done. She was always saying she wanted a new car. They had bought the Peugeot brand new in 2003 but now it was getting near the end of its life.

  The lights were on in the house, giving Kent a sense of déjà vu. It was a feeling he was becoming extremely familiar with thanks to his recent activities. Here, everything was exactly as it had been the previous evening other than the weather. Tonight it was wet and windy instead of crisp and cold.

  He turned the key in the lock, opened the front door and went straight through to the kitchen. Reliable as ever, Debs was there slicing some onions.

  “Hey, babe,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  If he was expecting a similar reaction to his use of this term of endearment to that of the previous evening, he was about to be sorely disappointed.

 
“Don’t you babe me!” she snapped. “Where have you been? You said you were going out to get a paper and you’ve been gone two hours. Not in that pub, I hope? I am not having you turning into one of those blokes who pisses his redundancy money up against the wall.”

  So, they had still made him redundant, then. It seemed his heroics in foiling the robbery had counted for nothing in the long run. And he said as much out loud.

  “I still can’t believe they kicked me out, not after the service I’ve given them over the years. What about when I caught that gang from robbing the betting shop practically single-handed? I should have got a medal for that.”

  Maybe he had. He wouldn’t know. “I didn’t get one, did I?” he asked Debs, with a hopeful look.

  Debs was looking at him with a perplexed look on her face.

  “What in the name of bloody hell are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You know, you must remember. Five years ago, on Grand National Day, the armed raid on the betting shop. We caught the lot of them.”

  “You have been in that pub, haven’t you? Either that or you’re losing your mind. You never caught those robbers. When did you ever catch anyone? I don’t wonder they kicked you out. You’re no bloody use to man or beast.”

  She was getting annoyed and was starting to get at him, just like she always did. The brief renaissance in their relationship the previous evening was well and truly over. She was right back to nagging fishwife mode now.

  This was all wrong. Why hadn’t her memories been changed? And come to think of it, what had happened to the money? He took a good look around the room. There was absolutely no evidence of any newfound wealth here, just as there hadn’t been outside the house.

  “What about the bet on Auroras Encore, then?” he said. He was already beginning to anticipate the response. A sense of impending doom was washing over him. Something had gone seriously wrong here and her reply merely confirmed his suspicions.

  “Oh don’t start going on about that again,” she said. “I’m sick of hearing about it. How you were going to bet on it, but forgot because you got distracted by the robbery. I’ve heard it all before, Richard. It’s just yet another of your sorry ‘woe is me’ tales.”

  This was all a load of crap, then. The angel had been playing with his mind. That’s if the angel even existed. Maybe Debs was right and he really was losing his mind. Had he simply been hallucinating all of this? It had all seemed so real. But as real as it might have seemed to him, clearly it hadn’t been real for Debs. From her perspective, nothing had changed.

  He was willing to bet that if he went up into the attic to dig out his old records, he wouldn’t find “What Difference Does It Make?” up there either.

  What he certainly didn’t need right now was a row with Debs. The disappointment at discovering all his plans had come to nought was one thing, but having her haranguing him was only going to rub salt in the wounds. There was only one thing that was going to cheer him up this evening and that was a few nice, relaxing pints in the local.

  He could just storm out in a huff, but it would only make things worse later. He would try and smooth things over and then try and think up an excuse for going out later.

  “Sorry, my love,” he said, in what he hoped would be a calming tone. “What’s for tea?”

  “I’m doing a stir-fry,” she said grumpily. “It’ll be ready in about half an hour.”

  “I’ll go and have a shower then,” he said. “Where are the boys?”

  “Upstairs in their room, I think. They said they had homework, but knowing them they will be playing on that bloody console again.”

  Kent headed up the stairs and looked in on the boys. As Debs had correctly surmised they were engrossed in some sort of football game, judging by the roar of the crowd coming from the TV.

  “Hey, boys, how’s it going?” asked Kent.

  The shrill sound of a referee’s whistle came from the screen, along with a roar of disapproval from the crowd.

  “Oh, you dirty bastard,” exclaimed Jack, his eldest, just turned sixteen. “That’s got to be a penalty.”

  “Bollocks, you dived,” replied the fourteen-year-old Luke.

  Neither had even bothered to acknowledge Kent’s presence. Was he now invisible and inaudible as well as going mad?

  “Language, boys,” he added, raising his voice in an attempt to be heard over the deafening roar from the crowd. He didn’t like hearing his offspring swear, despite this being mild compared to some of the colourful language Kent used in the pub.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Jack.

  “Sorry, Dad,” added Luke.

  Neither had even bothered to look up. There was a howl of anger from the crowd and Kent was sure he heard someone shout out something about the referee being a wanker. These games were getting very realistic these days. It reminded him of his days in the Met when he had been put on policing duty at a few Millwall home games. They hadn’t been occasions for the faint-hearted.

  “YES!” shouted Jack. “It is a penalty.”

  And that was as far as their acknowledgement of his presence went. With a sigh, he walked along the landing towards the bathroom, ready for his hot shower.

  “Hahaha, loser!” he heard Jack shout amid a massive cheer. He had clearly scored the penalty. The cry of loser hit home. He may as well have been shouting it at his dad, the way Kent was feeling right now.

  He was going to have it out with that angel the next day. How dare he play games with him like this? Before that, he had some serious drowning of his sorrows to do in the pub. And if Debs didn’t like it, she’d have to put up with it. She couldn’t expect him to stay in the house all the time now just because he hadn’t got a job.

  After much grumbling from Debs, who hadn’t thought much of his lame explanation that he needed to ‘get back out there and make contacts’, he found himself in the nice comforting atmosphere of Tuesday night in The Red Lion.

  He liked Tuesdays. There was no noisy disco and no hordes of young people to annoy him. It was the quietest night in the pub and there was never a problem getting a stool at the bar alongside the pub’s regular drunks.

  He enjoyed the banter that went on between him and the locals but had never felt fully comfortable with the situation. Although it was rarely mentioned, the fact that he was a policeman was never forgotten. The others were just that little bit too guarded around him for his liking and he knew they were careful what they said.

  The exception was Andy Green, one of the town’s biggest alcoholics, who was in The Red Lion every night. He never missed an opportunity to have a dig at Kent but it never got out of hand. Andy could be a pain in the arse, admittedly, but he knew what the limits were and didn’t cross them.

  Kent was pretty tolerant of Andy as he found a lot of his antics amusing, plus it was always handy to have someone around with a drink problem far worse than his own. It made his level of drinking acceptable by comparison.

  Maybe now Kent wasn’t in the police anymore they would be a little more accepting of him. It wasn’t like he could arrest them for anything anymore, was it? He would find out tonight. How would they react when he broke the news that he was no longer the local D.I.?

  Kent was relieved to reach the pub just as it looked like the heavens were about to open again. He pulled open the large, wooden door and strode inside. He made his way across the large stone flagstones that formed the flooring of the front part of the pub and headed for the bar.

  The Red Lion was a very old pub – 17th-century, so he had been told. The original wooden beams across the ceiling were testimony to that. Kent wasn’t particularly tall, only about five foot nine, but even he had bashed his head on them on occasion. He had complained to the landlord, Craig, about it once but he had just claimed that it wasn’t his fault because people had been much shorter in the old days.

  He could see that the place was quiet, even for a Tuesday. He looked around, taking in the scene. There couldn’t have been more than abo
ut half a dozen people in there. Apart from a couple of young lads playing pool and a teenage girl in an outrageously short skirt, there were just a few regulars at the bar. They were all familiar faces, the usual suspects as he liked to call them.

  Andy was there, of course, in his usual attire of ancient blue denim jacket and matching jeans. Kent noticed that his rapidly thinning hair looked even more greasy and unkempt than usual. He didn’t look as if he’d washed for days either. He knew Andy had lost his job a few months ago and it seemed he had really let himself go since then. Was this what happened after redundancy? Did people just give up?

  Nobby the Professor, the pub’s self-proclaimed betting expert, was also there, complete with the Racing Post on the bar. A dapper, well-dressed man with an immaculately groomed beard, he was deep in conversation with Craig about the next day’s runners.

  Alongside both of them was Kay, a divorcee who was the same age as Kent. He had known her for a long time. They had been in the same year at school together. Back then, she had been drop-dead gorgeous, a beautiful, blonde bombshell that he and most of the other boys in his class had fantasised over during their formative years.

  She was clever, too, top of the class and tipped for great things. But she had been too fond of having a good time and a few bad choices of men hadn’t helped. Never finding her true vocation in life, she had long passed the point where she had been someone with potential. Now she was just someone who could have been someone.

  Just like Andy, she was seriously letting herself go. Her face and body had seen better days and she was becoming an irritating lush on the booze. Despite that, she rarely went home alone. But the men who wanted her now weren’t ones who wanted to romance her or form a meaningful relationship. They were the sad, desperate types that hung around the pubs at closing time, desperate for sex and not caring how low they stooped to get it. She was a prime target for them, even more so as her reputation as an easy lay had grown.