“I want to go to the kids’ club!” said Luke, loudly.
“I want to go to the swimming pool!” shouted Jack, evenlouder.
Debs sat up and said, “Don’t you two come with a volumecontrol?” Kent looked at her to see she looked tired and ruffled, with a real bedheadof hair. Had they done anything the previous evening? he wondered. She did tendto be a little friskier on holidays, plus this was over a decade ago, beforetheir sex life had gone into a nosedive.
She may have looked tired, it was more than compensated forby the years that the trip back a decade or so had taken off her.
Just as on his previous trip, Kent’s thoughts reverted tohis base carnal instincts, but he quickly dismissed the thought. There wasn’tmuch he could do with two small children bouncing around.
Therein lay one of the sources of his frustration. Beforethe kids had come along they had had a fantastic sex life. After that thedesire was still there, but with two demanding little boys around all the timethe opportunities were reduced. Parenting also meant that they were tired mostof the time.
Once the children were older and starting to have their ownlives, it was too late. They had slipped into a middle-aged pipe and slippersroutine. They rarely went out anymore, instead spending their evenings in frontof the telly, lolling about in old clothes, snacking and putting on weight. Itcertainly wasn’t a scenario that lent itself to the passionate quickies on thesofa that they had enjoyed in their younger years.
Kent made a mental vow that at the end of this day he wasgoing to give Debs a seriously good seeing-to. And it wasn’t one he was going tohave to feel guilty about this time. Even if this was a different Debs, the youngerand alternate Debs of Universe 2.0, she was still his wife.
“We want our breakfast,” said Jack. “There’s no food.”
“There won’t be,” said Kent. “We have to go to therestaurant for our meals, remember?”
“Have they got Clover butter?” asked Luke, who was anotoriously fussy eater. “I don’t like their butter.”
“You know they haven’t,” said Debs. “They don’t do it here. You’lljust have to have what they’ve got.”
Jack joined in, asking, “Will they have Marmite today?”
“I told you yesterday, they don’t do that here, either,” saidDebs. “I am sure you can find something to eat down there, they’ve got virtuallyeverything else you could ever want.”
She got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt. “Come on, you,”she said to Kent. “We’d better get up. It’s ten to nine already.”
It seemed to take an age to get ready. Kent had forgottenhow much longer everything used to take when the children were little. It was almosthalf past nine by the time they made it downstairs. He had fond memories of therestaurant where everything was self-serve and they ate two or three times aday. He had been in his early thirties at the time, before he had reallystarted to pile on the pounds. Back then, he could seemingly eat and drink limitlessamounts and get away with it.
Before coming down to breakfast he’d taken a good look athis body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and washappy with what he saw. He was even happier when he found a much-loved old pairof blue and white swim shorts that he had long forgotten. Checking out thelabel, he noticed that they were a 32” waist. Nowadays it was more like 42”. Whenhad he started to pile on the weight? It must have been around the time of thisholiday.
He could hardly be blamed, no one could. The food in therestaurant was fantastic. Although it was only officially a 4* hotel it could easilyhave passed for a 5*.
Looking around the room at his fellow holidaymakers, Kentfelt positively thin by comparison. There was no shortage of flab on displayhere and it would be even worse when everyone got to the pool. With Debssorting out breakfast for the boys, he was free to wander up to the hot foodcounter. There was a lot more on offer to suit him here than there had been atGreenland’s and they even made omelettes and pancakes to order. He was going tomake the most of this.
That was if he could get near the food. Blocking his way tothe counter were two women scooping fried eggs and hash browns onto theirplates as if there was no tomorrow. As soon as he saw them he remembered who theywere – Tess and Tina, the terrible twins from Tyneside.
The two women were identical in every respect. They had the samebleached blonde hair, same piercings and even their tattoos wereindistinguishable. Despite being barely five feet tall, between them they couldeasily have tipped the scales above the forty-stone mark. He would be lucky if therewas any food left by the time these two were finished.
Not only were the twins extremely fat, they were alsoextremely loud and argued constantly. Right now they were fighting over thelast of the bacon. There were about twelve rashers in the tray, but apparentlythat wasn’t enough to share between them.
When they turned away, having pulled every last scrap fromthe tray, Kent marvelled at how much food they had managed to pile onto theirplates. It wasn’t so much the greed, that went without saying, but the sheerphysical impossibility of it.
From the base of their plates upwards, the food seemed to spreadoutwards like some giant mushroom cloud. He couldn’t see any way the food couldbe staying on the plate, it was as if it was defying the laws of gravity. Kent consideredhimself a past master at the skill of filling up a plate at buffets, but he wasclearly in the infancy compared to these two. They had got the skill down to a fineart.
As soon as they were gone, one of the chefs came and put
