Someday a situation was bound to arise in which Alice wouldbe only too happy to hand over that key.
THE END…for now. The next story in the series is MidlifeCrisis.
Midlife Crisis
No Future
November 2018
Richard Kent was having a bad day.
This was nothing unusual. He had a lot of bad days. But thiswas an exceptionally dismal one, even by his standards. At forty-two years oldhe had just been dismissed from the only job he had ever known. After twodecades in the police force, he had been unceremoniously booted out on his ear.
They had dressed it up and called it voluntary redundancybut he knew the sack when he saw it. He had been given an offer he couldn’trefuse: jump or be pushed. So he had jumped. And now here he was, contemplatinganother jump.
It was 4.30pm on a freezing cold November afternoon and he wasstanding on top of the multistorey car park that dominated the skyline of his hometown. The building was relatively new, part of an unprecedented amount of localbuilding going on in what was rapidly becoming just another bland London commutertown.
The sky was a huge red and gold expanse to the west wherethe sun had just set, a brilliant display of colour that complemented the many leavesblowing around in the autumn breeze. As far as Kent was concerned it may aswell have been setting on his life.
He hadn’t just had a bad day; he’d had a bad decade. In fact,thinking back over his life in general, he would have to conclude that it hadbeen all downhill since the Millennium.
There just did not seem to be any point in carrying on. Notonly were the best days of his life seemingly behind him, but he also hatedjust about everything about the modern world. From the way it was treating him,apparently it hated him back. As for the future, that was a huge, increasinglyalien landscape from which he would only become further and further disconnected.
Had there been anyone up on the roof with him, he could haveranted and raved for an hour about his woes. But even if there had been anyonethere, would they have listened? He had vented his frustrations enough times inthe pub and no one there took any notice. The core group of regulars in The RedLion were in just as miserable a state as he was. Most of the others who came intothe pub were people half his age and he had nothing in common with them. Theywere too busy being young, carefree and enjoying themselves. They were not remotelyinterested in anything he had to say.
It seemed like only yesterday that Kent had been just likethem, having fun and ignoring the has-beens at the bar. He had never evencontemplated the fact that one day he would become one of them.
If anyone had asked him there and then what was wrong withhis life he would have responded with: “Where do I start?” The list wasendless. The security of his job had been ripped away from him, his teenagekids either ignored him or took the piss out of him, and his wife, Debs, naggedhim continually. As for any sort of sex life, well, that had dwindled to thepoint where he could describe all the action he’d had in the past year on theback of a postage stamp.
He hated modern music, television and popular culture ingeneral. The town he had grown up in was unrecognisable. Nearly all the great,old pubs had closed down or been modernised to such an extent that Kent consideredthem ruined, and all the decent shops had gone.
All of that would not have been so bad if he still had his health,but that was going to pieces as well. His once flowing locks of dark hair wererapidly thinning on top, he had ballooned in weight to eighteen stone, and his eyesightwas rapidly declining. On top of all that he had suffered from attacks of goutand piles, and for the past five years had been taking a cocktail of pillsevery day to control his blood pressure. In short, not only was his mind amess, his body was as well.
There was no point in moaning about it to Debs or anyoneelse: they never had any sympathy. She blamed all of his ills on the pub. All,that was, apart from the eyesight. This she had cruelly suggested was down tohis own self-abuse after discovering a stack of hardcore pornographic DVDs thathe had been hiding for years in the garden shed. His lame excuse that they hadbeen confiscated in a police raid after being illegally smuggled into thecountry had not been believed.
Considering how unforthcoming she had been in the bedroom inrecent years, Kent felt that she had been unduly harsh, but then she was aboutmost things.
Other men in Kent’s situation had affairs, but this was nota road he had any intention of traversing. He had seen the mess it had gotother people into and he could do without that aggravation. Besides, he was painfullyaware that he couldn’t have an affair even if he wanted to. The sad truth wasthat women didn’t fancy him anymore.
In his youth, attractive, willing girls seemed to be everywhere.At the police Christmas parties back in the 1990s there were always plenty ofWPCs who were keen for a snog and a grope in the stationery cupboard.
That sort of thing doubtless still went on but the girlsdoing it were twenty years younger than him now and there were a whole newbreed of alpha males for them to play with. Kent had spent most of last year’s Christmasparty standing at the bar doing more or less the same thing he did all year inhis local pub – moaning.
The only woman who had made Kent any sort of offer in recenttimes was Kay, a drunken, middle-aged trollop in his local pub. He had knownher since schooldays when she had been the brightest and prettiest girl in theclass, but she had squandered her early promise on alcohol. These days she
