Whatever the reason, he wasn’t too bothered. He was too busysavouring every mouthful. It tasted so good that he vowed to make sure he had someeggy soldiers when he got back to his own time. He rarely, if ever, ate breakfastbefore leaving the house in the morning, another thing Debs was always nagginghim about. Well, that would have to change when he got back. It wasn’t as if hewould be in any hurry to leave the house in the morning now he was unemployed.She would probably mock him, but sod her. If he wanted eggy soldiers, he’dbloody well have them.
Thoughts of the future were banished as he heard the unmistakeablesound of Tarzan’s jungle cry coming from the living room. He got up and rushedin to find his sister, Annie, sitting in front of their old television, a huge,wooden box with four buttons on the front. She was watching an episode of ashow he’d long forgotten about, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.
Annie was 10, and growing up fast. She’d had a growth spurtrecently and was now several inches taller than him. She had inherited hermother’s long, dark hair but had hers tied up in pigtails. Kent remembered how heused to pull them cruelly when they argued, but he had no desire to do thatnow. He was just really pleased to see her in this shape and form, beforeeverything had changed.
He had hardly seen her in recent years. When she waseighteen she had gone away to university in London. Apart from a few holidaysas a fresher, she had never come back.
She had met a young stockbroker during her second year of university.By the time she had graduated with a law degree, they had bought a swanky flat overlookingthe Thames. They got married soon afterwards. Buying just at the right time, atthe bottom of the housing market in 1995, that flat soon exploded in value andbefore long they were property millionaires. In the space of a few short yearsthey climbed the career and property ladders, started a family and ended up ina stunning six-bedroom house in Surrey.
None of that would have bothered him if it had not been for thefact that her husband, the utterly irritating Ian, couldn’t resist rubbing Kent’snose in it every single time that he saw the pair of them. He was absolutelysick of hearing how much their house was worth. It seemed to go up by about a millionevery time he saw them. Thankfully the gaps between encounters were growing as Kenthad done his utmost of late to avoid having to see them unless he absolutelyhad to.
The most recent occasion had been a couple of years ago at acousin’s family wedding. Kent had tried to invent a fictional work conference toget out of attending. He hated weddings, but Debs had seen through it andinsisted he went along. Short of shooting himself in the foot to be invalidedout of duty, there was no other way out of it.
When they had arrived at the wedding reception, having successfullyavoided Ian at the church, he was dismayed to discover that whichever bastardhad organised the seating plan had put them at the same table. Ian had usedthis as an opportunity to spend the entire afternoon belittling Kent. He barelybothered to thinly veil his insults: in Ian’s mind he was above Kent on the socialscale which gave him the right to talk down to him to his heart’s content.
“So, still living in that old terraced house near the railwayline?” was Ian’s opening gambit in his attempt to steer the conversation roundto house prices.
“We like it there,” said Kent.
“Yeah, it’s not a bad little place that, I suppose. Prettygood for a policeman’s salary, I would have thought. Still, I wouldn’t want tobe so close to that new HS2 line they’re building: that’s going to be a bitnoisy when the trains start running.”
“If it ever gets finished,” replied Kent. He couldn’t seethe point of the whole project himself.
“Oh it’ll get finished alright,” replied Ian, confidently. “It’sa shame you won’t have a station, but then you can’t expect it to stop at everycommon or garden little market town. That would be very inconvenient for those travellingfrom London to Manchester on important business.”
“Oh, no, we couldn’t have that, could we, Ian?” Kent had repliedwith no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice. Ian wouldn’t notice: he wasso thick-skinned it always went straight over his head.
“So I expect you’ll be using the new line, then, importantfella like yourself?” he added.
“Oh definitely, one of our main clients is in Manchester andit’s going to be great zipping up there so fast. It’s OK in the current trains.My company normally pays for first class so I don’t have to muck in with the oiksbut it’s a bit slow. Time is money to a man in my position. And the mobilesignal keeps dropping out when I’m talking to clients – that’s very inconvenient.”
“Sounds terrible,” said Kent, insincerely. He could imagineIan on the train, talking loudly into his phone to demonstrate to the otherpassengers how important he was.
“That won’t be a problem on the new trains; it’s all goingto be built in – superfast broadband, the lot. Plus, on the new line I’ll beable to get there and back in a day, saves me staying overnight. I’m not thatkeen on Manchester. It’s alright, but full of northern people, you know what Imean? They just don’t have the same level of sophistication you get in London.”
And so it had gone on, all through the meal and even duringthe speeches. The worst bit was when Ian began to describe his plans to installa swimming pool and how much it was going to add to the value of the house. Hewas predicting that it would be worth at least £7 million. All through this,Annie sat there lapping it all up as usual,
