“What?” said Kent, shocked at this revelation. “I’m not gay,surely you must know that?”
“Well, I do now, but I didn’t then. He said I was wasting mytime and that I should go out with him instead.”
Kent thought back. She was right; he had gone out with herfor a while. What a bastard. How many more times had Glen screwed him over whenthey were younger? The two of them had fallen out for good by their earlytwenties after Glen stole his fiancée from him, but this new revelation was yetanother slap in the face.
Although Kent was repulsed by the drunken, middle-aged Kay,he was still mortified at the thought that he had missed out on being with herwhen she was younger. Did she feel the same way? Was that why she was alwaystrying it on with him? It was time to ask her the same question he had askedthe others.
“If you could go back in time, would you do thingsdifferently?” he asked, for the third time that evening.
“Too right I would,” she exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have goneout with that arsehole for a start. Do you know what he did to me? Got mepregnant and then told me to get rid of it or he would dump me. So I had anabortion and do you know what happened? He dumped me anyway.”
This was more news to Kent’s ears. Glen hadn’t told himanything about the pregnancy. It seemed he was an even bigger bastard than Kenthad given him credit for.
“If I knew then what I know now, I’d have ignored him whenhe said you were gay and have gone straight to you and asked you to take me tothe ball,” she added. “And I certainly would not have married that bastard Iended up with. Oh, Richard, why couldn’t it all have been different?”
She was getting extremely emotional and Kent could see she wason the verge of tears. This wouldn’t do at all. He didn’t want her crying onhis shoulder. He made the excuse that he needed to go to the toilet and headedoff to the urinals.
While he was relieving himself of his first couple of pints,he thought about what she had said and particularly about Glen. He really oughtto do something about him, but what? There was no point going back in time andconfronting him if none of it was going to make any difference to the present.He hadn’t even seen him for years, not since he had gone off to join the Army.
As for Kay, drunk and annoying as she was, he couldn’t helpfeeling sorry for her. He felt pretty bad for himself, he could have gone outwith the prettiest girl in school, but Glen had wrecked that for him as well.Not for the first time since this whole time-travelling business had started,he felt feelings of anger and frustration rising within him.
When he got back to the bar, Kay had joined in with theothers who were still talking about karaoke. The teenage girl Kent had seenearlier was at the bar ordering drinks. She had quite a diminutive stature, no morethan five foot tall with short, black hair cut into a bob. He had seen hersomewhere before, but he couldn’t quite remember where.
“What can I get you, Lauren?” asked Craig.
“A blue WKD and three Jägerbombs, please,” he heard hersaying.
Lauren. That was it. He did know who she was. She was aclose friend of the girl who had gone missing a few weeks back.
She was leaning provocatively against the bar, giving Craiga good view of her cleavage, as well as a view of her rear to the twoappreciative lads who were eyeing her up from the pool table. Kent didn’t thinkthis was really on. He knew for a fact the girl was still at school doing her ALevels. She couldn’t be more than seventeen at the most.
After she had gone back to the table, he confronted Craigabout it.
“You do know that girl’s underage, don’t you? You could loseyour licence if you got caught serving her.”
“What do you care?” replied Craig. “You’re not in the policeanymore so why worry about it?”
“You do know, then,” said Kent.
“She showed me some ID, when she first came in here a fewweeks ago, a student union card or something. It looked fine to me,” saidCraig.
“You don’t remember what we talked about at the lastPubwatch meeting, then? One of the main items on the agenda, the bit about fakeIDs?”
Kent had been the head of the local Pubwatch committee, ajob he had quite enjoyed as the local landlords used to butter him up with theodd free pint here and there to keep him sweet.
“Look, she’s shown me ID, that’s good enough,” protestedCraig. “Fact is, I need customers like her. I’ve told you how much I’mstruggling. She generates a lot of revenue.”
“I wouldn’t have thought teenage schoolgirls would have hadthat much cash to splash around,” remarked Kent, drily.
“It’s not her cash she’s splashing,” replied Craig. “There’snever any shortage of men lining up to buy her a drink. Look.”
Kent looked up to the pool table at the end of the roomwhere Lauren was lining up a shot and deliberately sticking out her arse at thesame time. The two lads’ eyes were on stalks, and that probably wasn’t all. Ohto be young again, thought Kent.
Then he looked over at Kay and remembered that twenty-fiveyears ago she was just as gorgeous and as big a flirt as this girl was now.Time could be very cruel and there was no way to fight against its ravages.This girl, Lauren, probably hadn’t a care in the world, blissfully unaware thatone day all of this would end.
He may as well let her get on with it and enjoy it while shecould. In another quarter of a century, she would probably be just like Kay wasnow. And what would Kay be like in another quarter of a century? What sort offuture did she have to look forward to? It was all so desperately sad.
“You’re right,” he said to
