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‘Hello everybody, come in, come in,’ said Jennifer, ushering them all into the house and down the hallway. ‘It’s so lovely to see you all. Oh my look at James, hasn’t he grown and doesn’t he look so like you, Henry?’
‘He’s a chip off the old block all right,’ agreed Judith, immaculate as ever in tasteful navy, which she’d offset with funky ‘weekend’ jewellery and ballet pumps. ‘No questioning who his dad is.’
Jennifer agreed totally, because actually James really did look exactly like Henry, only given that he was only ten years old, looking like a gone-to-seed, middle-aged man wasn’t necessarily a good thing. ‘So how was your journey?’ Jennifer enquired brightly, snapping out of her reverie before anyone noticed her staring.
‘Fine,’ said Judith, kissing her on both cheeks and handing her a bottle of wine. ‘Sorry we’re a bit late. Work’s been sooooo manic this week I simply had to have a bit of a chill out this morning. I bet Max did too, we’ve literally been working like Trojans this week.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Jennifer, quite wanting to punch her.
An hour and a half later than planned, lunch was finally on the verge of being served up.
The children were all starving despite having been fed various ‘just to keep you going’ snacks and were getting fractious. Judith and Henry had polished off two entire bags of Kettle Chips and had already had an argument about who was driving home. Oscar, their eighteen-month-old baby, was having a sleep upstairs and they were well into a third bottle of wine. Meanwhile, Max was sucking up to Judith so much it was making Jennifer’s skin crawl. She herself was worryingly pissed given that she still had to get lunch on the table.
As Judith roared with laughter at yet another dull work anecdote of Max’s, Jennifer flinched. The way Max was giving her his undivided attention was grounds for jealousy quite frankly, only she couldn’t be bothered to make a fuss. Instead she just felt saddened that every time she tried to join in with a vaguely witty remark he barely looked in her direction. Perhaps she should get her tits out she thought wryly. Run round the kitchen with them jiggling about.
With little enthusiasm Jennifer replenished the crisp bowl (this time with Frazzles and Pom Bears instead of posh Kettle Chips—it was all she had left). As she did so she smiled weakly at dull Henry who was sat on a stool by the island like a fat useless turd. She was just about to ask him yet another question about how his work was going when she realised she didn’t care and couldn’t be bothered. So instead she turned her back on him, and bent down to open the oven to investigate what might be happening in there. As boiling hot air blasted her in the face, she realised she was one hundred percent, definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, drunk.
She was also glad, and a little bit smug, that for once she’d cut corners by picking up (on Karen’s recommendation) some small stuffed chickens from the local deli. Not having to cook a meat dish of some description meant all she’d had to do in theory was make the roast potatoes and cobble together a salad. So why did it all feel as stressful as though she’d been preparing a banquet for eighty under the same conditions as the Masterchef final?
Seconds later she emerged from the oven once more, red in the face, sweating, and clutching the ludicrously heavy tray in an oven glove only to realise that the island needed clearing before she could put it down.
‘Max,’ she called over, to where he was deep in conversation with Judith about something tedious.
‘Max!’
‘Hey, there’s no need to yell. What is it?’ he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t snapping when in fact that was exactly what he was doing.
‘Sorry,’ she said, not sorry at all. Her hands were practically on fire. ‘I was just wondering if you could clear a space for this. It’s very heavy,’ she grimaced.
‘Oh right,’ he said, finally realising her plight.
Once dumped on the side, one by one, Jennifer lifted the little chickens out of the roasting tray and onto the chopping board. They were less chickens really, more parcels of poussin, tied up with string and stuffed with pork and herbs. Jennifer immediately decided that she wouldn’t bother fobbing the meaty creations off as her own. After all, she’d never boned a piece of meat (fnar fnar) in her life and had certainly never been arsed to tie up anything you could eat with string.
‘Ooh, those look wonderful, Jennifer,’ said Judith, gliding over to have a look at what she was about to stuff her self-satisfied face with. ‘Aren’t you lucky, Max? That’s what comes of having a wife at home who’s got time to actually create things like this. Poor Henry is lucky if I remember to buy him a ready meal aren’t you?’
‘I do work,’ said Jennifer, probably a bit defensively.
‘Do you?’ said Judith, looking first surprised and then apologetic, as if she’d just realised her error. ‘Oh god of course you do, and it goes without saying that looking after children is probably the hardest job of all. I certainly wouldn’t have had another if I’d had to stay at home and look after them,’ she honked, loudly enough for her offspring to hear and therefore quite possibly need therapy in the future.
‘No, I mean, I do work. I have a job,’ explained Jennifer ‘And I look after the kids. I work at an estate agent’s on the high street three days a week.’
‘Oh god brilliant,’ said Judith lamely, ‘that must be really fun.’
Jennifer picked up the carvers and tried not to look menacing. She really needed to eat.
‘Those look good,’ said Henry, ambling over.
‘Right, well, why don’t you all sit down?’ ordered Jennifer with meaning, wanting them all just to get out of her face while she plated up. ‘Judith, get the kids sat down. We’ll do their plates first.’
‘Oh right,’ she said, looking startled at having been asked to do anything.
Jennifer didn’t care though. She was too busy trying to figure out if the chickens were definitely cooked through. To her alarm they looked a bit pinky inside and a bit…well…unappetising really.
‘So, what’s that then?’ Max asked, also looking mildly alarmed by the colour of the meat.
‘Oh, that’s just the pork they’re stuffed with. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to look like that,’ Jennifer assured him, secretly wondering if a night on the toilet lay ahead for them all.
‘They don’t carve very well do they?’ Max added, in a muted whisper.
Jennifer gazed hopelessly at the chickens which had sort of collapsed in on themselves and were looking less and less appealing by the second. Sort of like grey and pink mush.
‘Just get it on the plates,’ she muttered, feeling deeply stressed now and too pissed and hot to handle the situation. She was pretty certain it was just the pork stuffing that was lending them that strange hue so they were just going to have to go with it. Frankly she was past caring, though she did add as an aside, ‘But make sure you give the kids the bits from around the outside.’
Once the children had all been given their plates of food (which they unanimously declared they didn’t like before having even tried it) and their drinks (one beaker of juice being knocked over immediately as tradition required), the adults got on with helping themselves to lots of salad and potatoes.
‘You didn’t make these yourself did you?’ Judith asked Jennifer, looking slightly worried as she surveyed her plate of unidentifiable meat.
And here it was, crunch time, time for Jennifer to explain that no, of course she hadn’t made them and that yes, they did look a bit weird didn’t they? And this answer was on the tip of her tongue, and yet for some reason known only to the inner machinations of her befuddled brain, that isn’t what came out.
Instead, what she experienced in that moment might well be what happens to mass murderers when they hear voices in their heads telling them to do things. Or, to put it another way, the normal Jen, the one who was usually pretty down to earth about stuff, and who ordinarily felt strongly that not making other women feel less able was hugely important, was punched in the head, literally knocked out flat by the other part of her. That is to say, the part that felt belittled by Judith and who had been battling for hours with the desire to yell very loudly and directly into her smug face that actually she’d got a 2:1 in her degree and that giving up her career in order to play an active part in her children’s upbringing had been a choice (albeit one she struggled with sometimes) so shouldn’t be sneered at. The part of her who was exhausted by the daily grind, that was strung out, in need of a long holiday and some rampant sex, and who was also suffering from a monumental mid-life crisis and had been prescribed anti-depressants only a few weeks earlier. That Jennifer took over and said, after an unnaturally long pause ‘Yes I did…I did make them.’
At the other end of the table Max looked baffled and just stared at his plate.
‘Wow,’ said Judith tentatively. ‘They look really…complicated. How did you go about it?’
‘Well…’ Jennifer said gingerly, feeling suddenly drowned by her own lie. ‘I…er…bought them, boned them…and then stuffed them with pork and herbs before…kind of, tying them up.’
‘Right,’ said Judith and in that moment Jennifer knew that Judith knew that she was talking absolute bollocks.
‘Mum,’ piped up Eadie, looking miserable.
‘Yes, darling,’ said Jennifer, teeth gritted. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t like my beef. It tastes like cat poo. Can I have some toast?’
‘It’s chicken not beef and it’s please may I have some toast?’ replied Jennifer.
‘Please may I have some toast?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Jennifer faintly. ‘Anyone else?’
For a second Max looked sorely tempted but soon readjusted his expression when Jennifer glowered at him on her way to the toaster.
The rest of the meal was pretty torturous. Only Henry seemed blissfully unaware that he was eating something which resembled road-kill. Everyone else performed a sort of cutlery ballet-dance around their plate, consuming lots of potatoes and salad, and expertly leaving a pile of pinky grey mush to one side, with either their knife and fork, or a napkin, placed cunningly over the top.
After the meal Jennifer cleared away, scraping tons of discarded meat into the food recycling bin. As she did so, she wondered at what point she’d become so sad and pathetic that she couldn’t have admitted that she hadn’t made the disgusting food herself and that probably none of them should have touched it, in case they all got the chronic shits. When had she become the sort of person who cared what people like Judith and Henry thought anyway? When had she transformed into such a middle-class stereotype, desperately trying to impress? When had she turned into Max’s mother?
Much later that night as she climbed gratefully between the sheets, head thumping with a same-day hangover, she said to Max who was already half asleep, ‘The chicken was a bit weird wasn’t it?’
‘It was all right,’ he said, his eyes shut and his body turned away from her. ‘It just looked a bit like cat food. Why did you say you’d made it?’
‘Don’t know,’ she replied truthfully, staring at the ceiling, hot with embarrassment just thinking about it.
‘You did yourself a disservice anyway,’ he added. ‘Your cooking’s far nicer and I think Judith doesn’t cook much so it’s not like you needed to compete. She works too hard to ever get round to doing any domestic stuff.’
‘Oh, so now you’re having a go at me for not making something are you?’ she retorted defensively, because in truth she was feeling gradually more and more embarrassed that she’d passed off the stupid, dodgy looking ruddy chickens as her own creations. Her tone wasn’t helped by the fact that the mere mention of Judith’s name was starting to send shivers up her spine.
‘No,’ he sighed, now clearly wishing she’d shut up and go to sleep. ‘I’m giving you a compliment on your cooking really but I’m also saying I think they knew you hadn’t made it anyway.’
‘Really?’ she said, despite the fact she’d figured this out on her own, having it confirmed was mortifying, to the point where another bad night’s sleep was probably on the cards. ‘Why?’
‘Because you went weird and replied really slowly, so it was obvious.’
‘Oh god I’m so strange,’ she whimpered. ‘The thing is I’m very tired you know.’
‘I know,’ he said, and with that he fell fast asleep, as he had an annoying habit of doing when he was tired, leaving his wife to ponder in the darkness the fact that lying hadn’t really achieved anything. In fact, it was clear to her that the only thing she’d stuffed by doing so (and it certainly wasn’t the chickens) was herself.
Perhaps the whole debacle was a sign that she needed to be more honest about a whole load of things.
Two hours later, bored of her insomnia, head whirring, Jennifer slipped out of bed and crept into the spare room. Able to spread out she tried to relax, and then decided to finish what she’d started much earlier in the day in the hope that a good healthy orgasm might help her get to sleep. And so it was that she returned to that hot summer back in 1994 when, unlike now, food was of little or no consequence to her or her friends because they’d had far more interesting things to worry about.
THE PAST—AIDAN (#ulink_33375bb5-7774-51c4-8e25-62790ef6e549)
Summer 1994
‘Come with me,’ said Aidan, the green eyes she’d got so used to, boring into her, pleading with her. ‘I know we’ve only known each other five minutes but what we’ve got doesn’t come along every day. I’m telling you.’
‘How can I come with you?’ repeated Jennifer, who inside was in complete turmoil. Something was pulling her, like a magnet, telling her to throw caution to the wind, to follow her heart, or possibly more accurately, her loins. They’d barely come up for air since they’d met and Jennifer had never known anything remotely like it. She knew she was relatively inexperienced on the sex front, having only slept with three people in total (actually four, she kept forgetting Greek bloke on beach), but Aidan had made her feel things she hadn’t dreamed were possible. In bed they made total sense and as far as she could tell he was also an exciting person, someone who was creating his own path in life to tread, one which wasn’t constrained by parental pressure or some traditional idea of how things should be played out. And that was the problem in a way. Jennifer had always liked knowing how things should map out. It had never occurred to her to stray even remotely from the plan which she and her parents were in agreement was the right one for her. The right one for most people.
School, college, travelling. Next on the list was university, followed by career, marriage, babies. That was life. Wasn’t it?
And yet here was someone asking her to go completely off piste. And she was actually tempted. Sorely tempted. She was pretty sure she loved him, or was definitely on her way to falling in love with him and knew if she let him go she might regret it forever. The thought of never sleeping with him again and therefore not experiencing that unbelievably exquisite pleasure was unbearable too. She licked her lips and stared down at her green flipflops. Her feet were pleasingly brown. It was so hot.
‘Look,’ said Aidan, ‘I’m not going to beg. That’s not my style. And if you say no I guess I’ll understand, though I think you’d be making a massive mistake. Like I said, what we’ve got is special. I know it is, and besides, what’s the worst that could happen? I’m asking you to come away with me, but I wouldn’t be kidnapping you. If it didn’t work out you could just get on a plane home.’
‘But my university place…?’ questioned Jennifer, wondering if she could really deny herself the opportunity to be with him when he’d turned her entire world upside down in a matter of days. University was something she’d always wanted to experience but he was right. She could always change her mind, so maybe she needed to be more adventurous? But as this thought trailed away it was replaced by the feeling of absolute certainty that her parents would be beyond livid with her for being so irresponsible and for not consulting them. Then again, it was her life. She was so torn.
‘Look, the boat leaves in half an hour. I’m going to be on it,’ said Aidan. ‘If you’re coming with me, you need to say goodbye to the girls and get your stuff. What’s it to be?’
‘Oh god,’ said Jennifer. ‘I don’t know.’
And for precisely ten more minutes she still didn’t.
And then she had a chat with Karen who looked at her with such horror that she was even contemplating the idea of going off with someone she’d known for a total of seventeen days that something took over. Something irritatingly sensible.
And so it was that the boat sailed off with a hurt and more devastated than he’d imagined he might have been Aidan, taking him off for adventure and ultimately Australia.
She may have made what she thought was the ‘right’ decision but that didn’t prevent Jennifer from feeling utterly desolate and distraught. She wailed as that boat sailed off into the distance and at one point even contemplated throwing herself off the jetty and swimming after it. Anything to have just one more feel of those arms around her. What had she done and would she regret this for the rest of her life?
PRESENT DAY (#ulink_2043e452-ab07-5b4c-93b9-1687112b8154)
‘Stay with us Jennifer, come on love, you can do this. Hang in there.’
Why was everyone yelling? She was so tired. All she wanted to do was sleep. She was so close to being able to just slip away yet simply wasn’t being allowed to. She felt very muddled and had the vague sense of being bullied.
‘Patient’s suffering agonal respirations and has a CO2 of eleven. Probably in anaphylactic shock so let’s commence CPR.’
‘Jen, please hang in there, I’m so so sorry. I love you.’
‘Sorry, Mr Wright. Can you stay out of the way? It’s very important.’
What was Max doing here, she wondered. For a second she was tempted to open her eyes to have a look but she wasn’t able to because suddenly a burning sensation swept through her so violently she would have done anything to make it stop. It was pain on a level she wouldn’t ever have thought possible. Every cell in her body was on fire, doused in hot, white agony. Then, as quickly as it showed itself it subsided, and once again she reverted to her numb state of nothingness.
Then, someone was applying pressure to her which hurt in a different way. She didn’t really want to be awake any more. She craved peace and sensed a way she could achieve it. There was definitely a direction she could go in that would remove all the pain, plus any further possibility of it.
She reflected for a second, feeling as though she were suspended in time and space, floating almost. In all honesty she wasn’t totally sure she wanted to go that way either. She wasn’t ready, which meant there was only one option left available to her. So once more she submitted to the grey fog of nothing. And as she sank back into it, more cries of panic sounded around her.
Meanwhile, as the paramedics went about their frenzied business of trying to save her life, the strangest things were happening in Jennifer’s bruised brain.
None of us can really comprehend what the human brain is capable of doing, in the same way that Jennifer had no clue as to the true capabilities of her laptop. All she tended to use her PC for was to write emails, do a bit of shopping or social networking, meaning its dual core processor was never fully taken advantage of. She was always stunned when Max, who was far more tech savvy than her, did some simple task on her computer, in a way that made her realise she was only ever utilising around ten percent of what it could probably do, if only she knew how to operate it properly.
It’s the same with the human brain, only on a far grander and more mysterious scale, its true power being so tricky to tap. Most of its work and activity happens at a deeply subconscious level and yet even beyond that, there are areas of it which we never unearth even when dreaming.
Psychics do better than most. Whether you believe in them or not, they at least have more awareness of the various possibilities which we could perhaps utilise if only we tried.
Right at that second, within Jennifer’s skull, a series of lightning-fast connections were being made, ones which she never usually would have been privy to if her head hadn’t made contact with the hard ground quite as brutally as it had, thus flinging her software into disarray. Something extraordinary was happening.
As her synapses furiously connected and fused, three tunnels of white light suddenly showed themselves to her. There was one to the left, one straight ahead and one to the right. Was this what death looked like? Instinct told her it was something different though and suddenly she knew, without needing to be told, that rather than leading her to the afterlife, instead these tunnels represented different lives she could so easily have led. Parallel universes, ones which were usually buried and hidden, deep in the core of the brain.
What she was being given here was a gift. The gift of being able to see what life would have been like had she chosen another route, or made a different decision, at three separate points during her life. And so it was that Jennifer allowed herself to fall into a deep and very informative coma. As her own private miracle started, she began to glide towards the first tunnel, the one to the left which was swirling with clouds of light at its entrance. This was the one marked Aidan
TUNNEL NUMBER ONE (#ulink_20648f69-d11c-5054-962a-c05e431b8478)
What Could Have Been—Aidan
Jennifer slipped out of bed and padded across the room to pull the curtain back. Sunlight immediately poured in and though it was still only early, she could feel the heat of the day penetrating the glass. She gazed out at the view, loving the way the sea glinted and twinkled through the gaps in the rooftops. Their little one bedroom apartment in the bay-side suburbs of Brisbane was very basic, very compact, but it was also only a twenty-minute walk from the beach.
She opened the window a fraction and breathed in deeply. Then she tipped her face back and let the already strong rays bathe her skin with their warmth.
It was strange getting up every day knowing it was going to be hot and that the sky would almost definitely be blue. She’d always considered herself a total sun worshipper but having been away for so long now, the sense of urgency to get out there and work on her tan had started to fade a bit. Sometimes, if she were being totally honest, she even found the constancy of the temperature a little relentless, a tad monotonous, to the point where recently she’d found herself secretly craving a bit of grey sky. This was ironic given that she was always the first to moan about the abysmal climate in England and yet what she missed about the British weather was that subtle change of seasons. Nothing beat a glorious, breezy, spring day, or that first sniff in the air which told you that autumn had arrived, when the light became more golden and the leaves were falling from the trees, crunchy and brown.
‘Hey sexy.’
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ she said, turning round to see Aidan grinning at her from the bed. He was brown, toned and fit from all the hours of running on the beach he was doing most days. She still felt a lurch of desire every time she clapped eyes on him.
‘Yeah funny that, given that you’ve pulled the curtains wide open. Now, seeing as you’ve woken me up, get your sexy bum over here,’ he said, eyeing her greedily.
She was only wearing a small vest top and a pair of knickers.
