The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 20

“Have you decided when exactly yet?” asked Kaylee.

“Not yet,” said Josh. “There are so many days I could choosefrom. Where would you go?”

“Ooh I don’t know!” said Kaylee. “It’s difficult when youput me on the spot like that. I feel like a kid in a sweet shop just thinkingabout it.”

“It’s easy for me,” said Alice. “I’d go back and relive mywedding day.”

“Ah, you must really love me,” said Josh.

“I suppose I must do if I’ve put up with you for this long,”replied Alice. “But to be honest, I was thinking more about seeing all myfamily again and wearing the dress.”

“You’ve still got the dress,” said Josh.

“I know but I can’t get into it.”

“I’d love to relive my wedding day again, too,” repliedKaylee.

“Apart from the fight,” said Charlie.

“Oh, yes, the big punch-up,” said Josh. “I’d forgotten aboutthat. It was after all those sordid revelations that came out during your dad’sspeech.”

“Hmmm, maybe that wouldn’t be the best choice,” said Kaylee,remembering the ructions that had ensued when her mother had interrupted herfather’s speech to accuse him of having an affair with Charlie’s mother.

It was all water under the bridge now but had been trulyshocking at the time, more the sort of wedding you would expect to see in anepisode of EastEnders.

“I know,” she added. “I could go back to the day we went onour first date. Do you remember, Charlie? When we went to the cinema and kissedfor the first time?”

“How can I forget?” he said. “That was one of the mostmemorable weeks of my whole life. Remember, it was also the week we discoveredthe original Time Bubble.”

“You recall more about that week than I do. I was stuck inthe Time Bubble for two days.”

“Don’t I know it!?” said Charlie. “That idiot DI Kent triedto stick a murder charge on me.”

“We’ve had a few run-ins with him over the years,” saidJosh. “Do you remember that time he threw us out of the pub?”

“Like it was yesterday,” said Charlie. “It was the night wetried and failed to do the Monopoly board challenge. Because of Kent we fellbefore the final fence.”

“What’s the Monopoly board challenge?” asked Alice.

“A legendary drinking event,” replied Josh with relish, ashe recalled the memory. “It was something that was originally based on London,but we decided to create our own local version.”

“How did it work? And how come you’ve never told me aboutthis before?”

“The initial concept was that you were meant to go aroundLondon and have a pint in a pub on every property on the Monopoly board. It wasmy dad who told me about it. Apparently, he did it for a mate’s stag dosometime back in the 90s.”

“That’s impossible, surely?” questioned Alice. “There arelike how many properties on a Monopoly board – thirty or something?”

“There are actually twenty-two coloured properties on theboard plus the four stations, which makes twenty-six in total.”

“Don’t forget the Water Works and Electric Company,” saidKaylee. “Not to mention Free Parking.”

“I don’t think they count,” said Charlie. “OK, you can buythem on the board, but they aren’t actual locations.”

“Even so, you’re talking about having a pint in twenty-sixpubs. No one could manage that in one day, surely? There wouldn’t be enough timeand who could possibly drink twenty-six pints?”

“You’re quite right,” said Josh. “And you can’t do them allanyway. There’s no pub on Vine Street for a start. What we decided to do wasstick to one pub for each colour on the board, giving us a more realistictarget of eight pints in eight pubs which is a nice, round gallon.”

“And coincidentally, that was the exact number of pubs inthe town centre at that time,” added Charlie. “We wouldn’t be able to do ittoday. There are only three left now.”

“I probably couldn’t manage eight pints these days, to befair, but three wouldn’t be a problem,” said Josh.

“From what I recall you couldn’t manage eight pints backthen either,” replied Charlie. “That’s the main reason we failed to completethe course.”

“What happened?” asked Alice.

“He was so drunk that he fell over in The Red Lion, whichwas the seventh pub on the list, knocking over an entire table of drinks in theprocess. It wasn’t long after Kent had been kicked out of the police and hadtaken over as landlord. He didn’t need any excuse to throw us out after thewhole botched interrogation thing. So we couldn’t finish our drinks there andthen we couldn’t get into Mario’s because Kent used the Pubwatch system toalert them not to let us in.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” said Josh, embarrassed at thisyouthful misdemeanour being brought up.

“That explains why you’ve kept this quiet. You screwed up,”said Alice. “When did all this happen, exactly?”

“Long before I met you,” said Josh. “It was the weekendafter we got our A level results, so sometime in August 2020.”

“Were you there, Kaylee?” asked Alice.

“Funnily enough, no,” said Kaylee. “If I remember rightly, Iwas out clubbing in Oxford that night with all the girls from our Englishclass.”

“That’s right, it’s all coming back now,” said Charlie. “Wehad planned it all before we finished school. We had a separate lads’ night outand a girls’ night out to celebrate our results. It was also going to be thelast time we were all together before most of us went off to uni. If I rememberrightly, there were about eight or nine of us, weren’t there, Josh?”

The embarrassed look on Josh’s face had gone, replaced withone of eager excitement. He had just come up with a brilliant idea.

“I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow night,” he said. “I nowknow what I need to do. You could almost say I’m a man on a mission!”

“You don’t mean…?” began Charlie.

“Absolutely!” replied Josh. “I needed to pick a time in thepast to visit so I’m going to go back to 2020 and make sure that this time wecomplete the Monopoly board!”

“This is meant to be a serious scientific experiment,”exclaimed Alice, “not an excuse for a pub crawl!”

“There’s no reason why I can’t have a little fun along theway, is there?”

“It depends what sort of fun you’re