The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 265

Chapter Seven

2020

For the first time since all of this started, I arrived inmy next time zone with some proper plans. Despite my drunken state on my lastnight with the girls, I had lain awake for the last hour or so of my time in2022 figuring it all out.

I wasn’t quite an old hand at this yet, but I knew how themechanics of it worked now. If this is how I was going out of this world, thenI was going to go with a bang, not a whimper.

So when I woke up on 31st December 2020, I already knewwhere I was going to be and what I was going to do. I had two goals in mind.Firstly I was going to get my revenge on Rob. And secondly, I was going to tryand make contact with Professor Hamilton.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, so the saying goes. Theposition I now found myself in was a strange variation on that theme. From myperspective it had been four years ago that the bastard had screwed me over, soI’d had plenty of time to reflect on it.

But as I lie here now, next to the snoring, cheating lumpbeside me, I realised that for him, the dish was going to be served steaminghot – right here and now.

Get your retaliation in first might have been a more aptsaying for what I had in mind.

I turned to look at him now – the man I had loved and laterdetested in equal measure. He was lying with his back to me, snoring away, allsixteen stone of him. He had gained at least three stone during his nine yearswith me.

He jokingly referred to it as contentment, but he can’t havebeen that happy. Contented couples don’t shag the neighbour unless it’s in a‘car keys in the fruit bowl’ kind of way. I most certainly wasn’t.

His idea of contentment meant sitting around watching SkySports whilst simultaneously demolishing whole packets of crisps in one go. Bywhole packets, I don’t just mean a standard bag of Walkers, I mean those big150g bags of Doritos that you are meant to have with dips. And, yes, he used tohave those, too – one of those multipack trays with four different flavours todip in.

Usually by the time he finished, he would have droppedcrumbs all down his shirt and onto the floor. He would also have dribbledCheese and Chive and Thousand Island dips into his ridiculous, straggly beard.It wasn’t a pretty sight.

He had grown the beard purely because it was the fashion atthe time and he was trying to be a hipster. He was desperate to show theyounger, leaner executives coming up through his company that he was still‘with it’.

Quite what Emma next door found attractive in this slob wasbeyond me, but perhaps he made more of an effort for her. I had noticed in thelast couple of years of our relationship that he developed a previouslynon-existent interest in male grooming. It wasn’t all the time, just on certaindays and nights. The rest of the time he was as slovenly as ever.

Looking back now, the signs that he was having an affairwere obvious – after all, why would a thirty-five-year-old man spray half a canof deodorant on himself just to go and watch football down the pub? Hewouldn’t. He was going out with her – or round to her place. I bet he didn’t treather to the Dorito/dip beard display that I had to endure.

As I looked at the black curls of hair on the back of hishead, he stirred, rolled over onto his back and loudly farted. That was enoughfor me; I was up and out of bed like a shot. What had I ever seen in this man?

Dressed in just my T-shirt and knickers, I headed out ontothe landing and down the stairs, grabbing hold of the wooden bannister on theinside as I negotiated the triangular-shaped stairs where the staircase took asharp hairpin bend. The stairs were very steep in this old house, probablysteeper than would be allowed with modern health and safety rules and I didn’twant to break my neck.

I idly wondered what would happen if I did. If I died wouldthat be the end of it, or would I be reborn in two days’ time? It wasn’tsomething I had any desire to find out. That question would have to remainunanswered.

I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with my oldhome. It was a place that until recently I never thought I would see again. HopefullyRob would stay asleep long enough for me to work on the logistics of my evilplan.

What I planned to do was breathtakingly simple and that wasthe beauty of it. I wasn’t going to do a Bobbitt and chop his dick off, or anyother violent act. I was simply going to show the world what a cheating bastardhe was.

It was highly possible what I was planning to do mightconstitute an illegal act, but I didn’t care. I had heard of so-called revengeporn crimes, but wasn’t sure if this would fall into that category or not. Itwas a bit of a grey area. I wasn’t going to waste time researching it; besides,even if it was a crime, it was worth it.

In the kitchen I made myself a posh coffee using the veryexpensive De’Longhi coffee machine we had purchased together. Annoyingly, hehad managed to keep that during what I jokingly call our ‘divorce settlement’,even though we weren’t married.

Perversely, I wished we had been because I had come out ofthe relationship very badly. I never even thought while we were together aboutthe rights or otherwise of common-law wives – something I had later cause toregret.

Health-wise I didn’t feel great this morning, and hadn’tdone since I had woken up. My throat was sore, and then I sneezed