Ahead of his Time by Adrian Cousins (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

I took hold of her hand across the table and squeezed it tightly. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Give us a ciggy, Jason. If you two can separate for a moment.”

Jenny beamed her smile, then broke the handhold and delved into her handbag. She plucked out a pack of ten Embassy No1, a box of Bryant and May matches and handed them to Martin.

Martin lit up again, performed his stupid Nookie Bear face as he studied the burning end. After a further moment of silence, he leant forward. “Right, what are we going to do about Mum?”

George thumped his beer down. “Well, lad, you’re going to have to avoid her. It’s just not right your mother swooning over her son … it’s … it’s immoral!”

“It’s not my fault!” Martin blurted back.

“I knew placing him in that job at school was going to be a disaster.” I gestured my thumb towards Martin.

“Wha … What? I didn’t ask for this, did I?”

Jenny shot me a look. Those eyes were telling me to calm the whole situation before our raised voices alerted the entire pub to our rather strange conversation.

“Alright, hang on. What is done is done.” I tapped the palm of my hand on the table, which seemed to have the required effect of calming George and Martin.

“It feels like I'm in the film Back to the Future,” said Martin.

“Precisely the thought I had earlier.”

“Is that the lightning film you were both talking about last week?” asked Jenny.

“Yeah,” both Martin and I replied.

“What’s that, lad?” George asked, as he leant forward, folding his arms on the table.

“That film I said about with the Flux-Capacitor and the time-travelling car.”

“Darling, when does that film come out? I’d like to see it as it sounds really good.”

“It is!” we both replied.

“The mid-eighties, if I remember correctly,” I added, and then we all fell silent again.

“Martin, did your mum ever mention any boyfriends she had at school? I was just thinking if she did, we could engineer that they hook up sooner rather than later.”

Martin blew out his cheeks as he tried to think. Then he raised his finger. “Hang on, Mum was really friendly with this couple. He was the editor of the Fairfield Chronicle, and Mum knew him from school.” He clicked his fingers, trying to pull the name from his memory. George sat even further forward at the mention of the Chronicle. “Dad played golf with him a couple of times, and there was always this suggestion that Mum and he were close in their school days. Christ, what was his name? I should be able to remember him as I only saw him a few months ago when visiting Mum.”

“Come on, Martin, think. This is important.”

He clenched his fist and thumped the table. “Got it … Carlton King. That’s his name, Carlton King.”

George turned to me. “You know him, lad?”

“Err … yes, I know him. Got to say I’m amazed he becomes the editor of the Chronicle. He’s not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox and always getting into bother one way or another.” I thought of him only a few hours ago entering the toilet cubical and donning a fetching pair of pink Marigold gloves, brush in hand, then pebble dashing the toilet seat.

“You’d be amazed at what idiots they appoint as an editor at that place. The current one, Braithwaite, is a complete idiot. Can’t spell to save his life, I can tell you. As for punctuation, the man’s obsessed with using a comma … total idiot!”

“So darling, is that the plan? Somehow you get Carlton and Martin’s mum together so she forgets about Martin?”

“I think so. Martin, you’re really going to have to keep a low profile. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but somehow, I have to get your mother to stop looking at you and develop a crush on Carlton King.”

“Blimey. What if they really get it together and then end up, you know, doing, you know what?”

“What?” we all said together.

Martin nodded his head and grinned. “You know, my mum and this Carlton boy, get it on. She falls for him, has a baby, never meets my dad; Martin, that is, not the rapist. Then maybe that changes history, and Mum never gets raped.”

Jenny placed her hand on Martin’s arm and looked at him. “And you never get born.”

We all sat back for a moment, contemplating what Jenny had said. She was right. If I interfered too much, then I could change history. Although we’d already decided we had to stop Sarah from being raped. Martin wanted to go back to 2019, but in reality, that was never going to happen. Also, both Martins couldn’t exist when we got to 1988.

The other problem I faced, and I’d had this rolling around my head for weeks, was that everything I did or said was changing history because I wasn’t even born the first time around. Every day that ripple effect sent further far-reaching circles of change out into the world which altered history. There surely would come a point when those ripples would travel far enough to change events in the future which I could remember happening and knew would take place.

Perhaps those sporting and world events would change. Maybe my planned financial investments would not prove as lucrative as I thought. I needed to ramp up my short-term betting and continue to build my portfolio of assets before the world I knew changed forever. Surely those ripples hadn’t already gone as far to nullify my bet that Notts Forest would win the league next year or that Niki Lauda would be world champion later this year – or had they?

We finished our drinks with little achieved, apart from my challenge to encourage Sarah to look at Carlton. George said he needed to be off, Jenny and I planned to spend the evening with her parents, and Martin said he had a hot date with one of the young mums he’d met