Jennifer despaired. ‘I don’t know to be honest. I mean, yeah, it is a beautiful day, just like it was yesterday and the day before and the day before that. But it would also be good to be able to tell Mum and Dad that between the pair of us we had a bit more money coming in. Besides, we’re not in England now you know? We don’t have to drop everything just because the sun’s out. I suspect it will be a beautiful day tomorrow too, only by then, if there is any work going it will have gone.’
Feeling decidedly grumpy now, in that second Jennifer wished heartily that it would start chucking it down with rain. A bit of damp and drizzle might force Aidan into doing something useful and they could have a day off from feeling required to be on the beach. She only had a couple of shifts in a cafe every week and he was working as a bouncer every Friday but that was the sum of their income at the moment. They were totally skint and their lack of a ‘plan’ bothered her greatly, though every time she raised the subject Aidan didn’t seem to understand what her problem was. As far as he was concerned, they were living in hot sunshine, near a beach and having a lot of sex so there wasn’t anything else to worry about. His needs were pretty simple.
‘Look, I’ll go tomorrow when you’re at work. There’s no point wasting a day when we could be together, hanging out,’ he said.
‘All right,’ she said, suddenly too hot and lethargic to protest. Besides, by now she was also keen to get out of the stifling apartment. She decided to make an effort to snap out of the mood which she knew deep down had been caused by speaking to her parents. She just wished they would be a bit more supportive. Aidan, who could see she was feeling tense and sad, came over and started to stroke her back in a way that instantly made her shiver with physical pleasure.
‘Hey baby, it’s OK,’ he soothed.
‘I know,’ she said unconvincingly.
His hands carried on lightly travelling up her back and then around to her front where he gently rubbed her breasts. His touch was incredible and never failed to arouse her.
‘Is that nice?’
‘Mm,’ she sighed, giving in to the sensations and reaching around to feel if he too was getting excited. He was.
‘Wow. We only had sex five minutes ago.’
‘That’s what you do to me, little baby,’ he whispered in her ear before pulling her around and kissing her passionately and deeply.
They fell into bed and gradually her troubles faded away. There was no point stressing about anything too much, she supposed. She was in Australia so had to just make the best of it and to enjoy being with this amazing man who had the ability to frustrate and delight her in equal measure. Had she done the right thing? Who knew? Ultimately, she guessed, only time would tell but for now she was lost in the moment, and the moment felt unbelievably good.
Jennifer didn’t exactly emerge from the tunnel. The sensation felt more like an expulsion, one which was sudden, brutal, and delivered with precisely no warning whatsoever. She was left feeling confused and utterly depleted. Her brain desperately needed time to rest and recover from what she’d just experienced, which was frustrating because there was so much she wanted to absorb, mull over and digest. But for now she was nowhere near capable. She needed to sleep. Before she surrendered to the grey ether however, she quickly glanced around and noted that the three tunnels all still existed, though the first was definitely shining ever so slightly less brightly.
She knew then that she would have another opportunity to visit each of them and was swamped with relief. She wanted to find out more about how things would have gone with Aidan. This was the most fascinating, terrifying, yet privileged gift she could ever have been afforded. For now though it was time to regain some strength and with that final thought she allowed herself to slip away.
‘Polly and Eadie need to get out and burn off a bit of energy,’ announced Jennifer.
‘Take them to the park then,’ said Max, finishing the last bit of his toasted bacon sandwich, and only narrowly saving himself from being swatted with a copy of The Sunday Times by winking, to make sure his wife knew he was joking. ‘Come on then, let’s take them to the swings now, and then perhaps we should go out for lunch, so you don’t have to cook?’
Jennifer acknowledged that this was a kind thought but couldn’t help but wonder what was preventing him from rustling anything up.
‘Or should I say, so you don’t have to buy in any revolting stuffed chickens that don’t actually look or taste anything like chickens.’ Another wink.
‘Ha bloody ha,’ said Jennifer, laughing despite herself. ‘OK, that sounds good. And there’s a pie in the fridge which we can all have for early dinner but not much more than that so hopefully it’ll be quiet at work tomorrow, so I can do a shop in my lunch break. Otherwise I’ll have to go later.’
‘Good,’ said Max, who didn’t really care. Food was his wife’s department as far as he was concerned. ‘Right, Po-lly, Ea-die, come and get your shoes on, we’re going to the park,’ he yelled in the general direction of the kitchen door, getting up to put his plate in the sink.
‘Let’s aim to wear them out as much as possible,’ said Jennifer.
‘Definitely,’ Max agreed. ‘Then we can plonk them in front of a DVD this afternoon totally guilt-free.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Jennifer, wondering hopefully if that meant that he was thinking they might be able to sneak back to bed for some canoodling.
‘Because I hope you don’t mind,’ added Max, looking sheepish, ‘but there’s a footy match on that I really want to watch this afternoon and I told Ted he could come round and watch it here. He still doesn’t have Sky Sports at his.’
‘Oh…right,’ she said feeling crestfallen and bored already.
‘You don’t mind do you?’
‘No,’ she lied.
Later that afternoon, despite having been run out in the park all morning, like dogs, Polly and Eadie were still full of energy. They usually got on pretty well but today were directing it all towards fighting with one another, forcing Jennifer to act as both bouncer and mediator. When she wasn’t stopping them from killing each other over, of all things, a broken Barbie, she was putting on washing, taking it out or shoving it in the mountainous ironing pile. All in all not the most riveting of afternoons and, as she took out load after load, she thought wistfully of pre-children days when Sundays meant lying in bed with a hangover, which would eventually be cured by a Bloody Mary and a roast dinner at the pub, followed perhaps by a movie and some lovely sex. God, she was becoming obsessed. This must be how people felt when they came out of prison, or the army.
‘Come on, you two,’ she said now, or rather yelled, because by this point both her daughters’ whining had developed into full-blown wailing. ‘Eadie, bash your sister again and I’ll bash you.’
Of course she would never bash her kids in a million years so the threat was rather empty which Eadie could tell.
Eadie eyeballed her mum through the wonky brown fringe Jennifer had gifted her with only the week before, as if weighing up how much trouble she’d be in if she ignored her. Then, obviously having concluded she could handle whatever