Given Time Read online

  Clearly I hadn’t got my position exactly right, because I felt her prod my shoulder with her foot and she asked, ‘Are you awake?’

  There was no point in pretending I was fully out, so I groaned and half opened my eyes for a second, as if I was only starting to come around. She was quickly on her knees beside me, dipping into my jacket and removing my wallet before checking my other pockets. She couldn’t have known whether or not I had a mobile, or anything else worth stealing, but I heard her sigh when she came up empty. Furiously, she patted me down while I lay motionless, feeling very pleased that I’d hidden the envelope. Finally, she reached for my wrist, and I could sense her hesitate as she realised I wasn’t wearing the watch she had seen earlier. She took it anyway, and I heard her stand up. I opened my eyes, and saw her put my belongings in her bag as she left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  I jumped up, feeling elated. For all her effort, she had got away with a worthless watch and a shabby wallet containing a few pieces of paper. I pictured her face when she realised, and I sniggered as I visualised her trying to work out how I had done it. I imagined her being really pissed off, and the more I thought about it, the better it felt. I’d won, even if I was still sore from where she’d punched and kicked me.

  I replayed the entire event several times in my head, each time feeling more and more satisfied with myself. Even so, there was one thing that left me not so much troubled as curious. I had never been in a fight before, and I had never punched anyone, so although I was convinced I hadn’t had a choice, and notwithstanding that she had deserved it, I still felt disturbed about hitting her. I felt better knowing that when I went back the second time, there wasn’t a mark on her; the lip I’d split was undamaged, and she had left the room completely unscathed. But that wasn’t the problem playing on my mind.

  What left me puzzled was that as soon as I had hit her, I’d got a massive erection. It had come on the instant my fist connected with her face. Never having been in that situation before, I couldn’t work out why an act of violence could have made me excited in that way. I tried to convince myself that my memory was mistaken, that I hadn’t felt it until I’d straddled her, which would have been more understandable, but I knew it wasn’t the case. There was no point in worrying about it, I told myself. Shannon, or whatever she was called, was completely unhurt and had no idea she had been attacked. From her point of view, all that had happened was she had failed to rob me, and nothing more.

  That thought comforted me, and I would try to forget about the rest.

  Six

  I slept sporadically and woke early in the morning, feeling less tired but far from refreshed. I took in my surroundings, still not quite believing that I was in such a high-end hotel, and then quickly felt under my pillow to confirm I still had the envelope with my belongings and the lottery ticket. I’d woken several times through the night, my anxiety only dispelled after I’d checked for the envelope.

  I pulled the items out and lay them on the bedside cabinet before I pressed the button to open the curtains. Sunlight flooded the room, and I looked briefly at the spectacular view. I knew the city well, but seen from this unaccustomed angle it was both familiar and intriguing.

  I was starving. I did a quick calculation and worked out that, with all the time travel, I hadn’t eaten anything more than a sandwich for nearly twenty-three hours. I’d started coding after breakfast, planning to have a meal when I’d finished, but then I’d found the time turner, and in the excitement all thoughts of food had gone from my head. Apart from the few nuts I’d had in the bar, my stomach was empty.

  Returning to the writing desk, I picked up the tablet and tapped the button marked Butler to order a room service breakfast before heading for a shower.

  After ten minutes of luxuriating under the warm pulsing jets, I felt invigorated. Wrapped in a warm robe, I strolled into the living room to find the butler had laid a place for me at the dining table and was busy preparing breakfast on a small stove set into a trolley. He stopped what he was doing when he saw me and served me coffee, orange juice and cereal from the array of options he had on offer, making small talk as he did so. He was a middle-aged man and unfalteringly polite. He provided me with a freshly ironed newspaper of my choice and offered me champagne, which I declined, before he went back to preparing the cooked part of my breakfast.

  Having completed his task, he presented me with a delicious plateful and refilled my coffee cup, leaving the pot on the table. After making sure I had everything I needed, he quietly tidied his trolley and wheeled it into a cupboard I hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Would you like me to lay out fresh clothes for you, sir?’

  Hoping he hadn’t noticed my embarrassment at the knowledge that I didn’t actually have any fresh clothes for him to lay out, I told him it wouldn’t be necessary. He asked whether I’d like him to wait to clear away or come back later.

  ‘Later would be fine,’ I assured him, and fetched my money to give him a tip. I had no idea what was appropriate, but I assumed anything less than a tenner would be beneath his dignity, so I gave him twenty, which he took with a genuine smile.

  I went back to my breakfast, feeling very decadent, and imagined the rest of my life being like this. I tried to read the newspaper, but nothing caught my interest so I absently gazed out at the city, thinking about the day to come. I had to phone the lottery company to claim my prize, but for some reason I was reluctant to make the call too early. I guessed part of me wanted to play it cool, but a bigger part of me was concerned they would somehow know I’d cheated and wouldn’t pay out, or worse, would start proceedings against me for fraud.

  If that was the case I should have been in trouble, but I reassured myself once more that, if necessary, I could turn back time to before I’d done any of it and put the whole thing down to experience. It would solve the problem, but having had a taste, I wasn’t prepared to let go of this lifestyle that easily.

  That led me to another thought. I pushed away my empty plates and laid out all the money from the envelope on the table. I left it there for about a minute, and then put it back into the pocket of my robe. I turned the time back about thirty seconds. The notes reappeared on the table. I checked my pocket and, sure enough, the money was still inside. I took it out and placed it with the rest on the table before repeating the process. The same thing happened, and I’d now got four times the original amount.

  I gave a spontaneous laugh. Who needed a cash machine? I calculated how long it would take to create ninety-five million and realised how impractical that would be. Even doubling up each time, I would rapidly come to the limit of how much I could hold at once, so it would take years to reach that amount. Then there would be the problem of where to store it all. That many millions in tens and twenties would need several large rooms to hold it all. Still, it was fun to think I could create cash whenever I needed some.

  It was only as I started to pick it all up for another go that I realised the problem. I’d got four sets of notes, each with identical serial numbers.

  So much for that big idea. I scowled at the useless money. Perhaps I could use it in different locations so the serial numbers wouldn’t be a problem, I thought, but in the end I decided it just wasn’t worth the effort.

  I could make the money disappear just as easily as I created it, so I watched the empty table for half a minute and then put the duplicates back down in front of me. With my original notes safely in my pocket, I went back fifteen seconds and saw the ill-gotten gains vanish into thin air.

  I played a little longer, duplicating different objects from the table and making some disappear again, but by the time I’d finished, I’d got spare house keys, another mobile phone and two expensive watches. That’s when I discovered another problem: the watches were showing slightly different times. At first I was annoyed, thinking that I’d paid a lot of money for a watch that wasn’t accurate, but then I remembered one of them had travelled back through time with me
and was showing the time I had travelled from, while the other was showing the current time. That in itself was irritating because it meant whenever I used the time device, I would have to reset my watch.

  I checked to see if the same thing had happened with the clock on the mobile phones, but they were perfectly synchronised. That made sense. Since mobiles constantly check and update themselves from the network, whenever I went back in time the phone would correct itself. It was just a shame the watch couldn’t do the same.

  A random thought occurred to me, and I rushed to power down the duplicate phone. I’d realised there were now two identical sim cards registered on the network; I wasn’t sure what sort of problems that might cause, but I didn’t want to find out. I used my new toy to make the second phone disappear and returned to the problem of the wristwatch.

  I could always keep the expensive watch for special occasions and buy myself a smartwatch or fitness tracker, which would update itself from my phone, but I wasn’t a big fan of either. I’d always considered them to be a bit gimmicky. Yet the choice seemed to be that or not wear a watch at all, and that wouldn’t do; I felt naked going out with nothing on my wrist.

  Playtime, I decided, was over, and I strolled back to the bedroom to get dressed. I hadn’t bothered to hang or fold my new clothes when I’d undressed, so everything was a little rumpled. I knew nobody would comment on my appearance, but I would have preferred fresh clothes. The thought had hardly formed in my head when I remembered where to get some. I gathered up my cards and money and went back down to the shop in the lobby.

  I selected a couple of shirts, a cashmere jumper, another pair of jeans and a pair of trousers before looking at the jackets again, but decided enough was enough. Obviously catering to the travelling public, they also had a small selection of luggage items, so I added a small suitcase to my shopping and found a nice wallet to replace the one that had been stolen in the night.

  There was a young girl serving this morning, presumably a student doing a Saturday job, who greeted me with a smile and a mouthful of braced teeth. If she was surprised by my large amount of shopping, she showed no sign of it as she charged it all to my suite. She packed everything into two carrier bags, which I placed in the suitcase to carry away.

  Back in my room, I changed into the new clothes and put everything else, including a fresh robe from the bathroom, into the suitcase. I really didn’t need to do it, considering how wealthy I was hoping to be later that day, but it felt like a bit of fun, and nobody was going to lose out, so holding the suitcase under my arm, I turned back twenty minutes, to before I had gone downstairs.

  A quick check of the bathroom revealed that the robe I had just purloined was back in its warming cabinet, leaving me with a duplicate in the suitcase, so presumably everything I’d bought from the shop was back where it came from as well. It seemed crazy, and I contemplated never having to buy anything I wanted, but I came back to the same argument; with ninety-five million pounds in the bank, why would I bother? The amount I’d spent since last night seemed like a fortune against my current income, but it wouldn’t even make a dent in the riches that would soon be mine.

  Hopefully.

  I finally put in the call to the lottery company. Sitting at the desk with my heart in my mouth, I dialled the number and was put through to a pleasant-sounding woman. She was obviously used to dealing with very excited people. Her tone was calm and reassuring, while her manner remained businesslike. She asked me a number of questions: What were the numbers on the ticket? What were the reference numbers at the top and bottom? Where had I bought the ticket? Approximately what time? Had I chosen the numbers myself or was it a lucky dip? And so on.

  At last she said, ‘Well, you certainly appear to have a winning ticket, but we still need to see it in order to validate it fully.’

  They would come to me, so I arranged the meeting for early afternoon to give myself plenty of time to get home. She told me that if everything was in order, they would arrange to transfer the money, but she didn’t recommend paying it into a high street bank. She explained that she could bring along a representative of one of a number of private banks and rattled off a few names, most of which were meaningless to me. I asked if there was anyone in particular she would recommend. She laughed and said that she wasn’t allowed to endorse any bank, but reassured me that any one I picked would be absolutely fine. Before she finished she made a couple of recommendations: don’t start telling everyone you’ve won before it’s officially confirmed, and don’t make any big purchases.

  Glancing around the hotel suite, I pulled a face at the amount I’d already spent, but in my best casual tone, I reassured her that I wouldn’t do anything so stupid, before ending the call. I sat and gazed sightlessly at the city while I replayed the conversation in my head. I could understand their caution, but I’d hoped the win was going to be confirmed straight away. Now I had to wait a few more hours before I would know for sure.

  I stared at the familiar skyline and felt a knot tightening in my stomach. It felt as if nothing could go wrong now, but I was becoming more and more unsettled. I wondered if all lottery winners felt like this while they waited for confirmation of their wins. It was probably quite natural, but I realised that I was starting to feel uneasy in my present surroundings. I was suddenly aware of the need to be in my own environment, with its sense of normality – not that my life was going to be anything close to normal after today.

  I’d packed the suitcase and put the contents of the envelope into my new wallet, but I did a quick check to make sure I’d left nothing behind before readjusting my watch and heading down to reception to check out.

  The receptionist handed me my bill with a print out of the items I had charged to my room, and I was relieved that none of the items I had bought that morning were listed. I suffered a small pang of regret that I hadn’t thought to do my shopping the same way the previous evening, but there was no way I was going to go back that far to change it, so I put my mind to working out how I was going to pay. I knew I couldn’t cover the whole bill with either one of my cards, so I made up a lie to the receptionist about paying for the room with my business card and the rest from my personal account. She processed my request without a murmur.

  I thanked her and breathed a small sigh of relief. I was sure one of my cards would still have a few hundred pounds of credit after the payment had been taken, but I hadn’t been sure whether the second would have gone over the limit. I would check later exactly how close it was, but for now I was just happy that it hadn’t been rejected.

  Strolling out into the morning sunshine, and feeling extremely pleased with myself, I was ready for the walk to Waterloo to catch the train back to Barnes Bridge, but as I passed the doorman he asked, ‘Would you like a taxi, sir?’

  I opened my mouth to decline, but changed my mind. It meant I would be able to catch an earlier train, which would give me more time to allow for any delays on the line. He nodded in reply to my acceptance, stepped into the road and whistled to an approaching black cab. He opened the door and helped me in with my suitcase, even though I was quite capable of carrying it myself.

  I asked the driver to take me to Waterloo, but before we’d gone as far as the end of the road, I changed my mind again and allowed him to take me all the way home.

  I dropped the suitcase and jacket on my bed, and ambled through to the kitchen to make a coffee. It felt good to be back home, even if my tension had only marginally decreased. I’d still got well over an hour before the meeting, so I had a quick tidy up and finally went to put on some clean underwear and socks, deciding as I did so to dress in clean clothes from my cupboard rather than in the new, expensive attire.

  The doorbell rang at precisely the time we had arranged, and I answered it to a middle-aged woman, who introduced herself as Gail, and a younger man named Matt, who represented the bank I had chosen. I showed them into the living room and offered them drinks, which Gail declined for both of them, saying she wa
s sure I would rather get on with things.

  First she asked me for the ticket, which she ran through a scanner in her briefcase. She nodded at the result, and asked me the same questions I had answered earlier over the phone, plus a few more: Did I play the lottery regularly? How many lines did I usually play? Did I always play the same numbers? Did I usually buy my ticket from the same place?

  I told her I only played sporadically and that when I did I only ever played one or maybe two lines, and I chose the numbers at random.

  ‘Why not take a lucky dip?’ she asked.

  ‘No reason, really. I just prefer to choose my own numbers.’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Well, I’m pleased to confirm that your ticket is valid. Congratulations, you’ve won the jackpot!’

  I’d wanted to be cool about it, but my emotions got the better of me, and I could feel my eyes welling up as I thanked her effusively. Gail was clearly used to dealing with this situation and gave me a few moments to regain my composure. There were forms to fill in and documents to sign, and then she asked if I wanted to go public with my good fortune.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I assured her.

  She smiled in understanding and produced yet another form to complete and sign.

  Finally she declared that her paperwork was finished, but before she handed over to Matt, she wanted to talk to me about the dangers of suddenly coming into such a large amount of money. Obviously, I was free to do whatever I liked with it, but she suggested that before I started buying luxury goods and frivolous items, I take a holiday away from home to think about what I wanted to do with my new-found wealth.

  ‘So many people rush out to buy expensive cars, boats, houses, jewellery, even planes and then regret it after just a few weeks when the novelty has worn off. Take your time and decide if you really want those things.’