Live. Live. Repeat.

Cliff Kemp

Description

What would you sacrifice for all the riches in the World? Your name? Your face?Your soul?Mike had already lost everything when he found himself sitting next to the stranger at the bar.He listened to an implausible tale, too tall to be true.What followed would change everything for him, forever.Money can't buy happiness. But what about ALL the money in the world...?

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398437197
• Langue: English

Extrait

L ive. L ive. R epeat
Cliff Kemp
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Live. Live. Repeat. About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17: Darkness Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21
About the Author
A former London Police Detective and regular panellist on BBC2’s BAFTA winning TV series ‘Ranganation’, Cliff Kemp now lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife and two relentlessly growing children. He has previously written for local press on sports events and online for sports websites. He describes the writing of this novel as being one of the few things keeping him sane during the Pandemic and another thing Covid-19 has to answer for.
Dedication
For Hannah, Isabel and Ethan. X
Copyright Information ©
Cliff Kemp 2022
The right of Cliff Kemp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398437180 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398437197 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
Thanks to everyone who took the time to read all, or part of this, I know you all had better things to do. Thanks for saying enough nice things at the beginning to keep me typing. Thank you so much Hannah, for being brave enough to make me re-write the bits that only made sense in my head. And thanks to former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Rishi Sunak, whose furlough scheme ensured that I had no more excuses for not getting this thing written once and for all.
Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one .
– Doc Brown, Back to the Future III
Chapter 1
I’d been living in Spain for three years following the split with Nikki. We’d planned on moving out together, but while I was at work keeping on top of the Pound to Euro exchange rate, she was apparently keeping on top of Dave next door. I’d always had an inherent mistrust of people able to work from home effectively. This was mainly due to the fact that whenever given the opportunity myself, it had generally resulted in finishing an entire Netflix box set or some ‘googling’ that required an internet history delete.
Although Nikki had humoured me during discussions about emigrating, it was always more my dream than hers. I had a middle management job with a cardboard packaging manufacturer that I despised and a boss who I’d fantasised about murdering in so many different ways I was running out of imaginary things to push him off, things to hit him on the back of the head with and places around High Wycombe to hide his dismembered body. In fairness to him, I am sure he felt the same way about me; I clearly couldn’t give a shit about my job, or the company, never really hid the fact, but never gave him quite enough reason to fire me. I’d catch him glaring at me across the office with a look reserved for someone you’d found trying to violate your Nan.
The final straw for me came when I was passed over for promotion by someone eminently more qualified, and deserving, and who would most certainly do a better job.
I was outraged.
Being the pro-level passive-aggressive I am, I wrote a sarcastic and strongly worded resignation email (timed to send once I’d slipped out the door like the coward I am), never to return. I did this at 10:03 a.m. on Tuesday. Evidently leaving the office early was more of a surprise to Nikki that day than it will have been to my boss Bill. Returning home, my feeling of relief and exhilaration was replaced by one of confusion at seeing Dave from next door come walking out of my bathroom stark bollock naked with my ‘World’s Best Husband’ mug clasped in a soapy hand.
I think I might have said ‘right then’ or something equally lame and British as we stood in my hallway with him dripping water all over my laminate flooring. His mouth flapped up and down a bit but not in any way that would formulate actual coherent words. I think my first thought was ‘screw you then Dave, you’re not having your hedge trimmer back’.
The next 30 seconds or so is a bit of a blur but I certainly swung something like a punch but at about the same time that Nikki came bundling out of the bathroom with a towel dragged hastily around her. This resulted in my, less than Mike Tyson like, blow being absorbed mainly by Nikki’s towel which sent her backwards into Dave, her legs sliding across at me sending all of us sprawling on the wet landing. By the time the indistinguishable chaos of arms, legs and genitals had separated into three separate humans again, the fight had gone out of me. My desire to wreak a terrible revenge on them both was outweighed by my desire to not accidentally touch Dave’s knob.
Although Nikki and I had been together since our mid-twenties, having met one starry night outside KFC in Hemel Hempstead, we had never been bothered about having kids. My reasons had been predominantly financial where hers were always about the physical effects on her. I specifically remember Nikki saying in response to a friend who had recently experienced the miracle of childbirth that she ‘didn’t want to…’, and I think I recall this profound moment correctly, ‘…end up with a lady garden like a punched lasagne’. I haven’t been able to eat Italian food since.
I had nothing to keep me in England. No wife, kids, or job, my dad has passed the year before after a cruel illness that left him a shell of the man I’d previously known, and I lost my mum in a bizarre accident in my teens. She had been my world and my best mate. I had plenty of other mates, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a Norman Bates situation, but we were super close, could always make each other laugh, and she was perfect in every way.
Sure, time blurs the imperfections, but I don’t really ever remember being truly happy after she died. One ordinary Tuesday, Mum was standing on a train platform on her way to meet some friends in London for a girlie shopping trip when a guy came bundling past her being chased by the local Old Bill. The guy tripped over the strap of the bag he’d stolen and pushed Mum onto the tracks as the 10:34 from Birmingham New Street was flying through the station. She’d have known very little about it.
Mum loved Spain and our family holidays from when I was a kid hold almost all of my happiest memories. It was another reason to pack up and move there.
I rented an apartment in a little town called Roquetas de Mar which sat on the Costa Del Sol, a nice balance of friendly locals and ex-pats but far enough from Malaga and Marbella to avoid being too close to lots of what I was trying to get away from. My apartment was less than luxurious but, if you stood with one foot on the sofa and the other on the flip-top bin, on a very clear day, on tip-toes, you could almost make out the Mediterranean Sea. My Paradise.
About three weeks into my adventure and wondering what I was going to do once the savings had run out, I got to talk to a guy in a bar. As one is tended to do. He was returning to the UK having very deliberately blown all his savings on beer and prostitutes, purely to prevent his ex-wife from getting her hands on any of it. He had been operating a small pool cleaning business amongst the ex-pat community and was simply going to let it fizzle out.
I bought the list of clients, some dangerous-looking chemicals and a couple of nets from him for the price of two pints of Guinness and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. I began to imagine my Pool cleaning empire, managed to expand the business further and even hired myself an employee when demand quickly outstripped my work ethic.
Juan had all the core skills required to be a highly successful pool cleaner. He was never more than an hour and a half late for work and looked good with his shirt off. He was almost certainly providing ‘extra services’ to at least four of the communities golf widows. I realised he was still ‘visiting’ one of these ladies (and that we were still collecting the direct debit) six months after they’d had their pool filled in and turned into a tennis court.
Even after 18 months of working together, he would still smile graciously when I would call after him with a jolly, “See you at ‘Juan’ o’clock!” in an exaggerated Spanish accent.
He almost certainly hated me, and without doubt, thought I was a little bit racist.
I’d turned up in the Costa del Sol with what was left of the proceeds of the house sale and schoolboy Spanish. I was able to ask where the library was, what time the bus to Madrid left as well as explain to people that I liked playing football with my friends on Saturdays. At 38 years, I was still in reasonable shape and not a bad looking guy, but it quickly became apparent that the local females weren’t going to be charmed into bed by being asked if the bakery was open on Wednesdays.
I eventually managed to pick up enough ‘Spanglish’ to get by (most of the locals spoke better English than I did), had become a frustratingly poor golfer