A Moment in Time

By Chris Marr

A potpourri of stories about murder and the mystical interspersed with moments of mirth. A fortune-teller makes predictions that turn out to be uncannily correct – to the misery of all. A couple write to each other after a long break and spar over what secrets to reveal. A woman discovers she has the power to kill whomever she wants by sup

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Marr
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781912145591

Chris Marr

Chris Marr was born in 1964 and went to school in Hertfordshire. After reading history at the University of Southampton he became a qualified librarian, worked full-time as an IT system administrator at The Times, before devoting himself to bringing up two children.

Book preview

THE CONVERSATION

The setting was perfect. Their table overlooked the beach and they could hear the gentle lapping of the waves. This was Martin’s favourite time of the day. He found the middle of the day too hot. (And Chichén Itzá had been ridiculously hot; Serena had felt ill on the way back to the resort.) But this time of the evening, when a cool breeze was blowing and the scent of jasmine was in the air, was lovely. Karen Hernandez, the Head of Marketing in the States, and her partner, Gabe, had gone to this restaurant the day before and seen a sea turtle and its babies – which, for once, merited the word ‘awesome’ – and although Martin was not prepared to spend the duration of their meal hoping to see this spectacle for himself, he and Serena had spent a good while gazing out at the palm trees and the orange and pink sunset. The food had been excellent – his main course, puerco pibil, in particular – and the Mexican waiters had been attentive yet mindful of their privacy.

This could be his last reward trip with the company. He had barely scraped enough revenue to meet his target and was now only three years away from retirement. The future lay with the younger members of the sales team, six members of which, along with their partners, had noisily congregated on the big table in the middle of the restaurant. Greg Simmons had topped the figures last year and was the most vocal out of everyone. The group had gone jet-skiing that day and were still laughing over their experiences.

In contrast, Martin and Serena had not spoken a word to each other for at least ten minutes. There was a comfort in not needing to speak, but also a danger of almost forgetting that your partner was there. Serena, Martin noted, was picking at her food, taking small and careful bites, as was her wont. Her glasses were perched crookedly on her nose. When she had come back from the opticians, he had said something complimentary about the frames, but the truth was that they made her look older. She certainly acted like an old woman at times. She had fiddled in her bag seemingly forever to check that it contained the key before leaving their hotel room. Of course, he too had his fair share of age-related problems. His knees felt stiff, particularly first thing in the mornings, and his fingers would seize up at the keyboard, if he typed for too long.

A sense of déjà vu assailed him. This experience, with the restaurant near to the beach, wasn’t dissimilar to another experience that had taken place a long time ago. What was it? He should be able to remember. Perhaps it was something to do with the music playing in the background, an instrumental version of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy...

That was it – he remembered now – their honeymoon in Mykonos, Greece. The restaurant then had been more open to the elements – in particular the patio with its pergola roof interweaved with hanging vines – but there had also been a beautiful sunset to conclude their stay on the island. Gosh, that holiday had been an amazing time. He was so in love with Serena, he would have done anything – literally anything – for her. Their lovemaking, which happened all the time, was bliss. In those moments, he had felt a togetherness that seemed to justify his existence and which left the rest of the world in shadow. The way he had felt was arguably too intense, which was probably why nature, in its wisdom, had ensured that his feelings over the following years had tapered off. It was an evolutionary trick. You were inspired by urges that ensured the continuation of the human race but, after the birth of your children, your priorities changed. He had thought for some time that his children, a boy and a girl both in their thirties now, had inadvertently dealt a critical blow to his marriage. Yet now that Sam and Abby had left the house, he had come to realize that, rather than being the problem, they had, if anything, been the glue that had held the marriage together.

On the contrary, the problem lay elsewhere. Somewhere along the line, life, in its myriad boredom, had worn him down. Promotions had passed him by and hope for the future had been replaced by cynicism. He had gone through several bouts of depression – to the extent that he had been lucky to keep his job. The worst aspect had been the feeling of guilt which, once or twice, he had thought of mentioning to Serena (and which, he imagined, would not elicit her sympathy if he tried to explain his reasons). She had formerly been his whole world and now, through no fault of her own, was only a single part. Shallow though it was to think in such terms, her looks had faded. His looks had faded too, but it was difficult for him to force feelings of passion where they didn’t exist. Instead, what did exist was a feeling of respect. Serena was a good mother. And he could honestly say that he wasn’t interested in a relationship with anyone else. He wouldn’t fall for that evolutionary trick again...

She coughed, a peculiar kind of cough that was silent, placing her hand over her mouth.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, to break the silence.

She was staring out at the view.

‘Just how beautiful it is,’ she answered. ‘A minute ago, I was thinking about Sam and Jessica and wondering how they are settling into their new place.’

Sam was their eldest child and Jessica was his wife. Martin had always felt that Serena had a soft spot for Sam, whereas he had always felt closer to Abby, their daughter.

‘I was thinking about our honeymoon,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Doesn’t this place remind you of the restaurant on the hill overlooking the beach?’

She looked out at the view again. ‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, I suppose.’

She wore a frown of concentration, evidently trying to recall the occasion in question.

‘I’m surprised you can remember back that far,’ she said.

‘We went there twice – the second time on our last evening.’

‘Mmmm,’ she replied vaguely.

Perhaps there was little similarity between the two places and he had only compared them because of the music then playing, which had since changed to something else.

‘Do you think Sam is happy?’ he asked.

‘With his job?’

‘I was thinking more of his marriage.’

She shrugged almost imperceptibly, as if the subject was something that shouldn’t be questioned – at least not any more.

‘He made a decision. He didn’t want to lose her.’

The wedding had taken place last year. They had been seeing each other for six years when Jessica had given Sam an ultimatum: unless he popped the question, she would end their relationship. Martin liked Jessica – it was impossible not to like her; she had a warm and bubbly personality – but if he had been her father, he wouldn’t have been nearly so happy about Sam’s reluctance to commit himself to a life together with his daughter.

‘Do you think that he loves her?’

‘We’ve had this conversation before.’

‘I know we have.’ Like every other conversation. ‘I just find it remarkable that he could be so mature in his attitude.’

‘It took him a long time to get over Adriana.’

Sam had met Adriana at Cardiff University. They had always had an unstable relationship, as far as Martin had been aware, but halfway through her first year and Sam’s final year she had dropped out of her course and gone back to Romania to patch things up with her ex-boyfriend. Despite his results for his first two years pointing to an upper second-class degree, Sam had collapsed in his studies and had ended up with a third.

It had been an unfortunate state of affairs, particularly in its timing, and Martin had naturally felt sorry for his son. Very few people, he presumed, went through life without experiencing the pangs of heartache, from which it might take months, or even a year or two, to recover.

‘That was over ten years ago,’ he said.

‘He was very, very keen on her.’

‘Did he ever try to contact her again?’

‘No, it was too painful for him.’

Martin’s memory of Adriana, on the one occasion they had met, was of a tall girl with dark blue eyes and jet-black hair – ‘raven tresses’ in Sam’s words – who did not smile much and, indeed, at times looked downright gloomy. Because of her accent – she struggled to speak English – and the area of the world that she came from, he had always associated her with Dracula, and she had certainly cast a spell over Sam.

‘He told me last year that she broke his heart and that there wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t think about her,’ Serena added.

‘Every day?’ Martin queried incredulously. ‘When did he tell you this? Before or after the wedding to Jessica?’

‘About a week before.’

Martin’s expression must have betrayed his thoughts.

‘I know you find him difficult to understand,’ she said. ‘And I guess it is amazing that he could hold a candle for someone for so long. But isn’t he just like you in that respect? Weren’t you head over heels in love with me?’

‘That was different.’

‘Was it? It’s the same emotion. Love can affect people very powerfully. During our conversation, he revealed a lot of stuff to me that he hadn’t talked about before.’

‘Such as?’

She took another bite of her meal. Then, aware that he was gazing at her, she looked up.

‘I promised him that I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

He continued to gaze at her.

‘You mustn’t repeat this under any circumstances,’ she said.

‘All right, I give you my word.’

‘I think he felt embarrassed to admit to it. Basically, before Adriana went back to Romania, he proposed marriage to her.’

‘What!’

Martin looked around to check if their fellow diners had heard his exclamation.

‘It was the day before she left the country.’

‘He seriously suggested that they...?’

She nodded.

‘But they’d only just met, pretty much. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have anywhere to live – unless you count living with us, of course.’

‘They’d known each for five months. He said that he was out of his mind at the prospect of her leaving and that, if she felt the same way about him as he did about her, he would go and live with her in Romania.’

‘Go and live with her in Romania!’ he reiterated.

He shook his head in disbelief, not only because of Serena’s revelation but because it had been hidden from him for so long. She was right about him finding Sam difficult to understand. It felt as if he were learning things about this person – whom she had compared himself to and whom he had helped to bring up – all the time.

‘How did she react?’ he asked.

Serena gulped, again placing her hand delicately over her mouth. Martin could almost predict when this quirk of hers might happen and wondered when it had first become a characteristic.

‘I think, under the circumstances, she handled things very well. She said that she was very flattered by his proposal and told him that, although she liked him a lot, she did not think that they had a future together. She said that she still felt close to her ex-boyfriend.’

‘Hi Martin.’

Laurie Madison and her partner, Kyle, had come over to their table. Martin had spoken to Laurie several times on the phone and found her easy to get on with. Nevertheless, this was a very inconvenient time to interrupt the conversation, and it required his best efforts to assume a welcoming expression.

‘Hi.’ Laurie greeted Serena before turning back to Martin. ‘I just thought you should know that we’re off to a disco at the nightclub. It’ll be great to see you both later.’

Over Laurie’s shoulder, Martin could see the people on the middle table getting up and leaving. Greg Simmons gave him a thumbs up sign.

He glanced at Serena, who gazed back at him inscrutably.

‘OK, we might pop over later,’ he said to Laurie. He wanted to get back to the conversation about Sam.

‘Awesome. It’ll be great to have some Brits to hang out with to improve the tone.’ She addressed Kyle, who was standing beside her. ‘Martin revealed in one of our conference calls that he’s had training in ballroom dancing. Did you have lessons as well?’ she asked Serena.

‘I did,’ she replied. ‘Unfortunately, I think we both have left feet.’

Laurie laughed and then addressed Martin. ‘Congratulations, by the way, on winning Ireland. Eric told me about it. That was massive, wasn’t it?’

‘Thanks.’

Laurie rejoined her colleagues. The US sales team weren’t a bad lot, Martin reflected. He could be overly serious at times and they did their best to engender a positive mood.

‘I don’t really fancy dancing tonight,’ said Serena. ‘I’m a bit tired.’

‘Me, too. I only said we might go to be polite.’

‘She seemed very nice. Extremely attractive.’

‘Yes.’

‘You think that she’s extremely attractive?’

‘No, I meant that she’s very nice.’

He genuinely hadn’t thought of Laurie in terms of her looks. She was probably twenty years younger than him. In any case, that aspect of his life – the sex side – was almost definitely over. He and Serena hadn’t made love for six or seven years. Although he was still capable of performing, as it were, he didn’t feel, perhaps in his unique, self-loathing way, that he deserved to make love to her. He had only managed to do so in the past because he had been able to compartmentalize his feelings. Making love had been a guilty – very guilty – pleasure.

‘Hmmm, very nice,’ she quoted, as if he was being coy about his feelings.

He shrugged off her remark. If she was implying that he liked Laurie more than in a friendly way, she was mistaken. Although Serena knew him better than anyone else, she did not know everything about him.

‘Why didn’t Sam mention this marriage proposal at the time?’ he asked.

‘It might have helped him to get over her more quickly, that’s true.’

‘Has he mentioned it to Jessica?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask too many questions because I thought it was a big enough step for him to tell me what he did. Perhaps he hasn’t mentioned it to her and that was why he didn’t want me to tell anyone else.’

It was an interesting question: was it always right to be open with one’s nearest and dearest or were there times when it was wiser to keep one’s own counsel? Arguably, the knowledge that Sam had already proposed marriage to someone else and had been prepared to live abroad with her wouldn’t benefit Jessica in any way.

‘I knew he was smitten with Adriana,’ he muttered, ‘but I didn’t realize he was that smitten.’

‘He finds it difficult to open up about his feelings. Don’t be too hard on him.’

Of course, as the parent whom Sam had eventually confided in, it was easier for her to take this attitude. On the other hand, perhaps it was amazing that someone who was now thirty-two years old could still confide in either of his parents.

‘A lot of people go a little mad with love,’ she went on. ‘You, for instance. Didn’t you propose to Annabelle Summers?’

He reared back, genuinely shocked. ‘No, I didn’t propose to Annabelle Summers! What ever gave you that idea?’

He had assumed that she had forgotten about that particular person from the past. She had only mentioned her three or four times during their marriage and hadn’t brought her up for over a decade.

‘Diana Stoner told me. You remember Diana, the short, pudgy girl from the tennis club?’

Yes, he remembered Diana, the gossip.

‘You’ve waited thirty-five years to come out with that!’ he expostulated.

‘Well, is it true?’

‘This is quite an evening for surprises!’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

He sighed heavily. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. We had an arrangement.’

‘Ah!’

She obviously thought that she had caught him out. Her bright eyes made her look younger and he was reminded of the early years of their relationship when they used to tease each other.

‘We were both drunk at the time.’

‘Of course you were!’

‘We agreed that, if neither of us got together with anybody else, we would get married to each other at the age of thirty. It was a joke. Her birthday was a few days after mine. As it happened, within weeks of that conversation, I met you.’

‘So you might have married Annabelle, if you hadn’t met me?’

‘It’s extremely unlikely, I would have thought.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘You’re humming and hawing a lot this evening,’ he said, getting a chuckle in response. ‘It’s as if you think I’m feeding you a tissue of lies.’

‘According to Diana, you were obsessed with Annabelle Summers.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ He scoffed at this calumny. ‘Well, that’s an interesting view of Diana’s – based on nothing except a desire to cause trouble. The point is that everything changed after I met you. You became my new favourite person in the world.’

‘And Annabelle?’

‘I believe she got married two or three years later.’

‘You’re not hiding anything from me?’

‘Good God, what is this? The third degree? Are you suggesting that I can keep secrets for years on end – like our inscrutable son?’

Even now, he could picture Annabelle perfectly, the way she would tilt her head to one side and smile endearingly. In truth, he had been completely obsessed with her. Although the marriage proposal had been framed as a lark – and he had made a pretence of getting down on one knee – in reality, he would have married her there and then. He had even occasionally loitered outside her house in the middle of the night and stared up at her bedroom window. It was lucky that no one had seen him or reported him to the police.

Furthermore, if he had wanted to be absolutely candid with Serena, he had not fallen in love with her immediately. How could he? He was in love, or believed he was, with Annabelle. Instead, he had thought, almost in a detached way, that Serena was a truly stunning woman and that it was amazing he could act so naturally in her presence. While he had probably come across as fairly laid-back when they had been together, every other man, it seemed, had been doing their utmost, and failing, to impress her. One chap, Callum, would slip his ‘washboard stomach’ into every conversation and Martin would make Serena chuckle behind his back by saying in Callum’s voice, ‘Just flexing the old guns,’ and posing ludicrously, or by exclaiming, ‘Hold on!’ and suddenly diving to the floor and doing some press-ups.

This remarkable self-assurance had been swept away with their first kiss. It had happened almost by accident. They had gone out with two male friends, both of whom were enamoured with her, and she had chosen Martin to take her home at the end of the evening. ‘He’s the only one of you I can trust,’ she had said. Outside her flat, they had said goodbye and in that instant – he had honestly not thought of the idea before – he had leaned forward to kiss her.

That first moment of intimacy, and the brief flurry of passion that had followed, had triggered off something in his brain. Serena Crawford – sensuous, sexy Serena – had welcomed him into her world. He finally understood what her other admirers saw in her, and the only mystery to be solved was why he had not seen it before. She was everything desirable in a woman. She carried herself with an aloofness, a hidden promise of what might be, that he craved to possess. No one else had such power over him.

And yet, almost unbelievably, her attitude towards him after that evening had not altered. She wanted, she told him, to remain a free agent. And so, while she appeared to view their fling as a bit of fun – and their friendship continued as before – he felt obliged, for fear of scaring her off, to hide the revolution that had occurred in his head. It was frightening how she had so quickly become the focus of his thoughts and so crucial to his emotional wellbeing.

Indeed, to prove her point about being a free agent, she had gone out with another man a week later. She had probably expected him to buckle under the shock of the sight of them walking together hand in hand, but his happy smile – a feat of superhuman willpower – appeared to have more of an effect on her. She had positively blanched and had given him a call later that evening. The chap with her, she said, had simply been a friend going through a tough time (hence the hand-holding). Over subsequent days, he had won her affections but only at the price, it seemed, of further relinquishing his own. Clearly, he had been under a delusion with Annabelle. She was