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  It’s the same with the human brain, only on a far grander and more mysterious scale, its true power being so tricky to tap. Most of its work and activity happens at a deeply subconscious level and yet even beyond that, there are areas of it which we never unearth even when dreaming.

  Psychics do better than most. Whether you believe in them or not, they at least have more awareness of the various possibilities which we could perhaps utilise if only we tried.

  Right at that second, within Jennifer’s skull, a series of lightning-fast connections were being made, ones which she never usually would have been privy to if her head hadn’t made contact with the hard ground quite as brutally as it had, thus flinging her software into disarray. Something extraordinary was happening.

  As her synapses furiously connected and fused, three tunnels of white light suddenly showed themselves to her. There was one to the left, one straight ahead and one to the right. Was this what death looked like? Instinct told her it was something different though and suddenly she knew, without needing to be told, that rather than leading her to the afterlife, instead these tunnels represented different lives she could so easily have led. Parallel universes, ones which were usually buried and hidden, deep in the core of the brain.

  What she was being given here was a gift. The gift of being able to see what life would have been like had she chosen another route, or made a different decision, at three separate points during her life. And so it was that Jennifer allowed herself to fall into a deep and very informative coma. As her own private miracle started, she began to glide towards the first tunnel, the one to the left which was swirling with clouds of light at its entrance. This was the one marked Aidan

  TUNNEL NUMBER ONE

  What Could Have Been—Aidan

  Jennifer slipped out of bed and padded across the room to pull the curtain back. Sunlight immediately poured in and though it was still only early, she could feel the heat of the day penetrating the glass. She gazed out at the view, loving the way the sea glinted and twinkled through the gaps in the rooftops. Their little one bedroom apartment in the bay-side suburbs of Brisbane was very basic, very compact, but it was also only a twenty-minute walk from the beach.

  She opened the window a fraction and breathed in deeply. Then she tipped her face back and let the already strong rays bathe her skin with their warmth.

  It was strange getting up every day knowing it was going to be hot and that the sky would almost definitely be blue. She’d always considered herself a total sun worshipper but having been away for so long now, the sense of urgency to get out there and work on her tan had started to fade a bit. Sometimes, if she were being totally honest, she even found the constancy of the temperature a little relentless, a tad monotonous, to the point where recently she’d found herself secretly craving a bit of grey sky. This was ironic given that she was always the first to moan about the abysmal climate in England and yet what she missed about the British weather was that subtle change of seasons. Nothing beat a glorious, breezy, spring day, or that first sniff in the air which told you that autumn had arrived, when the light became more golden and the leaves were falling from the trees, crunchy and brown.

  ‘Hey sexy.’

  ‘Oh, you’re awake,’ she said, turning round to see Aidan grinning at her from the bed. He was brown, toned and fit from all the hours of running on the beach he was doing most days. She still felt a lurch of desire every time she clapped eyes on him.

  ‘Yeah funny that, given that you’ve pulled the curtains wide open. Now, seeing as you’ve woken me up, get your sexy bum over here,’ he said, eyeing her greedily.

  She was only wearing a small vest top and a pair of knickers.

  ‘I know what you’re after,’ she grinned back at him, knowing full well he’d have a raging hard on. He woke up with one every morning. In that way he was a bit like the Queensland weather, predictable.

  ‘Just shut up and come here,’ he said, flinging back the sheets to reveal that her guess was indeed correct.

  Not needing to be persuaded, Jennifer approached the bed and succumbed to half an hour of intense passion. Before Aidan, she hadn’t been aware of ever having such a voracious sexual appetite but he’d definitely woken something up inside of her that she supposed must have been lying dormant before.

  After what was, as ever, mind-blowing, energetic sex, they both lay flat on their backs panting, sated, sweating.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ said Aidan, idly tweaking her left nipple.

  ‘So are you,’ she replied. ‘Seriously amazing.’

  ‘Love you,’ he said, hugging her tight. As he did so Jennifer marvelled at how safe he made her feel. The chemistry between them was something she doubted could ever be replicated with anyone else, to the point that sometimes they were almost savagely passionate with one another. She didn’t think there was anything she wouldn’t be prepared to do with him physically and, as a result, she had never felt so confident in her own body or so empowered in terms of the effect she knew she was capable of having upon him.

  ‘Are we going to the beach then?’ said Aidan.

  ‘Not the building site?’

  ‘Nah, that can wait. It’s too much of a scorcher. Maybe tomorrow?’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed, flopping over to her side so she could get up and start getting the beach bag ready.

  Just then the phone rang.

  ‘Yours,’ said Jennifer lazily, though a second later she regretted this when she remembered it would probably be the scheduled phone call she’d arranged with her parents before they retired to bed on the other side of the world.

  ‘Yup, here she is,’ Aidan was saying, in a fed up, vaguely unfriendly tone which simply confirmed it was them.

  Jennifer sat up and reached over for her vest top which she pulled back over her head before taking the phone from him. It was such a small apartment that there wasn’t anywhere for her to go where she could talk without Aidan listening in, so rather than standing up in the tiny kitchen, where he’d be able to hear every word anyway, she just stayed where she was. Never having any privacy did get to her sometimes.

  ‘Hi Mum, how are you?’

  ‘Oh all right,’ said the so familiar voice, made tinny from the sheer distance it was travelling.

  Jennifer pictured her parents, sitting by the phone together, probably ready for bed in their dressing gowns, in the lounge with the radiators blasting.

  ‘What have you been up to this week, Jen?’

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ she replied ‘Working, bit of beach action. You know? The usual really.’

  ‘I thought you were going to that Surfers Paradise place.’

  ‘Oh yeah, we were, but we didn’t in the end,’ said Jennifer, turning around so she had her back to Aidan. He was looking grumpy like he always did when she chatted to her parents. It was getting on her nerves.

  Three months ago, at exactly the time her mum and dad had been expecting her to be landing at Gatwick, back from her holiday with the girls, Jennifer had rung them from Athens to break the news that she’d essentially decided to throw caution to the wind and take an unplanned gap year. In Australia…

  To say they’d been furious had been an understatement. Her dad had shouted, her mum had wept though, as it transpired, it was less the fact she wasn’t coming home which enraged them so much, but more the fact she wasn’t coming back because of a man they hadn’t met.

  Their reaction had been so bad that Jennifer had seriously considered giving up on her adventure altogether. Had even thought it might be best just to admit defeat and head home straight away, tail between her legs. In fact she’d just been about to tell them that she was sorry and that she would do exactly that, when her mother had interjected with, ‘One whiff of male attention and you go and lose your head, Jennifer. It’s pathetic when you think about it.’

  And that one comment changed everything. For at that point, Jennifer’s mood had switched from apologetic and shamefaced to resolute and determin
ed. She’d been utterly insulted by her mother’s accusation and had said as much to Aidan when she’d got off the phone a few minutes later in order to have a think, on the proviso that she’d call them back with a decision.

  She’d left him drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in a dusty roadside cafe in a busy square and as she’d approached, it was obvious to her that despite trying to appear nonchalant he was in fact really nervous.

  ‘What happened?’ he’d asked, as soon as she was in earshot.

  ‘They went bloody mad,’ she replied, still a bit shell-shocked from the whole experience. She jumped as a moped whizzed past, almost knocking her off her feet.

  Gathering her wits and checking left and right she finally reached his table, mind whirling as she tried to comprehend what had just happened.

  She’d always hated confrontation and miraculously had managed to avoid too many bust-ups with her fairly conservative parents up until this point, which was partly why she was so livid with them now. How dare her mother have talked to her like that? Like she was some stupid, dozy tart who was so needy of male attention she’d do anything to get it. She’d never given them any cause for worry or upset in the past and yet now she was deviating off the path just a little bit, they didn’t have the patience to at least try and understand her reasons. Yes, Aidan had been a massive part of the decision not to go home, but that was life. You met people and things happened and given that they hadn’t even met him it seemed ridiculous for them to have formed an opinion of him already. It was so unfair. They gave her no credit whatsoever.

  ‘So what’s the score then?’

  ‘I said I’d call back in ten minutes so we could all cool off,’ she’d replied, avoiding both the question and his stare.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she’d replied truthfully, feeling unbelievably torn ‘They’re really mad at me, Aidan, and it was awful hearing them so pissed off. Plus, Mum’s desperately worried that if I defer I might lose my place altogether.’

  ‘Well she would say that wouldn’t she,’ suggested Aidan.

  Jennifer shrugged, doubtful her mum was that manipulative. ‘I’m so thirsty I almost feel faint, have you got enough money for me to get a beer?’

  ‘Yeah, go for it,’ said Aidan pulling some ancient Drachma notes out of his pocket and signalling to the waiter.

  A few minutes later, once Jennifer had had the chance to glug back some of her cold lager, he enquired again. ‘So what’s it to be then, babe? Sunshine, the land of opportunity and some hot romance with me? Or back to mummy and daddy and the rain?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jennifer had replied honestly. She felt really conflicted and a bit stupid. She’d probably been deeply deluded thinking her parents would just accept her reasoning for ducking out. Plus, deep down she really didn’t want to throw away her chance to go to university, even if it meant admitting she’d been rash. Their fury had knocked her though and treating her like a child made it harder for her to decide what to do. She was so cross with them.

  Realising she needed time to think Aidan dropped the subject so they sat in slightly tense silence, watching the world go by, until Jennifer got up. ‘Right, there’s no point sitting here putting it off. I’d better go and ring them back.’

  As she marched back across the busy road to the centre of the square where the phone booth was, her head was spinning. What should she do? She still had no idea, so decided it would probably be best just to see how the conversation panned out.

  Her dad had picked up the phone. ‘Right, now I hope you’re phoning to tell us you’ve seen sense.’

  This wasn’t a good start in terms of making her feel like returning to the bosom of her family.

  ‘I’ve phoned to discuss things like an adult,’ she shot back.

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said. ‘So in that case, surely you can see that running off with some good for nothing beach bum, while ruining your life in the process, is entirely the wrong thing to do?’

  It was a shame he’d taken that approach. It was a shame he hadn’t simply asked her how she was and how she was feeling because he might have got a very different response to the one he received and the conversation may have played out another way.

  As it was, three days later Jennifer and Aidan boarded a plane to Australia and, although she was experiencing an underlying sense of panic as to whether or not it was definitely what she really wanted, the fact she was proving a point to her parents had become enough to prevent her from changing her mind.

  If relations had been bad at that point they’d taken an even worse turn once she’d phoned them again from Sydney, where they’d stayed for the first few weeks before heading to Queensland, at which point her furious dad had demanded to speak to her boyfriend. At first Aidan had refused, which had made Jennifer feel very uneasy. Eventually however, sensing that if he didn’t Jennifer was going to freak out, he’d eventually acquiesced, albeit reluctantly, at which point her dad had given him very short shrift, venting all his frustrations and feelings of helplessness at the person he held responsible for his daughter’s unfamiliar behaviour.

  Aidan hadn’t appreciated being shouted at though. Rather than taking the reprimanding on the chin, he’d retaliated with a few barbed insults of his own which hadn’t helped matters in any way. Now, a few months on, things had calmed down a bit but no matter how much Jennifer tried to explain that Aidan had only been sticking up for her, her parents wouldn’t budge on their opinion of him. Meanwhile, Aidan refused to understand that perhaps they were only feeling protective and worried about their daughter.

  So here she was having yet another awkward conversation with them while Aidan glowered and sulked next to her.

  ‘So why didn’t you go to Surfers Paradise then?’ her mum asked now, in a way that sounded to Jennifer somehow accusatory.

  ‘Because we decided to go another time,’ she lied. In reality they couldn’t afford to hire a car or go at all but she certainly wasn’t going to tell them that.

  ‘Hmm, well it seems a shame since you are there not to be doing anything, or seeing anything other than Brisbane,’ remarked her mother pointedly.

  Jennifer swallowed, determined not to have another row.

  ‘How’s dad?’

  ‘He’s right here, do you want a word?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Hello, love,’ said her dad and Jennifer blinked back a tear. She didn’t half miss them.

  ‘You’ll never guess what happened to Martin at work the other day.’

  It was true, she never would, so Jennifer let her dad witter away, filling her in on the day-to-day minutiae of his life in a way that made her feel closer to home.

  Afterwards her mother came back on the phone. ‘I saw Karen’s mum the other day.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Jennifer, rolling her eyes and wishing Aidan would stop staring and listening, while simultaneously preparing herself for the next dig.

  ‘Yes. Karen’s loving university apparently. She’s got loads of new friends and is really enjoying the course.’

  ‘Good for Karen,’ huffed Jennifer.

  ‘Oh don’t be like that Jen, I’m just saying. There’s no need to be so defensive.’

  ‘You’re not just saying though are you? You’re having another go at me for coming here, only I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I can go next year.’

  ‘If they agree to you deferring your place. We’ve still not heard yet have we?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ she agreed.

  Minutes later as she finally put down the phone she swallowed hard.

  ‘Hey you, you OK?’ said Aidan. ‘Don’t let them make you feel like shit.’

  But Jennifer’s previous good mood had dissolved entirely. Every time she spoke to them it was the same. It stirred up so many mixed emotions, doubt, fear and anger at both their handling of the situation and her own.

  ‘Listen, fuck ’em. Just forget about them, babe. Now let’s
get up and head to the beach.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said flatly, wishing it were that simple. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be going today you know. Perhaps it would be more sensible to head down to that building site to see if we can get you some work.’

  Aidan rolled his eyes. ‘You’re such a killjoy you are. Don’t let your parents ruin our day. Just because they want to be miserable buggers doesn’t mean we have to be. I mean, look how gorgeous it is out there and you want to sweat into town because some idiot from the cafe says there might be some work going. That’s hardly making the best of the day is it?’

  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.