Done Like a Kipper

“Pity the tan’ll start to fade as soon as we get back,” Jim sighed, as he dropped his clothes in slow-motion, one by one, into a sizeable hold case.

For a split-second Jan watched as Jim struggled to zip up the case, then broke off from her own packing and pushed him aside, snapping: “You’ll never get them in like that. We’ll miss the airport coach. Let me do it.”

“I’d have had no trouble packing, if it wasn’t for those floaty bits of flim flam you couldn’t get in your own case,” Jim objected. “You never wore most of them. You were hardly out of your bikini.”

Now the awful moment had come for the long journey home. When they were first married, Jan would ask: “Jim, where would you like to go this year?” as she leafed through the holiday brochures. “Wherever you like, babes, you know I’m easy.” Jan liked to organise and plan ahead, so that kept them both happy.

Jan and Jim did everything together and kept no secrets from one another – until the day Jan noticed an odd-looking patch on her smoothly-tanned arm. It got bigger and started to bleed. The doctor referred her to a skin specialist who confirmed her worst fears. All those weekends away and long holidays in the sun had taken their toll.

She cast her mind back to the early noughties, when they had visited an amazing exhibition called ‘Life in Death’. People were preserved for ever in the poses they most liked in life, some with the skin peeled back to show their rib cage, some showing how the muscles plaited together, one riding a bike. “A bit like Pompeii, but much better,” she thought. “It’s almost like living for ever.”

“How would you like to be preserved?” she had asked Jim. “Oh, I don’t know…….maybe as a swimmer in an eternal pool of light.” That phrase swam into her mind when she set about booking their next holiday. The ‘Life in Death’ people were still requesting donations.

Jim was her only concern as they didn’t have a family to worry about. It would be cruel to leave him on his own, like an abandoned child. He wouldn’t cope without her. She imagined him taking to drink and sinking into a whirlpool of debt. Far better for them to go together after one, long, final, magnificent holiday to the sea.

“Seychelles!” he had exclaimed, trying to focus on photos of palm-fringed coral atolls in the brochure she had thrust in front of him as he watched football. “That’s going to cost an arm and a leg, isn’t it?” “Trust me, Jim it’ll be the holiday of a lifetime, and we deserve it.” Jim grunted. His team were setting up to score.

“We really can’t afford that sort of money, Jan, not if we’re to have our weekends away to top up out tans,” he objected, at half time. “And why are we returning via Zurich?” “Couldn’t you get a direct return flight?”

“I could have booked direct,” she replied, “but it saves a few pounds if we break the journey there. And I thought it would be nice to visit somewhere we’ve never been before, too.”

“They don’t have no beaches in Switzerland, so why would we?” he persisted. “And you’ve never said you wanted to go there.”

“People can change their mind, you know.” She hesitated, taken aback by Jim’s questioning, “Anyway, it’s all done now,” she added, closing down discussion.

Jim said nothing, but remembered Jan thrusting a flurry of official-looking forms in front of him to sign. Something to do with insurance or indemnity, she had told him. He hadn’t bothered to read them at the time, taking her word for it. Now he decided to find out.

Searching her emails, he discovered she had cut and pasted the doctor’s note about her own prognosis, fabricated a terminal illness for him, scanned it in and emailed it to the Swiss clinic.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Jim told himself, booking in a well person’s review at the doctor’s. He scanned in the results that showed he was as fit as a spring lamb, and sent it to the same email address.

They landed at Zurich airport in heavy rain. “Welcome to Switzerland,” said the taxi driver holding up a sign reading simply: ‘Jan and Jim’. “Sorry we couldn’t have arranged better weather.”

“He’s nice and friendly,” Jim whispered. “Good advert for his hotel. Puts you at your ease.”

“I booked self-catering,” Jan countered. “Thought it would be a better way to unwind.”

They drew up outside an anonymous looking block of flats. Jan checked her phone for the floor they needed. They emerged from the lift into a well-lit corridor where a smiling receptionist awaited them.

“It’s Jan and Jim, isn’t it? Please come in,” she purred. “I’ll make coffee while you get comfortable over there,” she said, gesturing towards a coffee table surrounded by armchairs and a sofa.

“Jan, we need to know you have made your decision without any pressure from family or friends,” the receptionist continued, when they were settled. Leafing through a file of paperwork she picked up from the table and, she asked: “Jim, you are here to accompany Jan. Is that right?”

“No, no,” exclaimed Jan, starting up from her chair. “You’ve got it wrong. Must be the translation. We’re mutual accompaniers. I’m here for Jim, and he’s here for me.”

Jan snatched the forms from the receptionist, anger mounting as her eyes darted across the pages. She lurched towards Jim, eyes blazing and cheeks aflame. “You traitor!” she screeched, index finger pointing at him like a poisoned dart.

As the angry echo of Jan’s words ebbed away, the door clicked quietly open and two men slid in. One was the ‘driver’, but in place of the welcome notice at the airport, he wore police ID.

Pace Rainbird