Do You Remember the First Time?. Jenny Colgan
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Jesus, these were up by my neck!) in our old blue bathroom suite?
I thought. What had happened yesterday? I had gone to the wedding. I had met Clelland. I had fallen out with Oliver. I had made a wish over a wedding cake …
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
You know when something terrible happens and everyone says ‘Don’t panic’?
Now, I believed, was the time to panic.
Slowly, very slowly, I reached out of the shower and put a towel round my tiny waist.
I was back in my nightie, and my dad pushed past me into the bathroom. I barely caught sight of him. Jesus. Had I … travelled back in time? What was it, 1987? I caught my breath. So I could … what? Bet on general elections? Ooh, maybe go discover Take That! Maybe I could marry Robbie. He’d be older than me too. Was Jonathan Ross still free? He turned out to be a pretty good bet. Are the Backstreet Boys still children?
I stumbled back into my bedroom and leaned against the wall, my eyes closed, my heart racing a mile a minute.
Hang on, I should stop just planning on not-yet famous people I want to get off with; do something properly. 1987. Maybe I could save that baby who fell in a well! Oh my God! I have to save Princess Diana! Ooh, I can become the most successful medium there’s ever been! I started to get feverishly excited. What could I invent? Did Dysons exist yet? Ooh, mobile phone stocks! I was going to be so rich!
I shook my head. This was nuts.
Opening my eyes, I took in a picture of – oh, for God’s sake – Blue on my wall. And Darius, I noticed wryly. Oh shit. This couldn’t be right.
I went and sat down in front of my old dressing table. Yes. Still incomprehensible, still from the eighties, still there. My old face. Right. This time, I was wearing sunscreen every day. Not a wrinkle to be found.
So. I tried to put it together in a brain that was dealing with sudden shocks equivalent to six bonfire nights and a bowlful of LSD. My parents were younger. And still together. But Darius was looking older than me.
I didn’t want to come over all Dr Who, but, unbelievably, I was actually going to have to ask someone what year this was.
To postpone the inevitable, and try to calm my breathing, I tried to think about clothes. What age was I? The tits suggested nothing much under fifteen, anyway. Oh God.
I opened my wardrobe door tentatively. Yes, there it was, as if I’d never been away. That bottle-green skirt. The pale green shirt. The thick tights. Tashy and I had sworn blind we would never ever, ever put this damn school uniform on again. But what were my options at this point?
My dad, stroking his still-thick sideburns. I’d forgotten about those.
‘Hey, love,’ he said. ‘Sleep well?’
I was too petrified to say anything, judging that this wouldn’t exactly be an unusual response at the breakfast table from a teenager. Finally, ‘Can I borrow your paper?’ I stammered out.
‘Nice to finally see you,’ said my mother, and I suddenly felt a residual sense of annoyance that she was pleased at something I was doing.
‘Tcch,’ I tutted.
‘Why do you want to see the paper?’ asked my dad. ‘I’ll read you your stars, if you like. Oh, here we are: Virgo. “Today you are going to be late for school and are going out dressed like a bin bag.” Gosh, they’re spot on, aren’t they, love?’
I fumbled my badly tied tie, hands shaking.
‘Don’t tease her,’ said my mum crossly. ‘For God’s sake, give her the bloody paper.’
‘All right, all right,’ said my dad. ‘Here.’ He handed it to me. ‘Happy now?’ he said to my mother.
‘I don’t know. What time are you coming home tonight?’
He blew air out of his mouth. ‘Well, I’ve got a few things to drop off.’
My mother turned back to the kettle and said something under her breath.
‘What was that?’ said my dad.
I buried my head in the paper. Oh my God. I’d forgotten they’d been like this.
‘If you’ve got something to say, just say it.’
My mother’s thin ankles shook in their American tan tights inside her horrid old carpet slippers that I could have sworn I threw out years ago.
Fourth of September 2003, it said. Definitely. Completely. The twenty-first century. Not the eighties. In fact, it was about a month before the day I’d had yesterday, and Tashy’s wedding. WHAT? So – hang on. Me, Mum and Dad had gone back in time, but they seemed completely fine with it?
Had I been in a coma? Had the rest of my life after now been a dream? Was I in an insane asylum and this was a brief moment of lucidity? Had I taken a dodgy pill and rendered the last sixteen years of my life a bad trip? Hang on, how many bad trips have you ever heard of that involved a regular visit to blood donors and a Nectar card?
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said suddenly.
‘Walking are you, love?’ said my dad, taking back the paper. ‘Wonders will never cease. Might get some fresh air in those cheeks.’ I stared at him in disbelief and dashed out the front door, pulling it shut behind me.
I stood outside and fumbled into my bag.
In real life, whatever the hell that is, my mobile is small silver and rather elegant-looking. This thing was pink, fluffy and had leopard skin on it. On the display there was a pixellated picture of a badger.
Chuffing hell.
There were fourteen text messages waiting for me, and I didn’t understand a single one of them.
‘RUOKWAN2CAPIC’
What was that?
I scrawled through to find Tashy’s name. That’s who I had to speak to. It wasn’t there.
All the way on the train I couldn’t think straight. I certainly couldn’t consider – God – school. I just wanted to go home, go to sleep, wake up properly, and never take drugs again.
I bought my flat about six years ago, just before everything went crazily mad in the property market, although I didn’t think that then: at the time I thought I was going crazy. Although I spent most of my time at Olly’s in Battersea now, I hadn’t quite got round to getting rid of it (‘No point. Don’t you know anything about investments?’ I recall Olly saying, at one point). It suited me: have somewhere to go for a bit of quiet time. It was a tiny studio, and the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom was purely for show, but it was in nice North London and I’d loved it; loved painting it different experimental colours to see if anything would make it look bigger; loved following the autumn sun round the room like a cat when I was reading the papers; strolling down and having an overpriced cappuccino on my own, and generally feeling like a grown-up. It was on the ground floor of a fussy Edwardian terrace, with the usual North London mix of inhabitants: a Persian couple, a teacher and a diffident trust-fund musician who owned the whole top floor, from which the smell of dope could permeate the entire building.
I was hurrying there now. The only thought in my mind was getting in there. OK, I didn’t have my keys here, but I kept a spare set in the pots in the scrub at the bottom of the front garden. Once I was in I could sit down, take a few deep breaths, make a proper cup of coffee. I kept looking around suspiciously as I made my way up Embarke Gardens, but everything looked just as it normally did. The old blue car that never moved was still parked in the corner; Hendrix, the top flat owner’s cat, was stalking carefully around on his neighbourhood watch patrol, as he did every day. I heaved a sigh of relief. Nearly home.
I crouched down and felt for the key. It wasn’t there. That was odd. Mind you, Olly had probably gone nuts when I’d disappeared.