by Jenny Colgan
I nearly choked on a piece of mashed potato. Work? I had a job? What kind of a job? I thought back to when I was sixteen, at the Co-op. Endless boxes of biscuits. No, no, no. Saturdays were for shopping, and pedicures with Tash. Please, no. Whatever my job was, I didn’t want to do it.
I swallowed slowly. ‘Actually, you know … it’s been such a big week, here or there …’
My dad looked at me. I thought for a brief second he could sense my inner confusion and turmoil.
‘Don’t think you’re getting any money from us.’
‘You don’t want to lose that job, Flora,’ my mother reproached me. ‘They’re good people at the Co-op. And, Duncan, for Christ’s sake, shut up. If she needs money we’ll—’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ I said hurriedly. Had they always spoken to each other in this way? I was a bit cheeky to Ol, but this was just awful. ‘But, also, you know, I’ve got a ton of homework to do too and …’
I got up and left. My dad was glaring at my mother. He looked as if he was thinking something he’d never say aloud.
My first stop: I should just get fired from the Co-op. Tashy would give me the money, surely. She had plenty sloshing around that wedding fund of hers. And I could pay her back … I swallowed a big gulp of uncertainty. I would pay her back when I got out of this mess. Jeez. And hopefully, when that happened, nobody would remember I’d even been here at all. I had to believe that. I had to.
I paced around my bedroom, picking up unfamiliar things. I needed some space I couldn’t trip myself up in, plus I’d already seen this week’s episode of Friends and Have I Got News for You a month ago, and I didn’t want to give away any possible psychic abilities. And I certainly couldn’t relax. I mean, when I’d thought about being sixteen again, I’d thought about staying out late and having fun, not having detention and staying in on Friday nights, watching old Have I Got News for Yous listening to my mum and dad rip each other to shreds. Which, when I thought back to it, I had done quite a lot of. Before Clelland had come along and … no, I wasn’t going to think about that. Not only was it long ago, it was in a completely different world.
Plus, I couldn’t have sat still even if I wanted to. I was fidgety and antsy, and the atmosphere between my mum and dad was too frosty for words. I wanted to run out the house and go find some friends and pretend none of this was happening, but I didn’t want to see that look in my mum’s eyes again. So I was a trapped animal. I looked around my blue-wallpapered bedroom.
I would have thought I was far too old for CDs by Gareth Gates, but clearly not. Oh well, I was the uncoolest girl in the school, so maybe that explained it. There was some old Steps, going back a couple of years, and lots of No Doubt, whom I clearly loved. Good. I put them in the woefully poor quality pink CD player that must have been a present. There were also plenty of other people I really hadn’t heard of, which was a bit embarrassing. I thought I was a bit more up on music than this, but I had no idea who Jay-Z was, or who those seventeen pikey-looking boys in the poster on my wall were. I leafed idly through several copies of Smash Hits, and wondered if I could remember who was about to become number one, so I could put a bet on it. I wandered over to my white, faux Louis XIV desk, which was horrible, and had a framed picture of a tiger above it – I loved tigers. I opened the drawers, one after another: magazines, free lipsticks and endless, endless screeds of useless-looking homework dribbled out. Then I got to one that was locked. Ooh, locked drawer.
I felt perversely guilty and sneaky about this. I was sneaking on a teenager’s privacy – the most precious thing to them. She would be horrified, totally horrified and mortified if she knew a complete stranger was going to look at her secret things. Even if the complete stranger was me.
I fiddled about at the bottom of the pink fluffy bag and, sure enough, there was a tiny key there. Feeling guilty, and with my heart thumping quite loudly, I turned the lock.
There was a miniature bottle of peach schnapps (which I drank immediately, of course, gagging slightly at the cloying sweetness), some cigarette papers, a couple of pictures of men with their shirts off – foxy – a copy of Fanny Hill (I smiled ironically to myself), and, oh God. Yes. What I had probably been subconsciously looking for all the time.
I drew it out. It was rather nice, actually, a plain, lined book with a silk cover that looked like a big investment of my Co-op money.
My Diary.
I had actually burned my own 1980s version of this little beauty some years before when I realised that, in fact, when I was an old lady sitting in a home I probably wouldn’t be that fascinated by reading who had annoyed me particularly that week, and if I couldn’t remember a person’s name ten years after the event, I’d be very unlikely to do so in my brief periods of geriatric lucidity. There also seemed less and less point in hoarding it for grateful biographers from the British Library.
More than that, though, I didn’t like seeing the lonely and confused little girl I was. I know all teenagers are lonely and confused, to greater or lesser extents, but surely a point of being an adult is that we get to dump that entire thing, like a snake shedding its skin, and escape into a world of lasting friendships, real fun, a lifting of the terrible, everlasting self-consciousness that weighs on your shoulders every single second of every single day. I didn’t want to read about a girl who didn’t know she could be happy. I didn’t want to read about a girl who painted castles in the air, who didn’t know what the world could bring, who planned the wedding that was currently driving Tashy crazy.
And everything did get better, of course it did. In the shape of a degree, and a nice little car, and a flat, and a nice boyfriend. She got all of these things. I’m just not sure that’s what she meant, or thought that’s how they would feel.
And here I was again. I lay down on my purple eiderdown and cringed. You know, I didn’t think I’d changed so much. I looked at my soft, lily-white hands. That wasn’t how I expected my hands to look. They wouldn’t have chipped black polish on them, for a start. But as I forced myself to read the book, I forced myself to realise the truth, however weird it was.
This girl was me, all right. Unbearably, unreadably so at some points.
‘Fallon is a big WITCH. She thinks she’s so brilliant but I think she’s probably a VERY UNHAPPY PERSON who thinks sending round notes about Somebody else’s feelings is funny, which means she is probably SICK.’
Yeah. Oh, no, please, what was this?
‘I think I’m in love with Ethan. I can hardly say it out loud, it makes me feel so strange. But I really do think I love him. I think this might be it. And he looked at me at least three times yesterday.’
Oh, fuck a doo, surely not. These bloody lads. In two years’ time they’d be DROOLING over us at university, and at the moment they were too busy playing top trumps to even think of including someone … OK, I was not going to have my feelings hurt by someone I had never set eyes on. Let me see …
There was an incomprehensible scrawl that seemed to indicate Constanzia and I had drunk two bottles of her father’s wine as an experiment and passed out. I had stopped dotting my i’s with circles only a year before. And the more I flipped back and forth in the book for it, the more I realised the truth. It had been true then, and it was true now.
I was still a virgin. Of course I was. I’d just turned sixteen. It’s just – at this I got a sudden twinge, I didn’t know why. It was very peculiar. Being a virgin wasn’t something I’d thought of as a state for so long, or at any rate as something to kick against as a prerequisite in women in geopolitical terms.
As soon as I left home – the increasingly sad, inward-looking place home had become after Dad’s departure – I’d got rid of it as quick as was humanly possible. It was sore, fumbly, damp and embarrassing.
Things had gradually improved, of course, and it’s rarely a romantic highspot for anyone, but I could feel the hopes and dreams tied up in this book, my blank slate, and hugged it thoughtfully to my tiny chest.
‘You don’t even know,’ I whispered to it. ‘Well, don’t accept any invites to any college balls willy-nilly.’
‘It was really nice kissing Felix at the s.p. We kissed for four hours and twenty-eight minutes.’
OK, this was from last year, but still, I was quite impressed by that. When had I last snogged for any time at all? I couldn’t remember. I mean, Olly and I kissed, didn’t we? Well, on the lips when we saw each other, which wasn’t quite snogging, and in bed, I guess, but that wasn’t quite snogging either.
But it’s a teenage trait, really, isn’t it? That’s why they’re always catching glandular fever.
‘I hate working in the Co-op. Mrs Bentall is a complete b***h. It’s so unfair. Stanzi just gets money off her mum and dad and a clothing allowance. It’s not fair. If Dad was ever in I might get a clothing allowance.’
Oh, gosh, a whiner. I looked down at the grumpy life I was holding in my hands. This girl was on the same trajectory as I was.
My phone bleeped. I leaped on it. It was a text.
‘World fucked up,’ it said. Thank goodness Tashy had never learned text language either. ‘Will pick up tomorrow for escape bid.’
Chapter Six
Thank God for Tash. I couldn’t sleep. I eventually curled up in a ball in the bed when I heard the Newsnight music downstairs, and had jerked awake all night, clutching the stupid diary. I’d texted Tash at as near first light as I could manage, and met her round the corner, in traditional teenager sneaking-out way. I’d just have to resign from the Co-op; Mum never went there anyway. She thought it was the supermarket of communist Russia.
Tashy was sitting at the wheel of her little Audi. She raised her eyebrows at me and I realised that perhaps the miniskirt/striped jersey ensemble I’d pulled out the cupboard might be a bit much for a Saturday morning.
‘What?’ I said crossly, even though I was so relieved she was there I could have burst.
‘Nothing,’ she said as I got in. ‘You’re just so tiny. Let me fiddle with your upper arms a second.’
‘LEAVE it.’
She pushed up the skin under my eyes with a finger. ‘There you go, see. That’s what you’re going to look like in sixteen years’ time. Fuck, you have so long.’
I studied myself in the car window as she reversed from the kerb. It’s true, my skin, where it wasn’t breaking out, had a definite bloom on it. But I also looked less like myself. You couldn’t really tell from my appearance what I was like. A blank slate, of course. My face hadn’t quite settled.
‘You know, I’ve been eating nothing but bloody steamed fish for six months and I still look nothing like you.’
‘You look great,’ I said, with the reflex action you have with your best friends.
‘So I bloody should,’ she said dreamily. ‘How do I look on the day?’
‘Oh, one must not know one’s own future,’ I said. ‘It is forbidden.’
‘Is Max’s speech funny?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Um, how is Max?’
‘Well,’ she looked worried suddenly, ‘I said, “You’ll never believe what’s happened to Flo.”’
‘Uh-huh?’
She concentrated on the road ahead. ‘Well …’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Here’s the thing, Flo. He’s never heard of you.’
‘He’s never what?’
‘He had no idea who I was talking about.’
The terrible crushing fear came back.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Oh God, I don’t exist. In this world, or the old world, or the … what the fuck is going on? Who am I? I don’t … how will I be able to do anything or get back or … I’m no one!’ I started to hyperventilate.
She clutched my arm. ‘You do.’
‘But … not for Max, not for bloody old Karl Dean, not for Miss Syzlack, even though … I mean, she knows someone else altogether.’
‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.’
‘LOOK at me!’
‘OK maybe not rational exactly.’
I gulped suddenly. ‘Oh my God, what about Olly?’
‘I wondered when you were going to mention him,’ said Tash quietly. ‘He must be worried sick.’
‘Well, where are we going now?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘You’ve invented a person-ageing machine?’
‘Yes, I call it “management accounting exams”.’
‘Ha-ha.’
We parked near the centre of town and walked up across Piccadilly, down the steps and over to beautiful St James’s Park. It was a lovely autumn morning, not wet, just a faint mist rising off the lake and through the trees. Apart from the usual complement of manic joggers, there weren’t many people around at all.
‘Let’s go feed the ducks,’ said Tashy meaningfully, taking some bread out of her pockets.
‘I’m sixteen, not six.’
‘Come on.’
‘You’ve set me up for MI6,’ I said, suddenly panicking. ‘You’re going to sell me to the military, aren’t you, so they can run all sorts of tests on me and work out how to use me as a weapon?’
‘Yes, that’s what friends do,’ said Tash snidely.
‘We’re near Whitehall! Experiments! Don’t do it, Tash. What if I get kidnapped by a cosmetics company?’
‘Ssh. Ssh. Stop being paranoid,’ said Tash, indicating a tall figure walking towards us through the trees.
‘I have every fucking right to be paranoid.’
‘It must be your hormones.’
‘Hormones they’re going to extract with an enormous probe! Oh shit.’
The figure resolved itself through the trees. It was Olly.
He stopped dead still about six feet away from us.
‘Jesus God,’ he said, staring at me.
‘He knows me!’ I exclaimed. Why some people did and some people didn’t, I hadn’t the faintest idea. I hadn’t realised the extent of my terror until then, and it had left me weak with relief and gratitude. ‘You know me!’
Tash had already gone to meet him and was holding his arm. ‘Sorry,’ said Tashy. ‘I didn’t quite know how to explain it over the phone.’
‘Clearly.’ Olly sounded hoarse. ‘What … WHAT?’ His head hit his hands. ‘I don’t get it. What?’
I stared at him. He looked tired and – God, I admit it – after staring at myself in the mirror far too much over the last two days, I thought he looked old. He looked like my dad.
‘He remembered you all right,’ said Tashy to me, to cover the silence. Olly was shaking. ‘Apparently your phone’s been out of commission.’
‘Yeah, in the netherworld,’ I said.
‘From Tashy’s voice I thought you were pregnant,’ said Olly incredulously, his voice cracking. ‘Or you’d had a really traumatic haircut. What happened to you?’ He came forward and stood in front of me. I looked into his eyes. He shook his head. ‘Look at you,’ he said quietly. Then he put out his hand and touched me in a curious prodding motion, as if I was a specimen in a laboratory.
‘Well …’ I began. Then I told him everything, excluding the bits about my worries about him, and meeting Clelland again, so it didn’t take long.
Olly listened extremely carefully in complete silence, so he could bring his rational lawyer’s mind fully to bear on it, but still occasionally shaking his head in incredulity. Then he stood in silence for a very long time, staring out on the water. He finally turned to me and looked straight into my eyes. He swallowed one last time. I rubbed my skinny limbs nervously.
‘You … you wanted to wish your life away?’
‘Or back.’ I shrugged.
He hung his head. ‘How unhappy with me were you?’
I hadn’t expected that at all. I looked at his face and felt completely dreadful. We were, after all, only a month away from him going down on bended knee, and he must at least have been considering it. So I did the best thing I could think of under the circumstances. Lied.
‘Don’
t be silly, darling. This wasn’t about you. I was just idly speculating, that was all, and this crazy thing happened.’ I tried to make it sound light and not so much of a problem.
‘God, I can’t … you have to see yourself say that, you really do. Do you know you have purple in your hair?’
I nodded.
‘Anyway, I thought you said you wished out loud.’
‘Hardly. It was just a passing thought …’
‘Just as well you weren’t thinking about big monsters,’ said Tashy.
‘No, that was Ghostbusters,’ I said. ‘I think this is more Peggy Sue Got Married.’
Olly couldn’t stop staring at me. ‘So, have you seen into the future too?’
‘No, I’ve just lived it already. And only a month of it.’
He frowned. ‘Do you remember how the market closes?’
‘I can’t even remember what was number one. I’ve tried this already.’
‘We have,’ said Tashy. ‘But my wedding is on a nice day and I fit into my dress. Ooh, I think I can have a cake.’ I loved her for trying to lift our spirits with a bit of jollity. And I hated what I was about to say.
‘I’m not sure you can,’ I said. ‘I’m here now. That might change everything. But you recognise me, and Max doesn’t, and my parents are all young and weird, and I don’t know what the hell’s going on and what I can change or not change. I don’t understand it at all.’
‘Oh,’ Tashy looked defeated, ‘OK. No cake then.’
Olly stepped up to me and took my shoulders. ‘My God, you’re shorter too,’ he said sadly.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But, on the plus side, my tits are further off the ground.’
He looked at me, his eyes wary. ‘Well, um, this is a shock. Shall we … shall we head for home?’
‘Um,’ I said.
‘Oh God.’ He jumped back. ‘Are you even legal? Am I a paedophile? Fuck.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. Poor Olly, terrified of accidentally touching up his own girlfriend. What a mess. ‘Anyway, I’m sixteen.’
‘OK, good.’ He thought for a second. ‘Better than good, actually.’
