Jenny Colgan - Do You Remember the First Time?

‘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. He’d probably come round to find me. Might even be inside right now. Ooh. That wasn’t something I particularly wanted to handle right at the moment. Also, he was one of those very rational thinkers. I didn’t think he’d take my little jaunt into the unconscious too well.

Still, I had to get in. I rang the bell. No answer. Fuck. I rang the general bell to see if anyone would let me into the hall at least, but I couldn’t get an answer from anyone. Shit. I took a look around the street. OK. This wasn’t the first time I’d ever done this – this is where the key pot had come from – but I was going to have to climb in through the top of the window, which you could pull down if you had to.

I shinned up the badly done pointwork and found myself reaching up effortlessly. God, I was so lithe and limber! I could probably somersault in! La la la. I pulled the window down, and gracelessly collapsed on top of what should have been my favourite red squishy sofa.

Owwww.

Who the fuck put an enormous glass modernist coffee table with bumpy bits all over it into my flat?

I straightened up, clutching my back, and slowly looked around. And then again. Nope, it didn’t matter how often I stared, there was no doubt that this remained, indubitably, somebody else’s furniture, somebody else’s books. No. No no no no no. I tore around the place, weirdly, looking for something – anything – that would prove that I used to live here, used to exist. No. My God. I couldn’t … I couldn’t not exist. That wasn’t possible.

But then, if I was sixteen, it dawned on me pretty slowly … maybe I didn’t own a flat in Maida Vale. After all, my wallet had disappeared.

No. This was awful. Even though I suppose if I’d thought about it … no, that didn’t help, of course. The more I thought about it, the worse it got.

Let me see. Oh my God. No flat meant … no money … no job … no …

It is, believe me, a profoundly shocking moment when you realise that the only person who may understand your predicament is David Icke.

Suddenly I heard a noise. Shit. Someone was coming in the front door. Please, please, please let it be the upstairs neighbour. Please.

The footsteps stopped, and I dived behind the black leather modern chair in the middle of the room – which looked rather good, I noticed. The door opened. For a heartbreaking second I thought I – or rather, my thirty-two-year-old self – was walking through the door.

It wasn’t me, thank God, although the woman looked a lot like me. I guess she looked like how I used to look. I suppose I wasn’t as unique as I’d always liked to think.

About my (old) age, quite slim, wearing a casual-looking trouser suit. I liked her face. She looked like the kind of person I’d like to be friends with. Nice, good-fun grown-up person. Who was going to have a screaming blue fit if she saw a sulky teenager wearing a cheap anorak hiding behind her sofa.

‘Fuck!’ she yelled. ‘Where’s my fucking keys!’

She started throwing pillows and papers around. Was London really this full of cross thirty-something women? Whoever this girl was, it was like watching a facsimile of my own self. Was I really this stressed out all the time? Did I get that frown line down the middle of my forehead?

‘OK. If it’s not bad enough that I’m already late for my fucking meeting with my fucking prick boss, I can’t find a fucking thing in this overpriced shoebox.’

This was uncanny. She could be me. Closer up, I could see there was a crease in the middle of her forehead, a bloating around her hips – too many late nights staring at a computer screen, too many corporate lunches. No wedding ring. Flustered, snappy.

She wasn’t me. But she was.

When she found her keys and slammed the door hard on the way out, I sat on the floor and started to cry. Properly cry too. Big, dripping tears that went down my nose and hurt my throat. I didn’t make much noise, but they just kept coming. What was happening to me? What was I going to do? Had I been erased for everyone? But what about Mum and Dad? They seemed to know who I was. Where had I been? Where was I now?