Do You Remember the First Time?. Jenny Colgan

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?

      I felt so sorry for myself. But no matter how much you feel like crying yourself sick, it can’t last for ever. Eventually, I pulled myself up and left quietly this house that was no longer mine, wondering who I might be, and where I might be going.

       Chapter Four

      I walked. I walked and walked for hours. Every time I caught sight of myself in a shop window I nearly passed out. This couldn’t be real. It was horrific. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to steal from that nice lady’s flat. The first place I walked to was my office in the Strand, all the way from Maida Vale. I actually went into reception.

      Hang on, hang on. This wasn’t right at all. It was the same reception guard I’d seen every morning for the last eleven years. And he didn’t look a day younger. So, it looked like whatever nightmare I was in, I was in it alone. Except with my parents. Which, of course, made it even more of a nightmare than it might have been otherwise. Oh Christ.

      ‘Hey, Jimmy,’ I said to the reception guard, exactly as I’d been doing for the last eleven years.

      He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Can I help you?’

      Actually, I was hungry. I was starving. I had always skipped breakfast, but now I felt hungrier than I had in years. I wanted to ask him for a sandwich, but I had something else to do here.

      ‘Can you put me through to the extension of Flora Scurrison, please?’ I asked. Even my voice sounded ridiculously high-pitched and screeching.

      ‘Who?’ he said gruffly. I’d noticed this already. OK, I was scruffily dressed, but he was eyeing me warily, as if I was looking for trouble. Had they done this when I was really sixteen? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps I’d been a tad wrapped up in myself.

      ‘S-C-U-R-R-I-S-O-N.’

      He shook his head. ‘No one here by that name, love. Sure you’ve got the right address?’

      On some level I had known that was going to happen, but it was a real slap in the face. On the way I’d tried going into the bank with my account details. That hadn’t yielded anything either. But a big fear – of running into myself – didn’t seem to be on the cards, not yet at least.

      ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

      Jimmy, I suddenly remembered, had a daughter … er, my age.

      ‘Probably,’ I said, then turned to go. ‘Say hi to Jinty for me.’

      ‘What? Are you one of her friends?’

      No. At the moment, as far as I could see, I literally didn’t have a friend in the world. I had ceased to exist. I was no one. While everyone else, Jinty included, was still going strong.

      As I turned to go, I nearly ran smack into my boss, Karl Dean, a sour, halitosis-ridden old man with a dour world view, as useful for accounting as it was miserable for his life and for anyone else who ever came within three feet of him. He looked at me without blinking. There wasn’t a second’s worth of recognition. He didn’t even look at me as if he thought I reminded him of someone but he couldn’t quite place me.

      Beside him there was someone who could have been me but was not me. It was the woman from the flat. She was looking nervous, and fiddling with her spectacles.