The Boy I Loved Before Page 6

  ‘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 pixel-lated 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?

  I felt so sorry for myself. But no m
atter 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.

  ‘I mean,’ he was saying, ‘you’ve got to care about getting it right. It’s your responsibility. You’re not just letting the company down, you’re letting yourself down. You’ve got a long career ahead of you here, and you want to make a success of it.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the woman. But just as she said it, for a split second she caught my eye, and I sensed I saw in her a desperate wish for flight. She looked at me, and for a moment I think she wished she was me, a teenager bumming around with nothing much to do. If only she knew.

  Lunchtime came and went, after I found a pound in my coat, and was thankful teenagers in McDonald’s weren’t exactly a rarity. I’d spent the day tramping the London streets, my thoughts exhausted. I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to give in; to admit that I was trapped. Not only trapped, but trapped with people I didn’t know, in a time that didn’t belong to me. Sighing heavily, I found my tired feet heading down to Waterloo. To Tashy’s office.

  I was trying to get it straight in my head. There was only one me. I was … a bit different. But it was possible that Tashy wouldn’t be there either. Every time I’d had a problem, for most of our lives I’d always taken it to her. We’d laughed and talked about every single thing that had ever happened to each of us for practically as long as I can remember, and she’d made me feel better every single time. I was an only child, and Heather was a witch, and school was no picnic, so we were closer than sisters.

  I went down outside the huge office, terrified she wouldn’t be in this strange new world, and sat on a bench, sadly watching people pour out, looking cold, tired, defeated as they tried to raise their spirits enough to manage the long commute home.

  My eyes were so blurred with tears, weariness and fear that at first I didn’t notice her. Then I became aware of somebody sitting next to me. I turned, slowly, scarcely able to believe that somebody I knew so well was right there. And she would never know it was me. Not only that, but she was crying too.

  Tashy sniffed loudly. I stared at her from out of the corner of my eye. My heart was thudding like a drum. It took every ounce of strength I had not to leap on her and smother her with kisses.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ I said, which sounded ridiculously weird. ‘Are you alright?’

  She turned round and, I swear to God, she nearly leaped straight up in the air.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, trying to catch her breath. I kept looking at her, feeling as miserable as I ever had in my life.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you look just like a friend of mine. Sorry, it’s the strangest thing.’

  ‘What’s your friend like?’ I asked, my heart racing suddenly.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. You’re much younger than her.’

  ‘Is … what’s her name?’

  Tashy stood up, roughly rubbing her eyes. She was looking paler than of late – must be all the subsequent sunbed sessions. Her small solitaire ring glinted sadly.

  ‘Why?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Tashy.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’ she said, suddenly looking very frightened.

  ‘Please …’ I said. ‘Flora …’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ She looked around her, holding on very tightly to her handbag.

  ‘When did you last see her?’ I croaked. My heart was in my throat and I could hardly get the words out.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Tashy peered at me. ‘What have you done? The likeness is unbelievable.’

  I heaved a big sigh. I couldn’t believe somebody recognised me. Or, she didn’t yet, but she would.

  ‘Look. This is going to be really difficult to explain.’

  ‘Are you a gang of fiendishly evil Eastern Europeans who have kidnapped her identity? Because if you are I’m telling the police.’

  At that, I was tempted to tell her her PIN number, which I knew in case of emergencies but, I figured, best not.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I swear on Dave Grohl’s life.’

  She shook her head, dazed.

  ‘Tashy, remember when we were fourteen and we swore faithfully the only man we’d sleep with before marriage was Prince Edward?’

  She stared at me.

  ‘Remember when you got locked in a toilet with that boy at McKaskill’s party? You weren’t really locked in, were you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Remember when we tried to drink your parents’ creme de menthe and hurled all over the shagpile rug?’

  ‘We were never going to tell anyone about that.’

  ‘We never did. What about the time you …’

  ‘OK, what? WHAT?!’

  Her face was a picture of confusion and despair. I took a deep breath. She was staring at me, eyes and mouth wide.

  I lowered my voice. ‘A certain tampon withdrawal failure? Being discovered on the end of a certain man’s …’

  Her hands went to her face. ‘OH MY GOD. OH MY GO
D. It’s you. WHAT HAPPENED?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It just – can’t be.’

  ‘I know.’

  She came up to me and squinted right in my face. I tried to keep still.

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘What the hell have you done now?’

  ‘So, I couldn’t get away with it just being a very good facelift and lots of healthy living?’ I said glumly.

  ‘Who would believe that of you anyway?’ She was staring at my face in a quite unnerving manner, and put her hands up to touch it. ‘My God …’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What … what happened?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ I said.

  ‘I saw you just a couple of days ago.’

  ‘No! That’s the thing. I just woke up this morning. Well, when I say “this morning” …’ I paused. ‘We really, really need a drink for this,’ I said. ‘Want to nip over to the Atlantic?’

  She half sniggered. ‘A teenager says what now?’

  ‘What?’

  We used to love the Atlantic. So expensive, but so pretty, and we could watch the mating rituals of the predatory scrawny English blonde, and merchant bankers and Eurotrash.

  ‘Tash, it’s me. It’s ME ME ME ME. So can we go to the Atlantic or not?’

  ‘Well, if we can get you in.’

  We made it in by my taking off my school tie and whisking past the doorman when he was distracted.

  ‘This is terrible,’ said Tashy. ‘Look at my hand shaking. I feel like your evil auntie. But that’s OK, because in a second – ’ she sipped her Mojito – ‘you’re going to tell me the secret of eternal youth. Or I’m going to wake up.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for that all day.’

  ‘And it hasn’t happened?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  This time Tashy took a gulp, closed her eyes firmly for five seconds, opened them again and stared at me.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘This is going to sound crazy.’