Do You Remember the First Time?. Jenny Colgan

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 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.