New Year’s Eve
Fourteen Months Ago
‘I hate New Year’s Eve,’ Jodie Saville muttered to her friend Tina Matthews. ‘All the enforced jollity and bonhomie. Nobody believes a word of it. It’s just an excuse to drink too much.’
Tina nodded in agreement. ‘I do swish you a Happy New Year, though. And me of course.’ She gave an involuntary hic at the end of the sentence. ‘Going to have a headache tomorrow.’
The two of them were standing close together with a crowd of other people in their local park watching fireworks light the night sky.
Tina jumped and uttered a loud groan as an extra-loud bang vibrated the air around them. As the crowd uttered the obligatory ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ she said, ‘Fireworks are very pretty but do they have to be quite so noisy? That one hurt my head.’
‘We ought to make a New Year’s resolution,’ Jodie said, watching the scarlet shower turn into a spectacular burst of gold sparks. ‘Make this the year we change our lives for the better. That big three-oh is getting closer and closer for both of us.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Tina muttered. ‘Maybe we should do what that bloke on the telly did years ago – Noel somebody. He reckoned he ordered the Cosmos to change his life and it did.’
‘So, whatd’youhavetodo?’ Jodie said, slurring her words together.
‘Dunno really. Think you have to decide what you want and shout it out to space. Bit like positive thinking, only louder and more pre… hic… precise.’
‘Nah,’ Jodie said. ‘We can try but I can’t see it working. Tell you what, if nothing’s changed by the time we hit thirty we’ll jack everything in and… and join a nunnery.’
Tina, about to hurl the last of her Prosecco down her throat, almost choked. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘OK,’ Jodie said. ‘How about promising ourselves if we’re still single at thirty, we’ll run away to deepest Wales and become madwomen who keep cats.’
‘Alpacas,’ Tina said. ‘I’ve always fancied living in the country and keeping alpacas. Much better than cats. And we can knit bobble hats with their wool.’
‘Whatever,’ Jodie said. ‘You hear that, Cosmos?’ She tilted her face up and stared at the star-filled sky. ‘You’ve got under two years to change our lives, otherwise we’re off to deepest Wales to live with alpacas,’ she shouted.
The loudest bang of the evening from the last firework drowned out her words.
February
This Year
Tina began the third Friday of February by oversleeping. Never good in the mornings, since Jodie had left and she was living on her own in the flat, mornings were reverting to being one mad rush to get to work on time. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her job as a literary agent – she