by Gill Paul
‘Ahh the birthday girl!’ she says in a tone of voice that might as well have ‘finally!’ tacked onto the end of it. ‘Half an hour late love, nearly all the crudités are gone. And is that really the only thing you had to wear? Oh well, never mind, at least you and your friends are here now and we can start serving the buffet. Look everyone, she’s here at last!’
‘Happy birthday Kate!’ everyone calls out and I have to remind myself to act happy and pretend turning forty is the answer to all my prayers.
Most people here are family, cousins mainly or else distant friends who I’m almost embarrassed to see it’s been so long since we were in touch, or else Mum’s tennis pals who couldn’t get a dinner reservation for Valentine’s night so they decided to pitch up here as a least-worst option instead. All married, all with kids and all with far more interesting things to do I’m certain, than sit round here drinking warm white wine and eating cold chicken salad. All while listening to an elderly neighbour of Mum’s who’s been roped into gigging as a part-time DJ for the night and whose idea of getting the party going is to play Now That’s What I Call Music 20,000 on a continual loop.
‘You do the rounds, and I’ll get you a very large gin and tonic,’ Amanda whispers in my ear, bless her. So off I trot, shaking hands of people I barely know, thanking all and sundry for coming and saying ‘Thank you for coming … and happy Valentine’s Day’ till I’m half hoarse. Hours must pass, because the next thing I know, a heart-shaped Valentine’s cake is being wheeled out, the DJ is playing ‘Happy Birthday’ and … oh my God, I do not believe this.
There are forty candles on the cake. Forty. What is my mother trying to do anyway, blow up the place?
‘I’ll need help with this,’ I hiss to Amanda and Sophie. ‘Well, either help, or a fire extinguisher.’
‘Make a birthday wish!’ someone yells out from the back of the bar.
‘Easy!’ I laugh, grabbing onto the girls who are supportively flanking me, one to the left and one to the right. ‘I wish I was twenty-one all over again.’
‘Well, I’ll certainly second that,’ says Amanda. ‘If I could miraculously be that age again, I’d choose to take up that place I was offered at RADA, maybe even be working on the West End by now. Or who knows, even Broadway.’
‘Oh God, what wouldn’t I give to be twenty-one again!’ Sophie interrupts, ‘and never to have heard the name of Dave bloody Edmond. I’m telling you ladies, I would have surprised you all and ended up being such a career girl, not stuck on a till in Tesco, saying ‘have you got a club card’ till I’m blue in the face.’
You should just see us. Honestly, we’re like the Holy Trinity of Coulda, Woulda and Shoulda.
Then, before I can barely register what’s happening, my two strapping, rugby-playing cousins have abandoned their wives and are over to me, yanking me onto the dance floor and telling everyone to stand well back so they can give me the birthday bumps.
I do not be-fecking-lieve this. Every major birthday of my life, this pair insist on doing this to me and I absolutely hate it. So I politely ask/beg them not to, but they’re having none of it. I’m screeching at the pair of them to stop over the Black Eyed Peas belting out ‘I Gotta Feeling,’ but it’s too late. Next thing, they’ve whooshed me up into the air and bumped me back onto the ground – not very gently, I might add – then a second later, I’m airborne again, screaming for all I’m worth and petrified for every second of this. From a weird, upside down perspective, I can see Amanda and Sophie looking mortified on my behalf and bravely trying to get the lads to stop this bloody torture … and then …
It all happens in a split second. Whichever one of them is holding me by the shoulders accidentally loses his grip, there’s an almightily cracking sound as I whack my head off a table and then I crash the ground head first with a huge walloping thud.
Then silence. Nothing but deep, blessed silence.
‘Kate? Kate, open your eyes, there’s a good girl,’ I can hear my Mum’s voice floating over my head, sounding like she’s a million miles away. ‘Come on love, you’re frightening us!’
My head is thumping, pounding as I try to sit up, but I just end up flopping limply back down again like a rag doll.
‘Get an ambulance, quickly,’ someone else says. ‘She’s concussed.’
My eyes must start to flicker a bit though, because then I swear I can hear another disembodied voice saying, ‘No look, it’s OK, she’s coming round … Kate?’
Slowly, very slowly, with my head throbbing so badly I actually think I might throw up, I somehow manage to open my eyes and sit up. Mum is right beside me, holding my hand and … looking younger somehow, she’s changed her clothes too, which is a bit weird … then I see Amanda, who’s now wearing this mid-nineties looking power suit, huge shoulder pads, the works, with a lot of major backcombing going on with her hair … and, weirdest of all, Sophie’s right beside her, but not looking anything like her worn-out, exhausted self. In fact, now she looks a lot like the old Sophie I remember, with long scraggly hair down to her bum again and smoking, every though you’re not allowed smoke in here.
It’s just the strangest thing. Now, instead of the Black Eyed Peas, Cliff Richard is singing ‘Congratulations.’ And just as I sit up, suddenly I notice that I’m wearing different clothes too. A particularly disgusting puffball dress that I haven’t worn since … since …
It’s only when I prop myself up on my elbows and look around me that the penny finally drops. Because right over at the bar, beside the mangy looking Valentine’s Day helium balloons, there’s a banner screaming in bright red letters, ‘Happy Twenty-First Birthday Kate!’
But that’s not what’s bringing tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Because here, kneeling right beside me is James Watson. The James Watson, The One Who Got Away. He’s holding my hand all tall and fair and blue eyed as he looks worriedly down at me and … oh dear God! Standing right next to him is my Dad. My darling Dad, who passed away ten years ago.
‘Dad? Dad? Is it really you,’ I say in voice that’s more of a wobble really. ‘Oh Dad, you’ve no idea how much I missed you! And James, you’re here, you’re really here!’ I say, squeezing his hands tight, like I can’t really believe my luck. Next thing I know, I’ve sprung to my feet and am hugging everyone for all I’m worth, telling James what a complete idiot I was to ever have left him and sobbing to Dad about how much I love him and miss him, over and over again.
I must look like I’m a few coupons short of a special offer, because Dad turns to me, pulling up his belt, pint in hand, and says, ‘Ah go easy, now love. That knock you got on your head must a lot worse than we thought.’
It’s like living the haziest dream you can imagine, except that somehow it’s real. It’s actually 1996. For real. I asked everyone about fifty times and wouldn’t believe it until the receptionist at the tennis club shoved a newspaper with today’s date on it right under my nose. John Major is Prime Minister again and there’s the proof, in black and white, staring right at me.
I’m twenty-one again. And I’m going back home to live with my parents. Back to the house I grew up in, long since sold, back to my old bedroom which still has posters of Take That, Blur and Oasis on the wall. (So funny, I’d totally forgotten I was such a mad Britpop fan.) Half of me knows that I must be unconscious but I’m still astonished at the accuracy of my subconscious mind. While the other half of me thinks, what the hell, I’m probably dead. Might as well enjoy this, for what it’s worth.
And it’s truly amazing! You should just see me; I’m so much skinnier and actually fitting into jeans for the first time in over a decade. All my wrinkles have mysteriously vanished and apart from having a lot more spots, my falling bum and saggy boobs are now perky and fabulous looking all over again. Sure, the clothes in my wardrobe are beyond gakky, (did I really used to wear denim shorts over laddered black tights? Out in public?) But that minor consideration aside, this is by far the single best thing that has ever happened to
me.
I’m in my final year at college, back in my old university canteen and it’s exactly as I remember it, right down to the Formica tables and the crap, watery coffee. And don’t even get me started on the stench of cheap perfume and testosterone that seems to assault your nostrils the very minute you step through the door. But do I care? Not a chance.
Next morning, I stride through the canteen door in my baggy jeans and a tiny crop top that shows off the tight little abs I’ve suddenly discovered, walking tall and with all the confidence of a grown women of forty who suddenly finds herself aged twenty-one again. To my left are Ayesha, Ailsa and Trish, the official Mean Girls at UCD, or as they’re unofficially known round here, The Bitches of Eastwick. They seem to be staring over at me as I walk by with mute expressions that might as well read, ‘who does your woman think she is anyway? Strutting in here like she owns the place?’
Twenty-one year old me would have shriveled and withered under their gaze. But this weird, hybrid, new me? Couldn’t give a rat’s arse. Because smiling over at me, cigarette poised in hand just like I remember and patting the empty chair beside him is James. I skip straight to him and there’s no preamble, no courtesy ‘Hi, how are you, great party last night!’ Instead he pulls me towards him and we instantly start snogging, tongues, the whole works. At half nine in the morning. The smell of smoke on his breath is just a tiny bit sickening, but then isn’t that a minor detail when you’re young, skinny and in love?
‘I’ve been waiting all morning for you baby,’ he says in that lazy, languid way I remember loving so much. We’ve stopping kissing and he’s holding my hand tightly now. And I’d completely forgotten how lovely it is to have a proper boyfriend, it’s been that long.
‘Great party last night!’ he goes on, ‘but how’s the sore head today? You didn’t seem like yourself at all afterwards. You kept hugging your dad and telling him it had been seven years since you last saw him. And as for the crap you were coming out with later on …’
‘James,’ I interrupt firmly. ‘Never mind all that. The fact is, I’ve got something really important that I have to tell you. Right now.’
‘Shoot.’
‘You remember I was offered that internship at The Times over in London?’
‘Do I remember? We’ve only been talking about absolutely nothing else since that bloody letter offering you the gig arrived last week,’ he says flatly, staring into the tepid looking polystyrene coffee cup in front of him.
‘Well, I’ve definitely made up my mind,’ I tell him. ‘Wanna hear my answer?’
He glances hopefully up from his coffee, eyebrows raised. I drag out the moment just as long as I can then almost burst with this deep need I have to tell him.
‘And guess what? I’m going to turn them down!’
‘You’re what?’
He says it so loudly that the Bitches of Eastwick all turn our way to tune in, like some kind of three-headed hydra.
‘You mean you’re really saying no to them? To the London Times?’ he says, stupefied. ‘But I thought you said it was like the answer to your prayers.’
‘Absolutely no question,’ I say firmly. ‘Because if I were to move to London, let’s face it, it would spell the end for you and me. I mean, it’s not like we can Skype or email each other, or even text.’
‘Ehh … what’s Skype? And what’s a text?’
‘Oh, never mind,’ I tell him, anxious not to veer off-course. ‘The thing is you’re just too important to me. I can’t do it. Can’t and won’t. So what do you think?’
‘You’d actually do that for me?’ he says, stunned, looking at me like he’s just waiting on the ‘but.’
‘James,’ I say, taking his beautiful face into my two hands and really spelling it out, almost like I’m speaking to a toddler. ‘Just listen to me. If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s this. We come first. You and me. Besides, it was just my first job offer. There’ll be plenty more where that came from, just wait and see.’
‘You know something, Kate?’ he says pulling away slightly, shaking his head and stubbing out his fag into the dregs of his coffee cup, so it hisses and stinks – a habit of his that slightly grates with me now, but I let it pass. ‘You don’t sound a bit like yourself at all today. Not in the slightest. You’re normally so ambitious and focused about your career. It’s one of the things I really love about you. ’
‘Well, this is the new me!’ I say, squeezing his thigh and marveling at just how toned it is. God, when I think back to the sight of James in the buff, I almost want to drag him out of here right now to have my wicked way with him in the back of that clapped out Mini Metro he drives. ‘And here’s why James; I’ve never felt more sure of anything in my whole life.’
And then we kiss in front of the whole canteen, not caring that the Bitches of Eastwick are staring over at us and it’s divine and I love being this young and in love all over again.
Every time I go home I hug my Dad so much, it’s frankly starting to embarrass him. Mind you, he worries about me every time I let something slip about the future. Example, last night Princess Di came on the telly and I asked Mum to change channels, as I still couldn’t bear to look at her in all her youth and beauty and promise.
‘Why’s that love?’ she asked, frowning across the sofa at me. ‘Because she’s separated from Charles now?’
‘No, because she’s dead! In a car crash … in … 1997 …’ I trail off a bit here as Dad chips in.
‘I think we’d better get that lump on your head looked into properly Kate. Ever since your birthday, you sound delusional. You were raving the other night about Take That splitting up …’
‘And you said that Michael Jackson is dead too,’ Mum chips in. ‘And that Bet Lynch leaves ‘Coronation Street’’
‘OK, that’s it,’ says Dad firmly. ‘I think you’re definitely suffering from concussion.’
I slip up a bit with Amanda and Sophie too, as the three of us are January sales shopping in Topshop. (Cannot believe we don’t have Zara here yet … and when I asked about Karen Millen, they both just looked blankly back at me.)
‘Call me later to arrange to go out tonight!’ Amanda says as she’s heading home.
‘Sure, I’ll call your mobile.’
‘A mobile? Are you joking? Only wankers have mobiles. And drug dealers.’
Oh shit.
‘Ok, then I’ll email you.’
‘Email?’ says Sophie. ‘ I wish! We don’t even have a home computer!’
‘You’re joking!’ I blurt out. ‘How in God’s name do you manage without Facebook?’
Now the pair of them are looking at me, puzzled.
‘Face … what?’ they say in unison.
I change the subject and we go back to the far more welcome topic of talking about boys and effective ways to get rid of stubborn zits.
Thank God I never got round to mentioning Twitter.
*
Best thing of all is that I even get to play God with everyone else’s life too. I meet up with Amanda first in MacDonald’s for a coffee (can you believe there’s nowhere else for us to hang out on a Saturday afternoon? When I mentioned Starbucks, she just looked back at me totally bewildered.) The place is noisy and packed with kids tearing about, high as kites on Happy Meals and when I ask for a decaf soy latte, I won’t repeat where the stressed looking girl behind the till told me to shove it.
‘Anyway, there’s something important that I really have to tell you,’ I bossily tell Amanda, as we clamber onto plastic seats and clear away the disgusting mess the last family left behind.
‘What’s that?’ she asks, sitting back and lighting up a fag.
‘Well, it’s about the place you’ve been offered at RADA.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The thing is, I think you should most definitely take it. No, don’t just take it Amanda, grab it with both hands. Trust me, you’ll be so glad you did in later life. You could end up like Judi Dench, or even Helen Mirre
n!’ I add, quoting 2015 Amanda back to her.
‘Yeah, but I also have an offer in on this new soap opera that’s starting up. Now I know it’s just a few week’s work to start with, but the money is bloody phenomenal! I could wipe my student debt off in no time if I accept it. Whereas if I go to RADA, I’ve no guarantee of a job at the end of it, do I? Plus I’d have to waitress in London to keep myself going. And at the end of it all, I could come out of it like one of those tosspot actor wankers who are so far up themselves that they call everyone ‘lovie’ and ‘dearie,’ and come out with insincere crap like, ‘I love your work’ and ‘channel your inner pain.’
‘Amanda, you have to trust me. If you turn down RADA and go with the soap opera, it will end up being the biggest regret of your life.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Trust me, I just do.’
Later that night, I even get to wave my magic wand over Sophie’s life too. She phones my house – oh the shock of actually having to use a landline in our narrow hallway at home with both parents earwigging in. Anyway, Sophie asks me over for a pizza, as she’s babysitting her two bratty younger sisters, who are aged nine and ten going on thirty-nine and forty respectively.
‘Guess what?’ she tells me excitedly as we rip into a giant box of tomato and pepperoni pizza, with a giant tub of Häagan-Dazs to follow. Yet another thing I can’t believe about somehow being twenty-one again; I get to eat what I like, and somehow manage not to gain weight. What’s not to love?
‘Tell me,’ I say with my mouth stuffed.
‘Remember I was telling you about Dave Edmond? The DJ I met in Renards the other night?’
My face falls.
‘Well, he called earlier and he asked me out! Tomorrow night. To the movies; he says he’s dying to see Braveheart.’
And now I can’t stop myself.
‘Oh Sophie, that the guy is bad news. Trust me, you should at all costs avoid, avoid, avoid.’