Читать книгу Love...Maybe: The Must-Have Eshort Collection - Julia Williams, Beth Thomas, Beth Thomas - Страница 16

Oscar Wilde once said that the tragedy of ageing isn’t that you’re older, it’s that you’re still young. And guess what? Today I’m discovering exactly what he meant.

It’s my fortieth birthday and I’m not a happy woman. Compounded with the fact that it’s also Valentine’s Day which of course ups the ante on the whole of this nightmarish day tenfold. Only people who had the misfortune to be born on either Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve will believe it, but trust me, if your birthday comes on a red letter day like this it frankly couldn’t suck any more.

Now normally I’m not a moaner or a whinger at all, I promise, but it’s my fortieth, so you’ll just have to indulge me. And yes, yes, of course I know that life is too short to dwell on every little bump in the road and that we shouldn’t measure our happiness against other people’s, but – well, it’s just on this of all days, I can’t help but feel deeply unfulfilled, stuck in a rut and don’t even get me started on my love life, which seems to have gone from a slump to an all-out strike.

Finally forty. Finally old enough to know that there’s more to life than sex and shoes and parties, but still young enough to know that they are the best bits. And that lately, I’ve been seeing damn all of any of them.

‘Oh for God’s sake, would you just listen to yourself!’ I say out loud in spite of the fact that I’m all alone, in a vague attempt to snap myself out of this pity-fest. My ‘surprise’ birthday-cum-Valentine’s night party over at the tennis club started half an hour ago and here I still am, still in my flat, still only half dressed and still bloody whingeing. I mean yes, OK, I may have reached this milestone age without a) having a husband/boyfriend/partner/any combination of the above or b) having kids and a family of my own, but I haven’t exactly been sitting around filing my nails all these years, have I?

’Course not. I’ve … erm … loads to be thankful for. Great friends for starters. And a really successful career that I absolutely love. And a wonderful family. Yes, OK, I wish my darling dad was still with us, but Mum’s still hale and hearty and well, compared to a lot of people I’ve got loads to be grateful for. I mean, I could be homeless couldn’t I? Or cleaning out sewers in Calcutta for a living? Then I’d really have something to moan about.

And then the same question that’s been playing on a loop round my mind all day. The same thing I ask myself every Valentine’s Day since the year dot.

‘So what’s my birthday wish? And what would I like the year ahead to bring my way?’

And suddenly the answer hits me, as sharply as a chilli finger poked into my eye. Life, I decide as I lash on the lip-gloss, is a bit like Van Morrison’s Moondance album; all the best bits are on the first side. And so on this most momentous of nights, I wish … I wish …

I’m rudely interrupted by a taxi horn blaring up at me from two floors down below. Amanda, my oldest and closest friend, here to give me a lift to the party and thankfully a good half-hour late, as usual. Amanda and I have been best mates through school, all the way through college and like I always say, men may come and go, blue eyeliner and the bubble perm may come and go, but true friends are, like Mac Bronzing Powder or the Hermes Birkin bag … here to stay, whether we like it or not.

Anyway, Amanda’s dream was always to become an actress and at age twenty-one, she turned down a place at RADA to accept a tiny part in a daytime soap. She struck it lucky though, the character took off and within one season of the show she suddenly found herself a household name, with all the supermarket opening and tabloid-baiting which that entails. But although she made a shedload of cash, the show was unexpectedly axed and as she turned thirty-five work dried up literally overnight, the way it does for any actress during those death knell years.

’Course none of this is helped by the fact that after almost five years of virtual unemployment, Amanda’s name keeps turning up on those, ‘where are they now?’ type shows. Pisses her off no end. Plus the fact that the last proper, paying, gig she was offered was on a rip-off of those reality celebrity TV shows, where you live in the jungle for three weeks eating cockroaches and sharing the one loo, all while Ant and Dec laugh at you.

Poor old Amanda. There are times when you really do have to feel sorry for her.

‘Happy birthday, Kate … and let Valentine’s night feck off with itself,’ she offers a bit half-heartedly, as I clamber into the taxi beside her. But then Amanda has to face into this awful nightmare of turning forty in just a few weeks’ time and I reckon she’s starting to feel a bit jittery too. In fact, she’s looking at me now in much the same way that miners look at canaries going down coal shafts.

‘So it’s the big birthday. How does it feel, hon?’ she asks worriedly.

‘Honestly?’

‘The truth and nothing but.’

‘Completely fabulous! Turning forty is without doubt the single best thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. By far.’

She shoots me this wry, sideways-on look that she only keeps for when I’m really talking through my arse.

‘Never go on the witness protection programme, Kate. You are without doubt the worst liar alive.’

‘Right then,’ I sigh. ‘In that case, today is probably the single most depressing day of my whole life to date. And I’m including my father’s funeral in there too, by the way.’

‘Oh come on now, it’s just another year, another milestone, with a brand new decade ahead of you to look forward to. What’s so bad?’

‘Amanda, as you of all people know only too well,’ I say turning to face her in the back of the taxi, ‘over the years, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy worrying about a whole lot of stuff that never even happened. Things like … would I ever be able to afford a mortgage on a home of my own? Would work take off for me and would I actually be able to support myself as a journalist? But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d somehow end up forty years of age and alone. On shagging Valentine’s Day. And the worst part is, it’s far too late now for me to do the slightest thing about it. I mean, if love and happiness were meant for me, wouldn’t they have happened long before now?’

‘Total rubbish!’ Amanda says warmly. ‘You’ve got a fabulous job that you love and that you’re completely brilliant at. And the only reason you don’t have a fella is because your career is your first, real, true love. Look at you, you’re not only the youngest, but also the first female editor they’ve ever had at the Chronicle! Besides, isn’t it far better to be on your own and independent, than with some git who’ll only mess you around? Who needs that anyway?’

‘Hmmm,’ I say more out of politeness than anything else, but deeply unconvinced.

‘Besides,’ she goes on, warming to her theme now, ‘if you really want cheering up, just take a look at me and my pathetic life. Every single birthday, I look back on the year’s work I’ve done, and you know what? This year, apart from one detergent commercial that I ended up getting cut out of, and two days on a TV game show, I’ve basically been sitting at home watching daytime telly and living off my ever-dwindling savings. While actresses years younger than me, with perky bodies and unlined faces get all the jammy jobs. Look at me, Kate, I’m nothing more than a washed-up old has been.’

‘That’s absolutely untrue …’ I tell her gently, but she barrels over me.

‘No hear me out, because I’m seriously having to face up to the fact that if I ever want to play a part within my own age group again, than I’ll have to have a full facelift. Bloody Botox! It’s only gone and raised the bar for all of us, hasn’t it? So now of course, if an actress my age is lucky enough to be offered any part, you still have to look young enough to be ID’d in bars.’

Ageism, I should mention, is a particularly sore point with Amanda, even more so since her agent told her that the only job offers she’s likely to get this year are either panto or else third prostitute from the left type roles, in rubbishy old cop operas. If she’s incredibly lucky that is.

‘But on the plus side,’ I retaliate, ‘remember that you did at least make serious money on that soap you were in. You’ve got a stunning apartment to show for it and you have the gorgeous Dave on your arm tonight. You’ve actually got a long-term boyfriend whereas I’m forty years of age on Valentine’s Night and finally having to face up to the hard, cold fact that I’m a man repeller. On the one day of the year where every garish red love heart I see seems to scream to me, ‘look at you, forty and alone!’

‘Complete rubbish!’ Amanda fights back. ‘Ok, so maybe Mr. Right hasn’t actually shown up as of yet …’

‘Or maybe he did, years ago, and I was just too young and stupid to recognise him,’ I say, thoughtfully looking out the window at twinkly heart shaped helium balloons looking back at me from just about every shop window. Meanwhile countless couples weave through the traffic making their way to already overcrowded restaurants to take their place in queues stuffed with nothing but more couples. Not a single singleton in sight.

God Almighty, I should be shot, stuffed and displayed in the Smithsonian as a wonder of the world. In a glass box that says ‘This is what forty and single looks like. Take note thirty-something women everywhere … and beware!’

‘Well, at least you have a proper, decent career that’s going from strength,’ Amanda interrupts my train of thought, in the ‘whose life is worst’ contest that’s now developed between us. ‘May I remind you that at aged twenty-one, like the roaring eejit that I was, I actually turned down a perfectly good place at RADA so I could possibly appear in the worst soap ever committed to the small screen? And if I had gone to RADA then who knows? I could be well on my way to being the next Helen Mirren by now. Or Judi Dench. I could have been a respected actress instead of thinking myself lucky to get offered guest slots on any old quiz show that’ll have me.’

‘At least you have a boyfriend, who’ll be on your arm when your turn comes to face the medieval torture of your fortieth. You’ll have someone to take you home, and help you to nurse your hangover the next day. Do you know what I just realised as you arrived to pick me up?’

‘What’s that hon?’

‘That if I ever had my time over, I would do things so differently. Re-prioritise. Not focus on work so much and really, actively go looking for my life partner.’

‘I don’t suppose all this is about James Watson again, is it?’ she asks, looking at me keenly as our taxi weaves its way through a traffic jam. ‘You know, the way his name automatically seems to crop up every single Valentine’s Night?’

‘No of course not, it’s just that … ’

OK, I’m making a pig’s ear of trying to explain myself, but what I’m really trying to say is that … I have twenty-three year olds who work for me and when they were handing over the helium birthday balloons in work earlier today, (bright red and love heart-shaped for V-Day, naturally,) I could see them all looking at me with pity in their eyes. You could almost see them thinking, ‘Yes, OK so you may have a great career, but you’re also forty and alone on Valentine’s Day and that certainly doesn’t make you any kind of role model for us.’

‘I wish I was twenty-one again, I trail off lamely. ‘That’s my birthday wish right here and now, on Valentine’s Night. Because believe me, I would do things so differently. And it’s absolutely nothing to do with James Watson, honestly.’

Although if I’m being really honest, it kind of is.

OK, I should explain, given that it’s a night when all my past failed relationships seem to flash right in front of my eyes, like the drowning single gal that I am. Because James Watson was my first boyfriend. My first proper, real, true love and I broke up with him because when I was twenty-one, I was offered my first proper job as an intern over at The Times in London. Which of course meant relocating to the UK. Yes, I could probably have kept seeing James and somehow made a go of things, but I didn’t. I went for the clean break option. Like the misguided moron that I was, I figured there had to be someone better out there for me and guess what? Turns out there wasn’t.

‘And speaking of people who wish they could be twenty-one again …’ Amanda mutters as the taxi pulls up outside the tennis club where we’re having the party.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, but instantly shut up when I see.

It’s Sophie. Our oldest and bestest mate. Or as everyone seems to refer to her behind her back these days, ‘poor Sophie.’ She’s just pulled her car in ahead of us and shoved her feet out the driver’s door to whip off trainers and put on party shoes, looking even more frazzled and exhausted than she usually does, God love her.

OK, just a few things you need to know about poor Sophie. The Sophie standing in front of us now is about as different from the Sophie we knew as teenagers as it’s possible to get. In fact to see her now, it’s almost impossible to remember a time when she was wild and mad and up for anything, devilment never far from her flashing blue eyes. Always doing something utterly mental, then daring to me to do exactly the same.

She used to have long red hair down to her bum and smoked from the age of about thirteen without ever once getting caught, whereas all I’d have to do would be put a single foot out of line to end up with a month’s detention. Every fella I knew fancied Sophie, they couldn’t not; she was just such fun and so completely reckless; even sitting on top of a bus with her was an adventure. I still have the school yearbook where she was voted, ‘girl most likely to do absolutely anything.’

But ‘the girl most likely to do absolutely anything,’ became pregnant aged twenty-one and the following year, gave birth to my beautiful God-daughter Ella. By twenty-two, she’d married Ella’s dad, a sound engineer called Dave Edmond and by age thirty, she had a total of four kids, all under the age of ten. Now, Sophie’s a divorced single mum, who works part time in Tesco and really struggles to make ends meet. Meanwhile her ex-husband has just begun to live with a part-time student beauty therapist, with naturally blonde hair and legs up to her armpits.

‘A student beauty therapist? Sophie had snarled at me at the time. ‘For God’s sake, what is there to study? How to rub cream into people’s faces?’

Poor Sophie. Compared with her, Amanda and I are living in Euro Disney.

‘I’ve never needed a drink so badly in my life,’ Sophie sighs as Amanda and I both hug and air kiss her. ‘If you knew the jigs and reels I had to go through with babysitters just to get out the door tonight? Never, ever, ever have kids ladies. If you feel the need to reproduce, just borrow one of mine for the weekend and you’ll be cured. Pure, visual contraception, that’s what they are. Honestly, I should charge people.’

My party is being held in the same tennis club where we’ve been celebrating every significant birthday I’ve ever had on every single Valentine’s Day all courtesy of my mother, who’s been on the organising committee since the year dot. She’s just inside the door handing out vol-au-vents and looking flustered, but instantly switches to a frown when she sees me clatter in.

‘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 Mirren!’ 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.’

‘But you’ve never even met him! How can you know?’

‘Take it from me. If you end up dating him, it will be the single biggest mistake of your entire life. He may not be an arsewipe now, but just give him ten years and you’ll see exactly what I mean. And you’ll be bloody glad I warned you. The day will come when you’ll thank me for being straight with you.’

‘But Kate,’ Sophie asks, abandoning her half-eaten pizza and looking over at me worriedly. ‘How can you be so certain that Dave’s going to turn into an asshole? You can’t know that for sure.’

‘Believe me, I do. Because I’ve got a crystal ball.’

Next thing though, it’s like a hazy fog drifts back over me and suddenly I start to feel nauseous and weak as water. I’m not even certain what’s happening, all I know is that my head is pounding and when I reach out for Sophie’s hand, suddenly she’s not there anymore.

Then nothing but blackness as a loud whooshing sound fills my ears … and now for some mad reason, I can hear The Black-Eyed Peas singing ‘I Gotta Feeling’ all over again, which … Oh God no … Can only mean one thing.

Yes. I’m lying back on the floor of the tennis club and I’m out of this lovely reverie, back to being forty again. And just in case I needed it, there’s confirmation writ large across the giant birthday banner over the stage that says, ‘Happy Fortieth Kate!’

Except somehow, things still don’t seem quite right. Amanda’s still beside me, but she doesn’t look anything like her usual fabulously glamorous self. And there’s no sign of Sophie either, which is odd …

‘What year is it?’ I mutter croakily. ‘Who’s the prime minister? And how old am I?’

‘You’re concussed and I’m taking you to hospital for a CAT scan,’ Amanda says firmly. ‘Your Mum’s gone to call an ambulance.’

‘Look, I say, somehow managing to haul myself up onto one elbow. ‘I know I sound completely mental and maybe I am, but please, please tell me what’s going on in all our lives. It’s important. I really have to know!’

She looks at me a bit oddly, but caves into the madwoman that I must sound like.

‘Well to be honest sweetie, I was kind of hoping that tonight might be an opportunity to forget about all our troubles. What with poor Sophie in hospital having IVF and everything …’

‘She’s having what? Hang on a minute … Sophie already has four kids, why is she having IVF?’

‘No she doesn’t! Four kids? Are you actually being serious? Kate darling, you simply must remember the reason she’s not here tonight? Because they’d kept her in hospital for tests to try and figure out why she’s still not getting pregnant? You’ve got to remember my love; you only went to see her this morning.’

No, no, no, no, no, no, no …

‘And what about you?’ I ask her urgently. Desperately needing to know just how bad things are. Because there’s something about Amanda that’s not quite right. Her whole accent is completely different and she’s acting all affected and – weird. Calling me darling and my love? That’s so not Amanda.

‘Me ? Oh lovie, that’s a hoot. Because if I don’t land some kind of gainful employment soon, there’s a good chance I’ll end up as a bag lady. I cannot believe I’m going to be forty in a few weeks times and I’m still living in the most dreadful rented flat with a bunch of drama students and cockroaches.’

‘But … You went to RADA, didn’t you?’

‘Of course, darling. And I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of jobs I’ve had since I graduated. To think, I turned down a perfectly good, well-paid job in a soap opera just to do some prestigious acting course in London? I must need my head looked into and judging by the way you’re yabbering on, I’m not the only one.’

I’m half afraid to ask my next question, but I know that I have to.

‘And what about … James? Me and James?’

She looks at me and I just know by her face that she’s too terrified to answer.

‘Amanda please. I really need to know.’

‘You really can’t remember?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘You’re divorced now, my love. And only last week, with Valentine’s Day and your big birthday party looming, what did the utter idiot go and do?’

‘Tell me!’ I croak weakly back at her.

‘Only went and announced that he’s getting married again. Makes me sick to my stomach … and when I think of the glittering career you gave up, just for him? But you know what you must do, darling? Channel your pain. See all this as a hidden opportunity for growth.’

I slump back onto the ground, hating this reality, this parallel time that I somehow seem to be stuck in. And hating that Amanda is now talking like the complete and utter tosspots she used to make fun of. ‘Channel your pain?’ Please.

I plead with everyone that I’m actually fine, just a bit groggy and that I definitely don’t need to go to hospital.

So Amanda takes me home. Except it’s not my gorgeous Victorian house that I renovated from scratch and invested pretty much all my savings into over the years. Instead, when the taxi drops Amanda and me off, we’re in a housing estate miles out of town, full of tiny dormer bungalows cramped one of top of the other.

‘Amanda,’ I say weakly, ‘I don’t live here! I live in Blackrock, on Avoca Avenue, in a gorgeous Victorian redbrick … you’ve been there loads of times, you know this!’

‘In your dreams you do, sweetie. This is all you could afford after you and James separated. But it’s the Four Seasons compared with where I live. I mean, look at me, almost forty and I can only afford to dress out of TK Maxx, while sharing the most appalling flat ever with possibly the two slobbiest actors – both practising alcoholics, by the way – in town. This to me, is luxury of the highest order, even if it isn’t quite the Ritz Carlton.’

The house is revolting. It’s where ten-year-old IKEA furniture comes to die. I don’t have a car it seems and my big jammy editorial job is just a figment of my imagination. Now, it seems I’m a lowly reporter for one of those free handout papers they give to hassled commuters at train stations.

I didn’t mean to, but somehow, by playing God, I’ve managed to ruin everyone’s life, my own included. At least the way things were before, I did have a great career. And Amanda had plenty of money, fabulous clothes and a lovely place to live. And she was herself, lovley, gorgeous, funny Amanda and not this affected thesp she’s morphed into. And Sophie had four fabulous kids … and now, because of my meddling, we’re all so much worse off.

Suddenly I feel nauseous all over again and there it is – that whooshing sound as the blood rushes back up to my head. I clench my stomach, not sure what’s coming next as my head starts to hammer away mercilessly. But just the pain gets so bad I think I’m about to gag, my eyes open and now … can this be for real? I squint and blink and try to take it all in.

Because somehow I’m not back in the tennis club at my birthday party at all now.

Instead I’m lying on a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines, with the girls beside me and Mum perched on a chair at the far end of the room.

‘She’s back!’ Amanda almost screams, gripping my hand. ‘Kate, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?’

‘You gave us all such a fright love,’ says Mum. ‘Kept talking all sorts of rubbish about seeing your father again. But the doctor says with plenty of rest, you’ll be just fine.’

‘And then you kept having this imaginary conversation with James Watson,’ says Sophie. ‘Scary stuff, babe.’

‘Sophie, how many kids do you have?’ I hiss urgently at her.

‘Four,’ she shrugs, ‘why? You wanna adopt one?’

‘And Amanda … did you once used to be in a soap opera?’

‘Jeez, you’re just out of a coma and you want my life’s CV now? Course I did, you eejit!’ she says, sounding 100 per cent like the old Amanda again.

And that’s when I know.

I just know I’m finally back in my own reality. In 2015, where I belong. With my two best mates and Mum; the people who matter most to me.

So there and then I make my real birthday wish. I wish that I could be nothing but grateful for every single life choice I made in my life that took me to this point. For my dream job, my lovely home and most of all for my family and friends. Because whether I thought so or not, every choice each of us made along the way was absolutely the right thing for us.

‘We’re all so lucky,’ is all I can whisper, before slumping weakly back onto the pillow.

We mightn’t have thought so, but actually everything is fine.

It just might take me till Valentine’s Day next year to explain it, that’s all.