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