Free The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan

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.
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    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.
    â€˜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?

    â€˜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.
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    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.

Chapter Four
    I walked. I walked and walked for hours. Every time I caught sight of myself in a shop window I nearly passed out. This couldn’t be real. It was horrific. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to steal from that nice lady’s flat. The first place I walked to was my office in the Strand, all the way from Maida Vale. I actually went into reception.
    Hang on, hang on. This wasn’t right at all. It was the same reception guard I’d seen every morning for the last eleven years. And he didn’t look a day younger. So, it looked like whatever nightmare I was in, I was in it alone. Except with my parents. Which, of course, made it even more of a nightmare than it might have been otherwise. Oh Christ.
    â€˜Hey, Jimmy,’ I said to the reception guard, exactly as I’d been doing for the last eleven years.
    He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Can I help you?’
    Actually, I was hungry. I was starving. I had always skipped breakfast, but now I felt hungrier than I had in years. I
wanted