Free The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan Page A

to ask him for a sandwich, but I had something else to do here.
    â€˜Can you put me through to the extension of Flora Scurrison, please?’ I asked. Even my voice sounded ridiculously high-pitched and screeching.
    â€˜Who?’ he said gruffly. I’d noticed this already. OK, I was scruffily dressed, but he was eyeing me warily, as if I was looking for trouble. Had they done this when I was really sixteen? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps I’d been a tad wrapped up in myself.
    â€˜S-C-U-R-R-I-S-O-N.’
    He shook his head. ‘No one here by that name, love. Sure you’ve got the right address?’
    On some level I had known that was going to happen, but it was a real slap in the face. On the way I’d tried going into the bank with my account details. That hadn’t yielded anything either. But a big fear – of running into myself – didn’ t seem to be on the cards, not yet at least.
    â€˜Shouldn’t you be in school?’
    Jimmy, I suddenly remembered, had a daughter … er, my age.
    â€˜Probably,’ I said, then turned to go. ‘Say hi to Jinty for me.’
    â€˜What? Are you one of her friends?’
    No. At the moment, as far as I could see, I literally didn’t have a friend in the world. I had ceased to exist. I was no one. While everyone else, Jinty included, was still going strong.
    As I turned to go, I nearly ran smack into my boss, Karl Dean, a sour, halitosis-ridden old man with a dour world view, as useful for accounting as it was miserable for his life
and for anyone else who ever came within three feet of him. He looked at me without blinking. There wasn’t a second’s worth of recognition. He didn’t even look at me as if he thought I reminded him of someone but he couldn’t quite place me.
    Beside him there was someone who could have been me but was not me. It was the woman from the flat. She was looking nervous, and fiddling with her spectacles.
    â€˜I mean,’ he was saying, ‘you’ve got to care about getting it right. It’s your responsibility. You’re not just letting the company down, you’re letting yourself down. You’ve got a long career ahead of you here, and you want to make a success of it.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said the woman. But just as she said it, for a split second she caught my eye, and I sensed I saw in her a desperate wish for flight. She looked at me, and for a moment I think she wished she was me, a teenager bumming around with nothing much to do. If only she knew.
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    Lunchtime came and went, after I found a pound in my coat, and was thankful teenagers in McDonald’s weren’t exactly a rarity. I’d spent the day tramping the London streets, my thoughts exhausted. I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to give in; to admit that I was trapped. Not only trapped, but trapped with people I didn’t know, in a time that didn’t belong to me. Sighing heavily, I found my tired feet heading down to Waterloo. To Tashy’s office.
    I was trying to get it straight in my head. There was only one me. I was … a bit different. But it was possible that
Tashy wouldn’t be there either. Every time I’d had a problem, for most of our lives I’d always taken it to her. We’d laughed and talked about every single thing that had ever happened to each of us for practically as long as I can remember, and she’d made me feel better every single time. I was an only child, and Heather was a witch, and school was no picnic, so we were closer than sisters.
    I went down outside the huge office, terrified she wouldn’t be in this strange new world, and sat on a bench, sadly watching people pour out, looking cold, tired, defeated as they tried to raise their spirits enough to manage the long commute home.
    My eyes were so blurred with tears, weariness and fear that at first I didn’t notice