Do You Remember the First Time?

want to come back,’ I said musingly.
    I surprised even myself.
    ‘Student grants,’ Tashy was saying earnestly. We’d repaired to the ICA. ‘Sweaters with big holes in the sleeves. Living off one pot of chilli for an entire week.’
    ‘Finals,’ said Olly.
    ‘Sitting your driving test. Which, by the way, they’ve made much, much harder.’
    ‘The Co-op.’
    ‘Other idiotic young people all around you.’
    ‘High hopes being dashed all over again.’
    ‘Middle-class students exploring socialism over long boring conversations.’
    ‘Trying to get on the London property ladder.’
    ‘Middle-class students telling you all about how their gap year in India really changed their life.’
    ‘Having to dance in public.’
    ‘Smoking dope again.’
    ‘A LEVELS!!!’
    ‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘Look, it just came out. A possibility. I know it would be awful.’
    ‘Crazy awful.’
    ‘It’s just …’ I said. ‘I could … I could choose everything. Do things differently this time.’
    ‘What’s wrong with what we had?’ said Olly, staring hard at his cappuccino.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just … there’s so many possibilities. I mean, what if I went to film school?’
    ‘Flora, your favourite film is Goldeneye ,’ said Tashy.
    ‘Mmm. He’s so beautiful. Oh God – and, really, far far too old for me now.’
    ‘I don’t think they let you in to film school just for fancying movie stars.’
    ‘They should,’ I said. ‘Then they’d stop casting Robin Williams in things.’
    ‘Hmm.’
    ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be film school. Maybe I could be an illustrator, or a teacher … OK, maybe – no, make that definitely – not a teacher. Maybe I could go travelling for a bit. Ooh, join an ad agency. That always looked like fun. I could work as an intern. Maybe go into government. Be one of those clever wonks like in The West Wing . I bet there’s billions of things I could do. And I know what they are. And I know how to network. And this way, I could choose my life, properly, based on the world as it is and not someone desperately trying to get their UCCA forms filled in on time.’
    They both looked at me. Olly stopped playing around with a packet of sugar.
    ‘I always thought we had a good life,’ he said quietly.
    I suddenly hated the fact that Tashy was here.
    ‘We did,’ I said as earnestly as I could.
    ‘You say that. In the past tense, by the way. Of course. It sounds reasonable. But then … but then, you hated it enough to rent the fabric of space and time to get away from it. From us. From me .’
    Suddenly, savagely, he threw down the sugar, which ripped and sprinkled over the top of the table like a tiny hailstorm. He stood up, put on his coat, and made to storm out. Then he realised he hadn’t paid his share, paused,took out his wallet, threw some money on the table, and, finally, left.
    ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Tashy. ‘I didn’t even know you two were having problems that bad.’
    ‘Well, I didn’t know you were having problems with Max till I found you weeping on a park bench.’
    We both stared at our coffees.
    ‘I—’ We started at the same time.
    ‘You go first,’ said Tashy.
    ‘I think … honestly, you haven’t seen what happens at the wedding, but it’s not pretty.’
    ‘Why, what happens at the wedding?’
    ‘I’m not sure I should say.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Olly proposes.’
    ‘Ohmigod! Congrat—’
    There is a default setting for thirtysomething women, and Tashy hadn’t quite learned how to switch it off.
    ‘I mean, gosh, that puts a spanner in a few things.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Ooh, does he steal my thunder? Bad, attention-stealing friend.’
    ‘Definitely not. In fact, he doesn’t even get a chance to finish. Mum interrupts. In fact, we get interrupted just before your cake cutting.’
    ‘Shit,’ said Tashy. ‘So you really did do it on purpose.’
    We walked to the tube station together and were just about to go our separate ways, Tashy tutting when I bought a child’s ticket when she knew for a fact we both used to do it until we were nineteen, when I heard a rapidly becoming familiar voice.
    ‘Flora! Flora! What, so, now you go travelling without me, yes? Perhaps you’d be happier pretending I didn’t exist, no? You run away from home, you run away from your job, you run away from your best friend – you’ve gone crazy? You’re on drugs? Perhaps somebody gave you drugs in detention. So now you are up, in Trafalgar Square,