Do You Remember the First Time?

scorned element of society.’
    ‘Poor little you,’ said Olly.
    ‘OK,’ said Clelland. ‘Here’s what I mean. You have the chance to do some things again, right?’
    I nodded.
    ‘And we think – well, this is what we were discussing before you came in …’
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘… that you might be caught in some sort of a loop. Because you’ve gone back in time. That when we get back to Tashy and Max’s wedding, something is going to have to happen there.’
    ‘I might meet myself,’ I said.
    ‘There’s that.’
    ‘There might be a collision of matter and anti-matter and you might die,’ said Olly.
    Tashy went over and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ssh,’ she said.
    ‘I’m just saying,’ he complained. ‘It’s a possibility.’
    ‘Don’t frighten her.’
    ‘OK then. The wolverine might disappear and I might get the old Flora back,’ said Ol. ‘And I’ll get to chuck her. You’re right. I like that much better.’
    ‘Well, what I mean is …’ Clelland was tentative, and he must have known what I might be thinking of, however much he seemed to be pretending, in his new role as grown-up, that I was merely a paranormal phenomenon. ‘… if there are some things you didn’t do first time round, some fun you didn’t have; do some good things you could have enjoyed.’
    I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say: what, all the things I missed when you went to Aberdeen?
    ‘Well, maybe this is the time to do them,’ Clelland finished. ‘You may only have a month.’
    He looked at me with his big grey eyes and I felt all funny inside. I noticed Olly darting him, and then me, suspicious glances.
    ‘Enjoy the fact that there’s no tomorrow, that’s what I mean. Because you’ve done this already. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve built a life. This is a holiday. Take it.’
    I noticed Tashy looking at Olly. She was patting him on the hand. She was a good friend to us.

Chapter Ten
    The breakfast table was quiet. Too quiet. My mother and father were silently eating toast as I tentatively sat down. There was a long pause. Then my father coughed a little and cleared his throat.
    ‘Flora Jane,’ he said. If there’s anything more indicative of trouble ahead than your parents using your full name, I don’t know what it is.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said immediately. ‘I’m a mouthy teenager with no impulse control. I’m really, really sorry. Mum, I really am. I only went to a friend’s. I just needed to get out.’
    My mother didn’t even look up. Which was more like the mother I knew.
    ‘We’ve been talking about you,’ my dad said, which is hardly a surprise, as that’s all parents ever do. ‘And, we’ve decided … well, I think perhaps this family needs to do more as a family together.’
    The seething hypocrite! This family needed to do a little less secretary banging, all told.
    ‘So, erm, from now, I think we all have to make more of an effort. I’ll try and be home earlier.’
    Ooh, good.
    ‘And we’ll try and do more things as a family.’
    Ooh, not so good.
    ‘Flora Jane, I want to see more of an effort around here and I don’t want you out gallivanting at all hours of the day and night.’
    Getting seriously to the state of extremely ungood gallivanting was pretty much all I had left. And if Clelland was right about the time loop, I had rather a lot to fit into quite a small space of time.
    ‘And we’ll all help your mother a lot more. OK. Speech over.’
    ‘What would you do,’ I said, trying to sound jolly as Stanzi and I surreptitiously shared a Twix bar in Miss Syzlack’s class, ‘if you thought you might be scheduled to disappear or, um, die three weeks on Saturday?’
    I’d been thinking a lot about what Clelland had said: it made my brain want to jump out of my ears. The idea, though, of either bumping into myself or spontaneously combusting had a curiously unreal quality to it. Frankly, I was more depressed at the possibility of seeing my thirty-two-year-old self from the back than ceasing to exist, and, even, bringing the entire universe to an end in some kind of anti-matter paradox calamity.
    ‘I’d eat nothing but shortbread and offer myself up to Ethan,’ whispered Stanzi.
    ‘That’s quite useful,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘Why? What is matter with you?’
    ‘Is there anything you two are saying that’s more important than Middlemarch ?’ said Miss Syzlack.
    ‘Flora thinks she’s going to die, miss,’ said Stanzi helpfully.
    With