Do You Remember the First Time?

‘Are you smoking?’
    ‘No!’
    ‘Oh. Right. God. No, it’s just … they’re about to cut the cake.’
    ‘Flora! Flora!’ It was my mother’s voice. ‘They’re cutting the cake! You should come to see it.’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ I said. Olly too was now running out of the house, running for me.
    ‘They’re cutting the … !’
    He was shouting, and I suddenly felt very tender for him, looking out for me; tearing across the short grass just to make sure I was alright.
    ‘Cake cutting?’ said Justin, closing his eyes again. ‘That sounds boring.’
    ‘You’re not needed, squirt,’ said Clelland.
    ‘Fine,’ said Justin. ‘I’ll stay here. Come back soon, Flo.’
    I looked at him, and suddenly a lump welled up in my throat. I was frozen to the spot.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
    ‘Flora,’ said Clelland, softly.
    I looked again at Justin, lying stretched out on the grass, like one of those beautiful boys from pictures of Edwardian house parties, not long before they all went off to Belgium to get slaughtered.
    I clutched Clelland’s arm.
    ‘You don’t have to,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said again.
    ‘You’ll be fine,’ he whispered.
    ‘Don’t be long,’ murmured Justin, but he already sounded as if he was drifting off into sleep.
    The room looked eerily, horribly similar. Tashy was standing at the cake, her face completely fixed. She was staring at me.
    ‘Get on with it,’ somebody shouted. She didn’t move. I walked forward until I was facing her.
    ‘We’re going to cut the cake now,’ she said weirdly, as if she was announcing it on television. She was standing in front of Max, almost obscuring him in her pure dress.
    ‘I know,’ I said, equally stiffly.
    I could feel Clelland behind me, standing as if to steady me.
    ‘Are you ready?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Don’t,’ said Tashy.
    Max nudged her. ‘Erm, can we get a move on?’
    I looked around. My parents were there, smiling anxiously, hopefully; at me and each other; holding hands. Tashy was standing, so beautiful and defiant. Olly was lurking sullenly in the background. And in the garden, perfect and dreaming, a boy, young and guileless, without a care or a fear in a world under a golden sky.
    The two hands joined on the knife, and pressed down.

Chapter Eighteen
    I’d expected – I don’t know, a blackout. A disappearance. Maybe a blinding flash of light? Or a jump to the next morning, or something. Something.
    I had done it. Instinct had taken over. My eyes had focused on the cake, the wish bubbling up – and I had spoken it, I must have. Stupidly, I was tempted to say, ‘I wish I was twenty-five again,’ but swallowed it at the last minute. I had said, ‘I wish I was my own age again.’
    Maybe that’s why it had worked badly! Maybe it thought I just wanted to stay sixteen! Olly was right: I had arrested my development so completely I would be staying here for the rest of my life! Or would go round it over and over again! Or nobody would remember anything about it and I’d be confined to an insane asylum like Sarah Connor!
    All this flashed through my mind as I concentrated on the two hands on the cake, cleaving it through to the bottom, and all around me there was applause, and flashbulbs wentoff and people cheered. Tashy and I stared at each other, and her eyes were wide and shocked. Then I blinked, several times, and let my field of vision expand to take in the whole scene. Tashy was still in front of Max, but as they started to move, my focus shifted and became blurry. It couldn’t be … it just didn’t …
    The person standing behind Tashy suddenly wasn’t Max. It was Olly.
    Tashy’s face of shock widened as she realised whose hand she was clasping so hard. Then she turned round, and her mouth dropped in delight, and she shrieked and jumped up, wrapping herself around him and almost knocking his ears off. His face too was comical, his eyebrows fighting each other like quotation marks, his ears pink as a pig’s.
    ‘You know, for such a short courtship, I never thought it would work,’ I heard somebody – probably her mother – say behind me. ‘But they certainly look happy enough.’
    I wanted to rush up to them, run into them, but they were clearly in a private moment of such joy and intimacy it would be sacrilege to interrupt them. All those secret meetings; discussion about me, my arse! They were falling in love! No wonder Tashy had been so tragic these last few weeks.
    I grinned from