I bet he’s married.
I bet he has kids.
I bet he’s living this amazing, adventure-filled life; the kind I can’t even dream of.
I find Jamie on Instagram without too much trouble. He’s instantly recognizable, even though I haven’t seen him for years now. But there he is, smiling on a boat somewhere. There he is again, holding a cocktail in a bar. There he is, brown eyes laughing at the camera, looking so familiar that the nostalgia almost takes my breath away.
He’s living an amazing life, filled with adventure: that much is certainly true.
But he’s not married.
He doesn’t have kids.
He does, however, have a bar in Tenerife, according to the information on his profile. A bar that looks rowdy and happy, and a million miles away fromDiamonds, with its sticky carpets, its watered-down drinks, and its weird old ladies who may or may not have been sent from the future, with an important message for Summer Brookes, aged 31-and-a-half.
A bar which I could get to on a budget airline for just £139 return, according to Google.
“No,” I say out loud, putting the phone firmly down on the bed beside the box of old diaries. “No, that’s crazy. I can’t go to Tenerife. I just can’t. I have work tomorrow, for one thing. I have those KPIs to do, for another. And I’m terrified of flying.”
Also, that would be crazy. Impulsive. Reckless. All the things I’m not.
I pause, thinking about it.
Fear-of-flying aside, there’s really nothing stopping me from getting on a plane and going out to Tenerife. No husband or partner. No kids. Hell, I don’t even haveplantsto worry about.
There’s nothing stopping me from booking a flight. There’s nothing stopping me from doinganyof the things I wanted to do with my life, back when I was 13, in fact.
So… why don’t you, Summer?
I’m not totally sure how the Wise Old Crone has somehow managed to speak inside my head, and I’m even less sure why I’m listening to her. But the more I think about it, the simpler it all seems.
I could fly to Spain.
I could kiss Jamie Reynolds.
I could, to quote my younger self,just totally change my life, basically.
And maybe the wine I was drinking tonight was stronger than I thought it was, but right now I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t do it, other than the fact that it’snot the kind of thing I do. My life is lived by rules and schedules, and … and KPIs. I’ve never done anything even remotely spontaneous in my life.
But maybe now’s the time to start?
It’s fifty-three minutes past midnight.
And it looks like I’m going to Spain.
Two
It turns out changing your life is a lot less dramatic than you might think.
It’s actually quite boring, if you want to know the truth.
I mean, I can’t speak foreveryonewho does it, obviously. It’s not like I’m the world’s foremost expert on leaving your life behind. This is my first time. My debut, if you like. I’m a rookie life-leaver. And I’m sure there are people out there who flawlessly pull-off soap-opera style exits, complete with suspenseful music and a desperate love-interest chasing them frantically through the airport, but in my case, it’s so far involved a lot of queuing, a not inconsiderable amount of admin, and a stony-faced woman at the check-in desk, whose name-badge identifies her as April, but who’s definitely more of a January, personality-wise.
I’ve always hated January.
And airports, for that matter.
Ever since that ill-fated flight to Majorca when I was thirteen, and I threw up in my mum’s handbag when the turbulence got really bad, I’ve been terrified of flying — to the extent that I just don’t do it. Buthere I am, standing at the check-in desk at Gatwick airport, less than 24 hours after booking the flight online, getting ready to face my fears and change my life.
