‘It looks amazing on you,’ Linda says as we both admire my reflection in the enormous changing-room mirror. It’s a bold, statement suit, by a designer whose name I don’t recognise. With its elegant cut and soft silk lining, it feels wonderful to wear.
‘It does, doesn’t it? It’s also making me feel better about how old I look.’
‘You don’t look old,’ says Linda, her eyes sparkling with the unmistakable glow of day drinking.
‘How old do I look?’ I ask, and her eyes grow wide in fear. I know it’s a mean question. It’s like asking someone if they think your boyfriend is hot – you can’t win.
‘Mid-thirties?’ Linda is being kind, but I’ll take it.
Looking at myself in the statement suit and heels, I know I’m going to buy them. Who knows when I’ll wear them, but since this whole experience could well be a hallucination, it’s easy to rationalise anything. Dorothy got new sparkly red shoes, why shouldn’t I have a new purple suit?
‘How much is it?’ I ask Linda.
‘It’s on sale,’ she says excitedly. ‘So only two thousand and eighty pounds.’
After briefly choking on my own tongue, I quickly calculate that there’s probably been some inflation I’ll need to account for here. Since coffees and croissants cost roughly four times what I’d expect to pay, two thousand pounds is probably the equivalent of only five hundred pounds in old money. Which is still a lot I know, but it’s like when you go to a festival and you get drinks vouchers, you can’t think of it as real money or you’d never buy any drink. Besides, if you can’t buy yourself a ridiculously expensive suit to make yourself feel better about time-travelling through half your twenties and your entire thirties, then when can you buy one?
‘I’m going to take it, and these shoes . . . and these boots,’ I tell Linda, handing her the black ankle-length boots that feel soft as butter. At the till Linda rings up the suit and shoes, plus a top and jacket I like, plus a sparkly brooch, because what’s a little more when you’re spending this kind of cash? The total when I hand over my bank card makes me feel physically sick, but that’s probably the residual croissant binge. I reassure myself that there is still plenty in my account, and that it’s not even real money, because none of this is real. Probably.
Linda holds a card reader towards me, but there’s no pin pad or eye scanner.
‘It’s a palm reader,’ she says, sensing my confusion. Cautiously, I lift my hand to the reader, which instantly flashes green. ‘You have twenty-four days to return anything, as long as it hasn’t been worn and still has the tags on.’
Watching Linda carefully wrap the purple suit in crêpe paper, I realise that I feel so much worse now I’m not wearing it. Maybe this clammy, guilty feeling will go away if I put it back on?
‘You know, I think I’m going to wear the suit home,’ I say.
‘O-k-ay,’ says Linda, enunciating each syllable, in a way that makes me think maybe she doesn’t think it is okay.
‘If it was good enough for Carrie Bradshaw to walk the streets in a tutu . . .’
‘Who’s Carrie Bradshaw?’ asks Linda.
And just like that, I feel incredibly old again.
As I walk down Oxford Street in my new I-might-have-lost-a-decade-and-a-half-of-my-life-but-I’ve-gained-a-phenomenal-suit suit, I realise I have no idea what time it is. I switched my phone onto silent hours ago to stop it from beeping and ringing and offering me stress-busting suggestions. Sitting on a bench, I retrieve it from my bag and see it’s two o’clock. There’s a message from Emily: Are you okay? I’m worried about you. Emily.
I quickly reply that I’m fine and she doesn’t need to worry. I think about sending her a selfie of me in my new suit, but then think better of it. Expensive shopping sprees might not be everyone’s definition of ‘fine’。
There’s also a text from Sam: Deal on tiles at Tanburys if you want to get those blue ones you like for the downstairs bathroom? Then he’s attached a photo of some beautiful hexagonal tiles, with a geometric turquoise pattern. I might not know much about Future Me’s life, but I know she would want me to say yes to those tiles.
Yes! I reply. Do I leave a kiss? He didn’t put a kiss on his message to me. Scrolling back through our chat, I see that I do usually add a kiss. There are messages about Felix’s swimming bag, about picking up the mild cheddar he likes for his lunch box, what train I’m going to be on, and whether Sam needs to ask Lenny to look at the dripping tap in the kids’ bathroom. In short, it’s all incredibly dull. I imagined marital WhatsApp might contain a bit more flirting, a few more dick pics, but the only recent photo on the chat between Sam and me is of the aforementioned leaky tap and more close-ups of the Tanbury tiles. Ooh they are nice. I follow up my initial text with a more enthusiastic, Love these tiles! xx
My phone starts to ring as I’m holding it. Michael Green is calling, whoever Michael Green is. It might be the new suit or those two glasses of champagne, but I now feel equipped to take a call from anyone.
‘Michael, hi,’ I say, full of confidence.
‘Are you feeling better?’ he asks. If he thinks I’m ill, he must be Michael from work, the one Trey mentioned.
‘I am, thanks.’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you when you’re sick, but I thought you’d want to know that the pitch went well. Sky loved your idea. They’ve committed to giving us development money for a pilot.’
They loved my idea. I feel a swell of pride. Even though it wasn’t really my idea, it was still some version of me, and that counts for something. ‘That’s great!’ I say.
‘You focus on getting yourself well,’ Michael says. ‘Everything else can wait until Monday, I just knew you’d want to hear the good news.’
I quickly access my options. I could head to Waterloo, get a train back to that house in Farnham and hide under the luxuriously soft duvet until all of this goes away. Or, like Mr Finkley said – I could explore this new world while I have the chance. This might be my only opportunity to see what my future life looks like. I don’t know the rules; for all I know this could be a twenty-four-hour thing and I could wake up in my old reality tomorrow. If I am being offered a chance to see what my future holds, maybe I should embrace it. Besides, the dopamine hit from shopping is beginning to fade and this Michael guy sounds friendly enough. I already look the part, what have I got to lose?
‘Michael, I’m feeling better. I’m coming to the office.’
Chapter 10
The minute I’ve hung up, I realise I don’t know where it is I work. I can hardly call Michael back and ask him. Then I remember, Trey called me from a landline number. I call the number and a male voice answers, ‘Good afternoon, Badger TV.’ I hang up straight away. Ha, I am detective extraordinaire; Poirot would be proud of me.
Google informs me that Badger TV is based on Beak Street, just off Carnaby Street. How would anyone navigate a life leap before phones or the Internet? Jumping in a cab （two cabs in one day, what decadence）， I spend the journey reading up about Badger TV.