Read Online The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan - Free Book Online

had it pretty much figured for one of those extremely convincing dreams. Any moment, the Queen and a big hippopotamus were about to crash through the window and take me flying. Until then, I was going to make the best of it. I stared and stared. This looked like my face from at least ten years ago.
    I had a crop of spots on my forehead. I moan about the occasional pimple now, but I’d forgotten what it was like when they used to grow in small fields. But apart from that, my skin was fresh, rosy … I turned round. I disappeared. I stretched out a long, white thin arm. Oh my God. How could I not have known this wouldn’t stay for ever? How could I not have realised that years of pizza and red wine could have an effect on this? When I was really younger, I thought I had an enormous arse and spent my entire time covering it up. I turned round again. OK, it wasn’t Kylie, but in absolutely nobody’s world was this a big arse. Wow! I jumped up and down. Nothing wiggled at all. Look!
Look! Hip bones! Bones! Oh my God! OK, my hair was a frizzy disaster, with what appeared to be pink bits dyed in, but that’s OK, I know about expensive haircare products. I wished it wasn’t a dream, because this could have been so much fun. As if my body had turned into a Barbie doll, I could dress up and parade around. This was the best dream in the entire world.
    â€˜Get out of the bathroom! You’re going to be late for school!’
    Now, this was too much. Oh my God. School. Tashy and I sitting up the back of English, giggling our heads off.
    No, I should just wake myself up before a monster came or something. I’m always quite lucid when I dream anyway. I always know that something won’t happen. I’d probably end up trapped in the bathroom, desperately knowing I was late for school on a test day and …
    I have never felt water flow over my hands in a dream. I have never turned a tap on and got wet.
    â€˜Hurry up!’
    The door was banging. And I had to realise: that wasn’t Ollie’s voice. That was my dad’s.
    Bloody hell.
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    I stood in the shower for a long time, shaking, although I turned the water up as hot as it could go. What the hell was happening to me? It couldn’t … this was impossible. What was I doing standing, washing myself (with impossibly pert breasts. Jesus, these were up by my neck!) in our old blue bathroom suite?
    I thought. What had happened yesterday? I had gone to
the wedding. I had met Clelland. I had fallen out with Oliver. I had made a wish over a wedding cake …
    It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
    You know when something terrible happens and everyone says ‘Don’t panic’?
    Now, I believed, was the time to panic.
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    Slowly, very slowly, I reached out of the shower and put a towel round my tiny waist.
    I was back in my nightie, and my dad pushed past me into the bathroom. I barely caught sight of him. Jesus. Had I … travelled back in time? What was it, 1987? I caught my breath. So I could … what? Bet on general elections? Ooh, maybe go discover Take That! Maybe I could marry Robbie. He’d be older than me too. Was Jonathan Ross still free? He turned out to be a pretty good bet. Are the Backstreet Boys still children?
    I stumbled back into my bedroom and leaned against the wall, my eyes closed, my heart racing a mile a minute.
    Hang on, I should stop just planning on not-yet famous people I want to get off with; do something properly. 1987. Maybe I could save that baby who fell in a well! Oh my God! I have to save Princess Diana! Ooh, I can become the most successful medium there’s ever been! I started to get feverishly excited. What could I invent? Did Dysons exist yet? Ooh, mobile phone stocks! I was going to be so rich!
    I shook my head. This was nuts.
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    Opening my eyes, I took in a picture of – oh, for God’s sake — Blue on my wall. And Darius, I noticed wryly.