The Girl I Used to Be

The Girl I Used to Be

Mary Torjussen




For Rosie and Louis

   And for my mother and my late father

   With love





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thank you so much to Toby Jones at Headline and to Danielle Perez at Berkley for your invaluable editorial advice and support. It’s been such a pleasure working with you both.

Thanks to my writer friends, Fiona Collins and Sam Gough, who made the experience of writing this novel such fun. I’m so grateful for your support and your tact when I went off piste!

Thanks to Anne-Marie Thomson for your advice about what an estate agent does all day. It was so kind of you to answer all my questions.

Thank you to Graham Bartlett, author and ex–Chief Superintendent of Brighton and Hove, for your advice and for talking me through what would happen to a woman in Gemma’s position.

Finally, thanks so much to Daisy Ambrose for your social media advice.





PROLOGUE




Fifteen years ago

Thursday, August 15

WHEN I THINK of that night now, I remember the heat, clammy and intense on my skin, and the sense of feverish excitement in the air. I think of the taxi ride to the party with my friend Lauren, her body soft and scented against mine as we sat crushed into the backseat with her boyfriend, Tom. The radio was on, the windows were open, and “London Calling” started to play. I remember the surge of happiness I felt then; I’d just been accepted by London University and would be there within a month. Whenever I hear that song now, it takes me straight back there, to that taxi ride to Alex’s house. It’s as though I am that girl, the girl I used to be.

But I’m not.

I can feel the sandals I was wearing as though I’m wearing them now. I could hardly walk in them; I wore them that night for the first time and within an hour I had blisters. I can remember the feel of my dress, its soft cotton brushing my skin. When I close my eyes I can feel the breeze lifting my hair. I can smell the perfume I wore, taste the lip gloss on my mouth.

But always, always, when I think of that night, I think of Alex.



* * *



*

    IT WAS MID-AUGUST, the summer we were eighteen, and over three hundred of us from school were going to celebrate our exam results at Alex Clarke’s party. Lauren and I had gotten ready together at her house, and I’d sneaked in the little pink dress that I’d bought with money I was supposed to be saving for university. We were tanned from the summer sun; each day we worked until midafternoon at the café in our local town, and then we’d strip off our sweaty nylon overalls, pull on our shorts, and spend the rest of the day down at the beach. That afternoon we’d spent an hour or so topping up our tans before going back to her house to get ready for the night ahead. This was the start of the rest of our lives, we told each other. We wanted to look different, like we were ready for our new lives away from home.

We had a few drinks before we went to the party. Lauren’s mum came into her room with a bottle of champagne to celebrate our results, and insisted on refilling our glasses whenever they were empty. We didn’t tell her we’d already had tequila shots. Lauren had more to drink than I did, but she always did back then. As soon as I was seventeen, I passed my driving test and my dad bought me a run-around so that I didn’t have to ask him for lifts. I loved driving and was happy to have soft drinks and ferry everyone around. I suppose that’s why it hit me so hard that night.

It was a Thursday in the middle of August and we had to go to the school office first thing that morning to get our results. We felt they were life or death; if they were what we needed, doors would be opened to the top universities, the best courses, and a life full of promise. Just a grade down and we’d be screwed. The lives we’d hoped for just wouldn’t happen. Or so we thought. And while we knew—we’d been told often enough—that everything would work out no matter what, that other universities were still good, we were young enough to believe that no, actually, things wouldn’t be okay. We all knew people who’d failed to get into their first-choice university, who’d talked about it for years later.

But that wasn’t our fate that summer. It was a stellar year. Everyone seemed to get the results they needed, to do what they wanted to do. It was exhilarating, the way we opened our envelopes and screamed, one after the other.

And I remember Alex and his friends, all of them bound for Oxford and Cambridge, trying to hide their elation behind cool exteriors. They were fooling no one. They’d seen themselves as separate from the rest of us—they knew they were different—and now they were proven to be right. Or that was how I saw it then. I didn’t even know him; I’d only spoken to him once, but that was the impression he and his friends gave.

Lauren and I were standing behind their group that morning in the queue for the exam results and overheard his friend Theo ask, “The party’s on, then?”

Alex nodded. “Spread the word around. People from here only. No one else.”

I’d nudged Lauren and she’d giggled; we’d been looking forward to it for months and had everything planned, right down to the nail varnish we’d wear on our toes.

The local press was there in full force that morning, prearranged by the school, and there were photos taken of us all, grouped into sets, our expressions happy and free. Our teachers stood with us, their faces so tanned and relaxed I could hardly recognize them. The relief among all of us was palpable.