Page 40 of Who’s That Girl?

Right, that’s enough. I screech my imagination to a halt. Like I said, it’s totally ridiculous. OK, so Beatrice did some mind-bogglingly brainy maths and physics degree at Cambridge, but time travel? Honestly, what next? UFOs and little green men?

But what about the date on the parking ticket? interrupts a voice in my head.

Stress, remember? I tell myself firmly. I was flustered and misread the date. If I hadn’t dropped the ticket, I could check it now, prove to myself I had made a mistake, and that would be the end of it.

And the fact she looked just like you did when you were twenty-one?

Mistaken identity. Happens all the time. In fact I once pinched Miles’s bottom when he was queueing to buy popcorn at the cinema. Only it wasn’t his bottom. It belonged to someone else’s boyfriend, and believe me, that someone else wasn’t very happy.

And drove your car?

Coincidence.

Which was scrapped?

No, it wasn’t. Dad was wrong.

And lived in your old house?

For God’s sake, what is this? An interrogation? Shut up, why don’t you?

Right, that’s it. I’m not listening to this nonsense any more, I tell myself decisively. Rattled, I reach for the volume button on the stereo, turning it up until the music is blasting out of my speakers. A few people are staring as I’ve got the roof down, but I don’t care. I’m going to listen to this song and stare straight ahead and not even think about how she reversed into that lamp-post just like I—

Shit. I’ve done it again.

I tug my mind back firmly, but it’s like a restless child and I can’t get it to sit still. Before I know it, it’s wandering back to play with those questions. I know there’s a logical, rational explanation for all of it. I know that.

And yet.

Doubt flickers, like lightning on the skyline, momentarily illuminating a qualm lurking deep down inside of me.

What if by some weird, freaky, inexplicable chance I really did see myself at the traffic lights? If at that diversion my world collided with that when I was twenty-one, driving to and from work in my old VW Beetle? And what if somehow I managed to follow myself back to 1997?

Honestly, Charlotte, those few sips of champagne really did go to your head, didn’t it? I realise, grabbing hold of my overactive imagination by the scruff of its neck. This isn’t Back to the bloody Future. This is real life. My name’s not Marty McFly; I don’t drive a DeLorean. I’m Charlotte; I run a PR company and drive a Beetle. And let’s face it, with the traffic in London, I can’t have been doing more than twenty.

My attention is distracted by a street up ahead. I recognise that street. It’s the one I turned down yesterday when I followed the old Beetle …

I look away quickly. OK, enough of that. What was I thinking about? Oh, yes, stupid things. But I’m not going to think about those any more, I tell myself, brushing them away firmly. I’m going to think about something else. Like, for example, how I’m going to take the doctor’s advice and run a relaxing bubble bath when I get home. Maybe even listen to that CD Mum sent me. Light an aromatherapy candle.

Shall I turn off? A little voice pops into my head.

No, of course not, I think sharply. I’m going straight home.

It’ll only take ten minutes.

I hesitate, my resolve wavering. Which is stupid as, like I said, this is all nonsense. You don’t drive down a street one day and discover yourself back where you were ten years ago, and I hardly think I need to prove that by driving down there again, do I? I feel a flash of amusement at the mere suggestion.

Plus let’s imagine for a second that it was somehow magically possible, which of course it isn’t, the truth is, I don’t want to bump into myself when I was twenty-one, thanks very much. I left that girl behind years ago. Why would I want to meet her again today?

Like someone pressing ‘play’ on a tape-recorder, I suddenly hear Suki: ‘Eighty-five per cent of sun-damage is caused before the age of twenty-five.’ I get an image of me aged twenty-one sunbathing in my back garden, basting myself in baby oil and rotating myself on my towel like a pig on a spit.

OK, I take that back.

Slamming on the brakes, I swerve right across the road and shoot off down the street.

Five minutes later I reach Kilmaine Terrace and I’m already regretting my decision. It’s one thing imagining doing something, it’s another actually doing it.

And what are you doing exactly, Charlotte? pipes up that annoying little voice again.