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with Abigail Daes on Facebook last night,’ Cally tells me after she’s spent an hour trying to coerce Zachary into consuming six pieces of
pasta and a cucumber eyebrow, before finally skipping to the cupcakes.
    He’s in the living room now, engrossed in a
Bingbah
DVD and probably smearing the cake on the sofa, but I’m beyond caring.
    ‘Wasn’t she the quiet one in 4R?’
    ‘Yes – glasses and a funny twitch.’
    ‘What’s she up to these days?’
    ‘Pan Asian Marketing Director for a global software company. She’s based in Singapore.’
    I nearly spit out my tea.
    ‘I was shocked too,’ Cally says. ‘She never really had much about her, did she?’
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘You should see the pictures of her apartment on Facebook. It’s stunning. The size of a football pitch.’
    I stand up, banging my head on the space-saving recess next to my back door.
    ‘She’d have to be work-obsessed to get to a position like that,’ I venture, placing the dishes in the sink.
    ‘Actually, she seems to be up to quite a lot. She’s getting married next year, to a guy that looks like Olivier Martinez. And she’s climbing Kilimanjaro in October, to raise
funds for a charity she’s on the committee of. Oh, and she was voted Woman of the Year by her colleagues in April.’
    I take a deep breath. ‘Please tell me she’s fat.’
    ‘Size eight. Tops.’
    ‘That’s settled, then. I hate her.’
    Obviously, I’m joking. Clearly. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone their fabulous lifestyle and achievements and I have absolutely no doubt she’s had to work extremely hard to get to
where she is today.
    But while I’m certain I don’t feel resentful, I definitely feel
something
.
    Something that is still lingering as I’m clearing up the devastation after Cally and Zachary have left. I go to open the freezer to put away the litre and a half of hidden vegetable pasta
sauce I might get around to eating myself one day. And when I close the door, I’m confronted by something stuck to it with a magnet: the list.
    I pick it up and stare at it, reading each line.
    I don’t know what it is
exactly
that persuades me to make the decision there and then.
    Maybe it’s because the countdown to turning thirty has well and truly begun. Maybe Abigail Daes and her luxury Singaporean apartment have brought out my competitive side. Or maybe
it’s that picture of my mum on her thirtieth birthday, taken less than a year before she died. Since it tumbled out of my photo box, I haven’t been able shake the feeling that I should
be treating every second of my life as precious – grasping every opportunity, no matter how mad or scary.
    It could be all those things, or none. But once the decision is in my head, there’s no going back. So I clutch the list and head to the living room, where I fire up my laptop and type two
words into Google.
    Polo lessons.

Chapter 8
    ‘Are you serious?’ Asha splutters into her tea.
    ‘Actually, I am.’ I’m at her flat on Thursday after work, trying to ignore the implication that I must’ve suffered a severe blow to the head.
    ‘But, Em,’ she says gently, ‘how are you going to buy a cottage in Rutshire?’
    ‘I can do half of that one – the polo lessons. Besides, I didn’t say I’m necessarily going to do
everything
. There’s got to be flexibility or it’d
become a full-time occupation and I’ve already got one of those. But by the time I hit thirty, I want to have achieved . . . I don’t know . . . seventy-five per cent. Enough to make the
point.’
    Asha’s flat is at the top of an enormous Victorian terrace off Lark Lane. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of a place, courtesy of the travelling she’s done over the years, with
rugs from Turkey, batiks from Swaziland, tea caddies from Hong Kong and a dozen other far-flung places.
    She examines the list and raises an eyebrow. ‘Have a one-night stand. When are you going to do that, then?’
    ‘That’s in the twenty-five per cent I won’t