A Letter to Myself

At the school reunion, twenty years after graduation, Amy had not expected to feel anything but boredom. She had a good job, a small flat and a calendar full of meetings; by any reasonable measure, everything was fine. Then the headteacher rose to announce that each former student would receive a sealed envelope containing a letter they had written to themselves at sixteen.

Amy laughed along with the others, but she held hers with unexpected care. She remembered nothing about it. She slipped out to the car park, sat on a low wall and opened the envelope. The handwriting was round and a little too confident. “Dear Amy,” it began. “By now you are probably famous. If not, I hope you are at least happy.”

The letter listed ten wishes. Amy read them with a half-smile that slowly faded. Learn to sail. Visit a country where she couldn’t read the signs. Adopt a dog with ridiculous ears. Play the cello badly in public. She had done none of them. “I wish I had at least tried one,” she thought, “and I wish I didn’t feel quite so ordinary.” She was not even sure when she had stopped wanting things at all.

The last line was different in tone: “Don’t wait until you’re ready. Nobody is ever ready.” Amy read it three times. If only somebody had told her that at twenty-five! Then she took out her phone and, before she could talk herself out of it, searched for a sailing school. A beginners’ course was starting in two weeks. Her thumb hovered over the button for a long minute.

“Amy! We’re taking the group photo!” someone called from the door. She pressed the button. The confirmation email arrived while she was smiling for the camera, and for the first time all evening, the smile was entirely genuine.

On the way home she bought a notebook and began a new letter, to be opened in ten years’ time. She started with a single line: “Dear Amy, by now you can sail.”