The Good Part

“If I owned those boots, I don’t think I could be anything but deliriously happy all day long. Anything could happen—I could get pecked by a pigeon or hit by a truck—and I’d just look down at my perfect ankle boots and feel that everything was right with the world.”

Lucy views her boss, Melanie Durham, as an emblem of who she aspires to be. Lucy sees Melanie’s expensive wardrobe as an indicator of success, not realizing until she journeys forward in time that having the “right” clothes does not give her the confidence and knowledge that Melanie has—these have to be earned with experience.

“‘People need wishes as much as they need bread and milk. Maybe more so,’ she says, smiling at me, and there’s a kindness in her soft, lined face. Something tells me she won’t mind if I wait out the rain without buying anything. ‘You look like you could use a wish, duckie.’”

The elderly woman in the shop makes this observation to Lucy, underscoring that having a dream can help one get through the difficult times in life. Her use of the endearment “duckie,” along with the description of the “kindness in her soft, lined face,” shows that the magic of time travel is benevolent rather than sinister. Rather than losing 16 years of her life, Lucy is receiving a rare chance to understand the value of the years of struggle she has to go through.

“I wish…I wish I could skip to the good part, where my life is sorted. I’m so tired of being broke and single and stuck. I wish I could fast-forward to when I know what I’m doing, when I have some semblance of a career, when I’ve met my person and I don’t need to go on any more soul-crushing dates. I just want to live somewhere nice, with a sturdy ceiling and a shower with no bones in it. If the love of my life is out there, I want to get to the part that he’s in. I just want to get to the good part of my life.”

Lucy’s wish demonstrates her need to learn one of the novel’s biggest lessons: that all parts of life come with joys and sorrows, high points and tragedies. Twenty-six-year-old Lucy believes that it is possible to fast forward through the challenges in life, but she soon discovers that all stages of life have their challenges and that there will never be a time when everything is perfect; what matters is Gratitude and Appreciation for the Present.

“‘Where did you put Mummy? Have the aliens taken her back to their planet?’

Have I been abducted by aliens and put back in the wrong body? At this point I’m not discounting any possibilities.”

Felix immediately sees that Lucy is not the same when she wakes up in her 42-year-old body. Unlike Sam and everyone else, Felix is not fooled by the fact that she looks the same as she did yesterday, and he remains the only person who fully believes her when she explains her situation. His perception of the change indicates how a person’s lived experiences contribute to their identity.

“It was just a shock seeing the effect of sixteen years all at once, like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the guy chooses the wrong cup and ages a hundred years in five seconds.”

Lucy alludes to a well-known movie to create an image in the reader’s mind of what waking up 16 years older feels like. By selecting a vivid image to reference, Cousens takes what could be a serious, upsetting situation and puts a comedic spin on it.

“Yesterday I had minus money, my overdraft was maxed out. Peering down to check the number again, I can’t quite believe it. Future Me is rich. And whoever said money can’t buy you happiness hadn’t been living off thirty-five pounds a week for the last four years.”

Lucy still thinks at this point that having more money will fix all her problems, dismissing other types of riches she had before, like the presence of Zoya in her life. However, she soon learns that having a larger budget does not automatically translate to happiness. Later in the narrative, Lucy is not comforted by her nice house and beautiful clothes when she realizes that Zoya has died and that she will not be able to laugh with her again.

“Being constantly in bed is probably not helping, but the thought that I might never feel young and sprightly again makes me want to cry. I do cry, a lot. For Zoya, for the years I’ve lost, for the contours of my jaw.”

Here, Cousens utilizes anticlimax to lighten the tone. By ending the list of what Lucy has lost with “the contours of [her] jaw,” something that is decidedly less important than the other items on the list, she encourages readers to laugh even though the moment is very serious. Lucy cannot get herself out of bed, yet she can still laugh at herself, pointing out the physical changes that bother her even though she knows how insignificant those changes are next to other losses.

“Great. So, Future Me has gambled the jobs of my entire team on some ‘amazing big idea’ that no one else knows about, least of all me. I’ll need to call Michael and break it to him that however screwed he thinks we are, we’re infinitely more screwed because there is no idea, big, small, or even medium-sized. As I’m mulling the unfortunate timing of all this, a small thought takes hold. Isn’t this what I asked for—to have my ideas heard, to be taken seriously? If Coleson Matthews can do this job, surely I can—memory or no memory. How hard can it be to come up with one great idea? These last few days, grief has knocked me into neutral. But now, with the prospect of doing something useful, something inside me notches into gear. I always loved a challenge.”

This is a turning point in Lucy’s character arc. She recognizes that one of her wishes as a 26-year-old was to be valued for her ideas, and now she has that opportunity. The change from being ignored in a meeting to having everyone at the company rely on her helps Lucy transition from an immobile state to one in which she is ready to take on a challenge.

“Twenty minutes later, as I’m lying in our big, beautiful bed, with Sam’s strong arms wrapped around me, I feel an overwhelming sense of contentment. Sure, it’s not ideal that I’ve missed sixteen years of my life, but this situation certainly has its advantages. I’ll never need to have bad sex ever again or wear cheap footwear that dissolves in the rain.”

Lucy is someone who finds the bright side in all things. While at first, she was distraught at learning what she had missed, she can identify the perks of her new timeline and appreciates them, as well as the relief she gets from some of the stressors in her former life.

“These last few days, you’ve got this lightness back, a kind of childlike exuberance, as though nothing bad has ever happened to you. But I feel guilty for enjoying it, for wanting to keep this from you. On Saturday, it felt like we were thirty-one again, having a fun first date, all the heavy stuff, the day-to-day stuff, erased. But I don’t want to erase Chloe. I wouldn’t want her never to have existed.”

Sam is speaking to Lucy about the contrast between the joy of newfound love and the bittersweet experiences of a long-term relationship. Lucy has missed the latter by skipping ahead in time, and Sam’s words help Lucy see that no matter how exciting it is to fall in love again, that cannot compensate for her inability to recall an event that is central to their relationship—the loss of their daughter, Chloe.

“‘You know what I’ve always loved about gardening?’ he asks, and I shake my head. ‘Plants don’t mind who you are, what you’ve done, or what you’ve forgotten. If you visit them frequently and look at them properly, you’ll sense what they need. People are the same—you don’t need to know someone’s entire history to know when they need a hug.’”

Lucy’s father is losing his memory but can still communicate important life lessons. Lucy needs this insight to successfully navigate her own “memory loss” and engage in relationships in her future timeline life. Her father underscores how taking care of others is the most important thing.

“‘Yes,’ I say, without even hesitating. ‘I can see the advantages to being this age, but there are things I didn’t expect to. Life just feels so busy, like there’s never any time. The big stuff seems so much bigger, the sad stuff…well, it’s really fucking sad.’

‘You’re right, in some ways, life only gets more complicated,’ says Alex. ‘The older you get, the more you encounter grief, pain, and disappointment. Anyone who hasn’t, it is coming for them.’

‘Amen,’ says Roisin. ‘Life is never sorted. It’s just an undulating shit storm of problems and pleasure.’”

Faye, Alex, and Roisin help Lucy process the loss she is experiencing. This conversation connects to the themes of the book by emphasizing that life is always changing and is full of ups and downs.

“So I’ve not had instant success. Did I really think I was going to come up with the perfect idea in one evening of research? That I was going to learn how to be a parent in a single day? That I could slot into an eleven-year relationship without any difficulty at all?”

Lucy has an important realization here: Skipping ahead in life is not the shortcut she thought it was when she made her wish. More broadly, this speaks to The Consequences of Wishes, suggesting that there are no shortcuts in life and that anything of significance requires growth, time, and experience. Where Lucy initially believed a “fake it till you make it” approach would suffice in her new life, she now sees that time and effort are vital.

“‘Yes. All I’m saying is, you have been on a journey to get here, and it’s all connected because if Toby hadn’t broken your heart, you might never have come back home, and you wouldn’t have met Sam, who is your person.’

I reach out a hand to Faye, grateful for her unwavering kindness.

‘You have a strong marriage. But that’s taken work too. What you’ve both been through is not easy.’”

With Faye’s help, Lucy begins to understand that all her terrible dating experiences are necessary to get to “the good part” with Sam. She could not have recognized the value of her relationship with Sam if she had not felt heartbreak in other relationships.

“As I hang up, I can’t help feeling disappointed. Is that what life is—missing out in your twenties because you have no money, then missing out in your forties because you have no time?”

Lucy gets invited by Roisin to Mykonos and has another important realization: Every stage of life has its sacrifices. Her younger self had more freedom from ties like a husband, family, and job, but for the same reason, her life also lacked the elements that contribute so much to her current happiness. “Having it all” does not exist, a lesson that 26-year-old Lucy needs.

“‘You can’t be jealous of yourself,’ Sam insists.

‘I can. I can be jealous of the version of me that got to live eleven years with you, that got to meet you for the first time across a crowded karaoke bar, that got to date you and fall in love with you, not knowing how it would end. The person who got to marry you, who got to see your face when I gave birth to our first child, who got to hold your hand when we lost our second.’ And now I’m sobbing, and he’s holding me tight. ‘Because I missed it all, Sam, I missed my life, I missed us.’”

Lucy feels the full weight of missing these pivotal life experiences, both joyful and tragic, with Sam. By entering the future timeline where she did, Lucy can see exactly how those experiences built to something beautiful over time, but without firsthand memory of those events, that beauty is lessened.

“‘You once told me that everyone dies twice. Once when your body takes its final breath, then again when someone says your name for the last time. You made me promise we’d keep saying Chloe’s name so part of her would always be here with us. I think that’s why you not remembering her feels particularly cruel.’ He turns to plant a kiss on my head.”

The reason for Sam’s withdrawal from songwriting and the pain in their marriage finally surfaces during this conversation. Lucy’s previous statement about the importance of remembering loved ones who pass is ironic in light of her “memory loss” and a source of pain for Sam’s character.

“He pinches his lips together, then says, ‘How’s the fog?’

‘Currently a dense smog,’ I say, then ask quietly, ‘Do you think memories make us who we are, Michael?’

‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘Who we are is our code of morals, the things we stand for, not our ability to recall the past.’”

While Lucy has been grappling with the consequences of missing the pivotal experiences in her life, Michael provides a different perspective, one in alignment with her father’s view that one can tend to one’s relationships regardless of what one remembers. To this, Michael adds the idea that a person’s values, not their memories, make them who they are.

 “‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, ‘I don’t need to be anywhere else.’ And even though there are a hundred things I could be doing, even though there is never enough time, right now, it’s true.”

When Lucy meets a woman, Greta, whose toddler and baby both need attention and who is overwhelmed, she immediately starts to help. Lucy understands the challenges of motherhood now in ways she did not previously. In her 26-year-old life, she and Zoya encountered a parallel situation, and Lucy’s only thought was that the baby was “annoyingly loud.” Lucy did not even consider offering help to the woman at that moment, yet she has a complete reversal after experiencing motherhood herself.

“‘Well, there’s been a lot to catch up on,’ I say, relenting and reaching for one of her sweets. ‘But maybe there aren’t any shortcuts in life. Maybe you have to live it all, because it makes you who you are.’ I pause. ‘Wait, did I really say that? Wow, I’ve gone full Elizabeth Gilbert.’”

Lucy alludes to Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (2006), which explores finding comfort and meaning in life after divorce. By connecting her reflections to Gilbert’s, Lucy is pointing humorously to finding one of life’s great truths—one so universal that saying it, she implies, verges on platitude.

“When all this began, I so desperately hoped for the wishing machine to be real, wanted to believe I had skipped forward because that might mean I could go back. But now, I have fallen in love with the people in this life. I know I could be happy here if I stayed, especially if my memories returned.”

Lucy is faced with a difficult choice: to stay in a timeline she has learned to love and allow the memories to come back, or to go back and let her life unfold naturally. Lucy is experiencing internal conflict because she has become attached to Sam, Felix, Amy, and the rest of her future self’s world. At the same time, Lucy also knows that she has missed getting a chance to live her memories rather than just recall them.

“We grin at each other. ‘If I stay, she said my memories will come back. I’d be your mummy again.’

‘You’re already my mummy,’ Felix says, hugging closer into me. ‘Just messier and swearier.’

I blink back tears.”

In Chapter 5, Felix thought his mother had been replaced by aliens, giving this remark that Lucy was “already” his mother added pathos. Felix’s acceptance was the hardest earned among all Lucy’s family and friends in the future timeline. For Felix to recognize Lucy as herself means that she has figured out how to connect to the core of who she is.

“I want to go back. Please, I want to go back. I want to live every messy day—the good ones and the ones that suck—where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know where I’m going or how to get there. I want to go on all the shit dates, because then, when I meet the right person I will know how special he is. And when I find him, I don’t want to miss a minute. I don’t want to miss making him laugh for the first time, I don’t want to miss discovering that his eyes look green rather than blue when he wakes up in the morning. I don’t want to miss our first kiss, our first fight, our first anything. And I’ll take the heartache and the horror and the losses too, the fear of not knowing how it will all come to be, because that is life, in all its glorious, messy Technicolor.”

Lucy’s second wish reverses her original wish, not only because she wants to return to being 26 but also because she recognizes the value of her struggles at that age. Having missed 16 years, Lucy realizes how valuable it is to live the adventures of life for herself. By skipping ahead, she lost vital experiences that she would prefer to go through herself rather than hear about from others.