Kate O'Reilly, mother of three on the cusp of her 45th birthday, has got a thing about the past. Her husband, Seamus and long-standing best friend, Georgia, both call her chronic nostalgia an obsession - but Kate sees it as her safety harness, her private Prozac, her coping mechanism of choice. Because when being a wife and mother is weighing her down, making her feel trapped and overwhelming her, all Kate needs to do is take a quick trip down memory lane - to where the music was better, her social circle was wider, her self-esteem higher, her hair thicker and her waist much, much thinner - and voila All is right with her world again. So when a freak electrical storm propels her back in time to 1996 for real, Kate's elated - this is the moment she's been waiting for all these years, her chance to re-live the good old days and actually do all those things she's been fantasising about. Armed with little more than the optimism of youth, the benefit of hindsight, a taut-again tummy and just the one chin, Kate sets out to discover what might have happened if she'd only done things a little bit differently in the past. And why life in the present can be a truly great gift, even if you do have a bum the size of Cuba. Mink Elliott is also the author of The Pissed-Off Parents Club and Just Another Manic Mum-Day