Channel 7 star Gemma Acton reveals the one life-changing phone call she’ll never forget

Welcome to our regular column series written by some of your favourite Channel 7 stars.

This week, 7NEWS presenter Gemma Acton reflects on how her life could have been so different.

The 1998 rom-com starring Gwyneth Paltrow popularised the idea of Sliding Doors moments where, if we’d taken a slightly different path at a pivotal moment, our life would have panned out completely differently.

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What if we hadn’t accepted that job offer? What if we’d stayed in that flailing marriage? What if we hadn’t tried one last time for a child?

When we reflect on these bygone possibilities, we are left just imagining the other path as we haven’t found a way (yet) to exist in parallel universes.

Every now and then, though, we do get an insightful little taste of what might have been.

I moved to London after finishing high school in 1999 and, once I’d become caught in the cogs of the buzzing city, I hadn’t really ever expected to come back to Australia.

In 2017, one phone call turned that all on its head when I heard my beloved father wasn’t well.

Within an hour, I’d decided to move back to Australia — a country I’d never lived, worked or studied in as an adult.

Dad tried to dissuade me, not wanting to feel responsible if I ended up miserable — but I was resolute and a few months later rolled up in sunny Sydney and started work at 7NEWS.

It was my sliding doors moment.

Six years later, I am in the same job and flanked by a wonderful husband and two tiny daughters.

It’s a far cry from the adventurous life I was living in London with a group of career-minded girlfriends, most of whom were single.

Working furiously hard and without dependents, we were able to soak up the best of London culture and its incredible proximity to Europe for travel. It was an exciting and fun time.

Last week, I went back to London for my first stint in the city since becoming a mother.

Most of my girlfriends are still single so we trooped around our old haunts and tried some trendy new places.

It was fantastically good fun and felt like no time — or a husband and two babies — had passed between us.

After two days in London, my husband joined me — and it was absolutely wonderful to create new memories with him in a city bursting with flashbacks for me.

Now, as I write, I’m about to board the flight home and I am tapping my toes with excitement to see my toddler and baby.

It was a terrific privilege to be able to step back for a couple of days into the shoes of the life I had loved so much and experience what could have been if that fateful call had never come through back in 2017.

I do, however, feel very lucky at how things have panned out.