Swapping Lives

by Jane Green

‘To the Bronx zoo,’ Nadine’s son says. ‘You’re not coming because you don’t have a permission slip.’

  ‘I wanna go to the Bronx zoo.’ Jared’s little face crumples up.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Vicky pleads. ‘I’ll sort it out on Monday. You’ll still go. I’ll come in and talk to the camp on Monday.’

  ‘Can I go to the zoo too?’ Gracie wanders in, looking hopefully up at Vicky, having decided that she will talk to her after all.

  Vicky looks at Nadine.

  ‘No, honey,’ Nadine says. ‘It’s just for the big kids.’

  ‘But I wanna go to the zoo too!’ Gracie starts wailing, and Nadine mouths an apology at Vicky, who suddenly thinks that perhaps Nadine isn’t quite as nice as she seems.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Nadine says, hustling her children together and taking them out of the back door. ‘Say bye bye to Jared and Gracie, kids.’ Her kids say nothing.

  ‘Say bye bye to Mrs –? What was it again?’

  ‘Oh I’m not Mrs,’ Vicky laughs. ‘It’s Vicky.’

  ‘I’d prefer the children to call you Mrs something, or Miss.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Well, Miss Townsley, then, I suppose.’

  Nadine nods. ‘Say bye bye to Miss Townsley.’

  And the kids say nothing as Nadine leaves and Vicky sinks onto a stool at the kitchen counter, wondering why the words Miss Townsley suddenly make her feel like the oldest spinster in the world.

  ‘How does she seem?’ Suzy is on the other end of Nadine’s cell phone as she pulls out of the driveway of Amber’s house.

  ‘Completely disorganized. And slutty. I can’t even tell you what she was wearing when we pulled in. She was fast asleep, floating round the swimming pool on a raft in black and purple lacy underwear. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Nooooo!’ Suzy is horrified, wants more information, is loving hearing that not everything about Amber’s life is perfect. ‘I can’t believe Amber would let someone slutty in her house! She wore underwear in the pool? That’s outrageous! Do you think Richard is safe?’

  ‘God no,’ Nadine laughs. ‘Not that she’s anything special, but I wouldn’t let someone like that in my house with my husband. Are you kidding? The only reason I can think that Amber is doing this has to be that her marriage is in trouble, don’t you think?’

  ‘I totally agree. Letting another woman come and pretend to be you for a month! I mean, I could understand it for, like, a week maybe. For a TV show or something, but a month! A whole month? That tells me that yes, there’s definitely something up with the marriage.’

  ‘I know, and they always try and appear so perfect. Just goes to show you that you never know what goes on behind closed doors.’

  ‘So do you think she’s going to be, you know, going after Richard?’ Suzy is almost breathless in her excitement at this new, unexpected gossip. When Amber had been confronted about Life Swap by the women in the League, she hadn’t said she was doing it because she was unhappy – God forbid any of those women should know her life is anything other than peachy-perfect – she had said she was doing it as an anthropological experiment, that a friend of hers worked on a British magazine and had begged her to do it, and she was curious to see whether she could still hack it as a single girl.

  It was the greatest gift she had given the League since the complete set of Villeroy & Boch dinner service for last year’s silent auction.

  The phones in Highfield buzzed for days, and just as the brouhaha was dying down, here was this to set them all a-buzzing again. The girl that Amber said was just a nice girl, a single journalist from London, is actually a slut! A man-eating black-lace-wearing slut who has already had numerous affairs with married men! She has practically told Nadine that she will be sleeping in Amber’s bed! She’s implied that she finds Richard unbelievably attractive! What do we all think of Amber’s perfect marriage now?

  Oh my. And who thought life in suburbia was boring?

  ‘So who wants pizza for dinner?’ Vicky has already put the pizza under the grill, and has rounded up the children from the playroom, Lavinia still nowhere to be found.

  ‘I don’t like pizza,’ Gracie says, pouting as she stands next to her chair.

  ‘And I had pizza for lunch,’ Jared says. ‘I don’t want pizza again. I want something else.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bugger. What now? If she were at home, with her nieces and nephew, she’d be telling them that they get what they get and they don’t get upset. As Kate always says, she’s not running a restaurant, and Kate ought to know.

  Polly and Sophie have always been fantastic eaters, but Luke never eats anything. In the beginning Kate would kill herself offering alternatives, and then each mealtime became a series of bribes. ‘Three more bites and you can have some ice cream; ten more bites and you can watch Star Wars.’

  After a while she got fed up with the constant battles, and decided to try a new tactic: she puts the meal on the table and after that it’s up to them. If Luke doesn’t want to eat, he doesn’t have to, but he doesn’t get anything else once he leaves the table.

  Normally Vicky thinks Kate is a genius when it comes to child-rearing, and tends to emulate her when she’s with Kate’s kids. But these aren’t Kate’s kids. Nor are they hers, and she’s not at home, and with a flash of guilt she realizes she should have asked them before just making pizza thinking that it was a fail-safe.

  ‘Okay, sorry, guys,’ she says. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Hot dogs,’ Jared says, getting up from the table, swiftly followed by Gracie who announces she would like a grilled cheese.

  Ten minutes later Jared says he doesn’t like the hot dog which Vicky cooked in a pot of boiling water. ‘Mom always puts it in the microwave,’ he whines. Funny, thinks Vicky, I don’t remember him being this whiny or difficult the last time I was here.

  ‘And I don’t like this,’ Gracie says, pushing her grilled cheese away. ‘This isn’t the way Mom makes it.’

  Eventually Vicky finds a supper that makes them happy. Unfortunately it consists of chocolate-chip cookies, muffins and ice cream.

  At six o’clock she finally gives in and calls Lavinia to help bath them. It’s now eleven o’clock at night in England, she’s had a hell of a long day, and her skin is starting to feel horribly tight from her unexpected nap in the swimming pool.

  At seven o’clock Gracie is in bed, Vicky having read her The Tiger Who Came to Tea, which Vicky brought with her from London, thrilling Gracie who insists that she reads it three times.

  At seven thirty Vicky manages to calm Jared down from his sugar high and put him into bed, and it’s all she can do to drag her feet up the stairs into the master bedroom and unpack, when the phone rings.

  ‘Hi, Vicky, it’s Richard.’

  ‘Oh hi!’

  ‘I’m just calling to let you know that I’m going to be late tonight. I’m so sorry, I thought maybe we could have dinner and I could tell you a bit about how everything works, but I’m stuck in a meeting and probably won’t be back before ten. How has your first day been?’

  ‘Exhausting,’ she says. ‘And strange. I keep wanting to ask permission to do things, and then I remember that I’m supposed to be the mother here, and I’m the one who grants the permission, not asks it. And then I met Nadine, and I had fallen asleep in the swimming pool, and now I’m sunburnt and it was incredibly embarrassing…’ she tails off. Probably not appropriate to tell Richard she’d stripped off in his swimming pool.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m glad someone’s using the pool other than the kids. Amber begged me to put the pool in and never has time to use it. And you have to be careful with that sun. It’s far stronger than you think.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ve realized that now. The kids wanted you to go and say goodnight to them.’

  Richard sighs. ‘I know. They always do. I’m definitely going to be home earlier next week. Will you be up when I get back?’

  ‘I doubt it. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open tonight. I think
I’m going to turn in now.’

  ‘Turn in?’

  ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘Ah. Okay. So I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well.’

  ‘Thanks, Richard. See you in the morning.’ And as Vicky puts down the phone she realizes that for the first time she sounded, and felt, just like a wife, and she’s not sure it’s such a good thing after all.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I feel like such a tourist, Amber thinks, striding along Gloucester Place on her way to the offices of Poise! on South Audley Street.

  So many people, all different shapes and sizes, all walking briskly on their way to their respective offices. It’s been years, Amber realizes, since she was part of the workforce, just another office worker striving to make it in on time, cup of coffee in a flimsy paper cup clutched firmly in hand. Years. A lifetime ago. When marriage and children weren’t even possibilities, felt as if they were aeons away.

  Do they know I’m a fake? Amber wonders, wanting to stop and gaze in every shop window, but not wanting to appear to be what she is – a tourist pretending to be a Londoner.

  She has dressed carefully for her first day of work. Although she fell in love with Vicky’s boho wardrobe, admiring it from a distance and actually wearing it were two different things entirely. Not to mention that once she took a closer look she realized the clothes in the wardrobe seemed to run a range of four sizes. Pulling on a skirt there was no telling whether it would fit like a glove, or immediately fall off and pool around her ankles.

  Vicky’s weight is clearly not consistent – anything from an English size eight to a fourteen by the looks of things, and Amber is closer to a six than an eight, so three-quarters of Vicky’s wardrobe is automatically ruled out.

  Luckily their shoe size is the same, and this morning Amber has teamed a yellow silk sweater with an embroidered chocolate-brown skirt, gold beaded slipons on her feet and a yellow coat that Vicky picked up at a designer sample sale and has never worn, had shoved to the back of her coat closet and completely forgotten about.

  Amber admires herself in a shop window. She looks perfect. Hip, trendy, and certainly not a mother of two living in suburbia. With Vicky’s Gucci sunglasses wrapped around her head, she is convinced she is the very picture of the Features Director of Poise! magazine – a style icon for thousands of women around the country.

  Of course Amber isn’t to know that Vicky bought the coat in a moment of panic, that anything in bright yellow is an aberration in London. She isn’t to know that the skirt is from H&M, and has been bought by every other woman under the age of twenty-six in London, and just a few, like Vicky, over the age of thirty-five.

  Not quite as trend-setting as she might think.

  Still, she notices and appreciates the appreciative looks she gets from the British men. Good Lord, she thinks, a smile starting to spread on her face, I am still attractive! Who knew? Because back home in Highfield there are no men around to give her appreciative looks, even if they wanted to. At this time in the morning the men have taken the commuter train into the city, and are already firmly ensconced at their desks. When back home in Highfield, they are far too busy with their kids and wife to take the time to notice other women. And anyway, who’s interested in looking at other wives?

  And Amber is no one’s wife today! Admittedly the weekend wasn’t the best – there’s only so much shopping in Marylebone High Street that can remove the tinge of loneliness, and this is the first weekend Amber has ever spent away from her kids.

  Saturday was lovely. She slept in until midday – oh the joy of sleeping in again! – had a croissant and coffee on a pavement café, then wandered around window shopping for most of the afternoon.

  Saturday night was spent in, watching television, struggling to understand the regional accents of the people in the UK version of Big Brother, flicking the channels, fascinated by the differences between UK and US television, slightly horrified by the language – are people really allowed to say the F-word just on regular TV? – and the sex that seems to be accessible to all.

  By Sunday lunchtime the reality of the life swap started to kick in. Still tired from the jet lag, and now lonely as well, Amber sat on Vicky’s bed for a while looking at photographs of Richard and the kids, and allowed herself a few tears.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this for a month,’ she whispered to herself, stroking Gracie’s face in the picture. ‘What was I thinking?’ And then she got up, grabbed the notes that Vicky had left on the kitchen counter, and picked up the phone to call Kate.

  ‘Amber! Hello!’ Kate’s voice was warm down the phone, and Amber knew instantly she would like her, that they would get on. ‘Welcome to England, or should I say welcome to Vicky’s world!’ She chuckled. ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘Do you want to hear the truth, or the answer I’m supposed to say?’

  ‘How about both? Start with the answer you’re supposed to say, then tell me the truth.’

  ‘Well yesterday was amazing. Just to have all this time to myself. I slept in, I went shopping, I didn’t have to think about anyone other than myself, which I haven’t had to do for years. I watched TV last night without having to worry about providing dinner for anyone, and without a husband moaning that he hates reality shows, and I sat in bed reading and eating chocolate digestives, and got crumbs all over the sheets and there was no one to complain about it but Eartha, who couldn’t have been happier.’

  ‘Sounds like heaven,’ Kate moaned.

  ‘It was. And today I miss my kids, I miss my husband. I feel like I’m about to start crying all the time and I’m lonely as hell. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this when I don’t even know you, and I’m sorry, but I don’t know what on earth I was thinking, and this is only day two. How am I going to survive a month?’

  ‘Oh you poor love! I’d say come down and see us but by the time you got here you’d have to go home again, but I do feel for you. I always teased Vicky that I’d swap with her in a heartbeat, but I understand what you’re saying. You want to swap but only for a day or so, just to remember who you were before you became a wife and a mother.’

  ‘Exactly! I just felt that I’d lost myself, and now I’m like, okay, now I remember, thanks a lot but I’ll go back to my real life.’

  Kate laughed. ‘The thing is it is an opportunity of a lifetime. From what Vicky has told me you’ve been feeling stuck, so maybe you could use this time to figure out what you want to do, where you want to go.’

  ‘I know that makes sense, but right now I just feel scared. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘Amber, everything happens for a reason. Vicky picked you for a reason, now you just have to figure out what that is. In the meantime, make some calls. Call some people in Vicky’s life, ring her friends and make some arrangements. If you don’t plan things not only will the four weeks feel like four years, but you won’t have achieved anything, and you’re supposed to be living Vicky’s life, aren’t you? Walking in her shoes.’

  ‘You’re right, you’re right. I will. I’ll call some people now.’

  ‘And next weekend I want you to come and spend the weekend with us. Vicky’s down here all the time and you can be mum to my lot while I have a lie-in. How does that sound?’

  ‘Perfect!’ laughed Amber, and as she put down the phone she knew she’d found a friend.

  By Sunday evening she wasn’t feeling quite so bad. She had plans to go to Deborah and Dick’s for dinner on Tuesday, and a movie screening with Jackie on Thursday. She’d left messages for a couple of other people, and by the time she went to bed that evening she was starting to think that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel after all.

  And now here she is. Standing outside the offices of Poise!, pushing open the swing doors, standing before the man sitting behind reception, giving her name and being told to wait on one of the purple modern sofas off to one side.

  And then she’s directed up to the sixth floor, and as the lif
t zooms up, Amber feels as if she left her heart downstairs at reception, the nerves flooding in, apprehension and excitement causing a wave of nausea as the lift doors open and she finds herself staring into the friendly eyes of Ruth.

  ‘You must be Amber!’ Ruth says, shaking her hand warmly. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get you a cup of tea and then we’ll go and meet everyone. How’s everything going? We’re so excited you’re here, everyone on the magazine is completely obsessed with Desperate Housewives and Vicky said it’s just like that where you live, and we’re all dying to hear about it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Amber has joked about being a Desperate Housewife but has never meant it to be taken seriously. But who else would answer an ad looking to swap lives? Who else would actually leave her beloved husband and children for four whole weeks to go and live the life of a single girl? No one other than a Desperate Housewife, that’s who. And with a sigh of resignation Amber follows Ruth into the kitchen to get some tea.

  When Amber goes to the loo, Leona comes running into the kitchen.

  ‘Is she here? What’s she like? What do you think? Is she like Teri Hatcher? Or Bree? Vicky said she was more like Bree but with Teri Hatcher’s legs. What do you think?’

  ‘Sssh. She seems really nice and she’ll be back in a minute. She does look like a banana, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No seriously. She looks like a banana. She’s wearing bright yellow and brown. It’s making me hungry just looking at her.’

  ‘Oh don’t be so horrible to the poor woman. She just got here. Anyway, isn’t she supposed to be wearing Vicky’s wardrobe? Vicky doesn’t have anything bright yellow.’

  Amber rounds the corner, at which point Ruth introduces Leona.

  ‘Anything you need, you just ask,’ Leona says. ‘We’re sitting at the same desk and we work incredibly closely together, so I’m going to be helping you out. I’ve got to run in and see the editor a second, but I’ll see you a bit later.’

  ‘What’s she like?’ Janelle is peering through the sidelights to the left of her door as Leona walks in.